When I was seventeenIt was a very good year.It was a very good year for small town girlsAnd soft summer nights.We’d hide from the lightsOn the village greenWhen I was seventeen written by Ervin Drake

“Kathy”, I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh,“Michigan seems like a dream to me now.”It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw.I’ve gone to look for America.   Laughing on the bus,Playing games with the faces.She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy.I said “Be careful, his bowtie is […]

  At the age of 17, Helô Pinheiro became the inspiration for the song “The Girl from Ipanema” when songwriters Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes saw her walking to the beach in Ipanema, her neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro.

<a href=”https://morethanfolkrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bitter-root-magpie”>Bitter Root & Magpie by Autumn Shade</a>

<a href=”https://morethanfolkrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bitter-root-magpie”>Bitter Root &amp; Magpie by Autumn Shade</a>

The world’s most successful investors are some of the happiest people on earth. But it’s not because they are rich — money won’t buy happiness — but because they are able to think rationally. Listen as William Green talks about interviewing financial superstars like Sir John Templeton, Peter Lynch, Michael Price, Ed Thorp, and Charlie Munger. The concepts he shares […]

Frank Pooler wrote the words to “Merry Christmas, Darling” in 1946 when he was 19 years old. Twenty years later, Pooler was Professor of music at California State University. Richard and Karen Carpenter were in his choir. When Richard asked Professor Pooler if he knew of any new and different Christmas songs they might sing, Pooler […]

On January 10, 1988, Dolly Parton explained why she wrote “Jolene”: “Now this is a true story. I wrote this song about 20 years ago about this woman down in Nashville that worked at the bank. She was trying to take care of my husband while I was out on the road. Well, that didn’t […]

Speaking of sons, the video below was crafted as a 50th anniversary tribute to Creedence Clearwater Revival. John Fogerty says, “It’s about rich men making war and poor men having to fight them. So it was the Vietnam War going on… Now I was drafted and they’re making me fight, and no one has actually defined […]

Floyd was in his 60’s and 70’s in the twenty years I knew him. He was a slim, tall man. He walked the mile to his law office nearly everyday, rain and snow notwithstanding. His walk took him across a long bridge high above the Illinois river. It was a brutal walk in the rain […]

This is Kerry Livgren, the guitarist who in 1976  wrote “Carry On Wayward Son” at the last minute, giving his band, Kansas, no time to rehearse it. The song became a massive hit. According to Livgren, “It’s an autobiographical song. Parallel to my musical career I’ve always been on a spiritual sojourn, looking for truth and […]

Carry on, my wayward sonThere’ll be peace when you are done.Lay your weary head to rest.Don’t you cry no more. Once I rose above the noise and confusionJust to get a glimpse beyond this illusion.I was soaring ever higher,But I flew too high.Though my eyes could see, I still was a blind man.Though my mind […]

On February 10, 1968, Berry delivered “A Statement Against the War in Vietnam” during the Kentucky Conference on the War and the Draft at the University of Kentucky in Lexington: “We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to ‘win the hearts and minds of the […]

More than one billion copies of the Bible have been sold, but I have no idea how many people are actually reading it today. Here are some other numbers: 25 Best-Selling Books of All-Time #1 – Don Quixote (500 million copies sold) by Miguel de Cervantes #2 – A Tale of Two Cities (200 million […]

Do you want to visit the Livraria Lello website to see more of this amazing place?

Indy, every year twixt Thanksgiving and Christmas I have the privilege of hosting a Christmas show that runs on a bunch of Westwood One stations. This year there is a new tune by Ingrid Michaelson and Zooey Deschanel that I wasn’t familiar with so I looked it up: “Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.”   As I kept […]

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate.Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;But […]

I bought this old pencil sketch of a farmer with his hands on his hips shortly after I purchased the unpublished manuscript of Don Keehan, Marshall of Manchon from the estate of John Steinbeck. Everyone in the Cervantes Society assumed that Stanford University was the winning bidder, but the head of the Department of Spanish and […]

I’ve been saying for 20 years that I’m going to write a buddy movie about Jesus and the 12. I’ve got the whole thing in my head. But who am I to put words in the mouth of Jesus? The idea of creating a fictional Jesus who does and says things that are not in […]

“You see?If Mrs. Trent had not so perfectly mastered the art of roasting, the young lieutenant might have kept his attention on the Princess instead of washing down a third helping of beef with an eighth glass of wine. If the temperature that night had not dropped six degrees in as many hours, the ice […]

“Let us not confuse ourselves by failing to recognize that there are two kinds of self-confidence—one a trait of personality and another that comes from knowledge of a subject. It is no particular credit to the educator to help build the first without building the second. The objective of education is not the production of […]

https://youtu.be/lxqBN3h0Bgs?t=7

Warren Buffet, in the 2017 documentary, Becoming Warren Buffett “I was genetically blessed with a certain wiring that’s very useful in a highly developed market system where there’s lots of chips on the table, and I happen to be good at that game. Ted Williams wrote a book called The Science of Hitting and in it […]

People, and businesses, think change is difficult, costly, and weird. But as the old saying goes, “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” But according to Erika Andersen, if you embrace change as doable, rewarding, and routine, then growth – big growth ­­– is also inevitable. Erika is an important advisor to top executives at Amazon, […]

Advance to 4:30 to see Will Farrell and his wife perform Free Bird during the final moments of Conan’s farewell episode as host of The Tonight Show in 2010. Or better yet, advance to 8:30, right before the band starts to FREE BIRD rock.

“Indy, Evan might be right about the origin of his willingness to ‘go with the flow’. Being the youngest child in a large household makes it easy to follow the lead of the more experienced children. All I know for sure is that Evan has proven to be exactly what I knew he was when […]

Being Intentional Hey Indy, A client of mine was talking about how he makes time each afternoon to hit the gym. He said, “You have to be intentional.” While he was referencing his regimented workout, these words have hit me with blunt force. Of the drifter, the surfer, the drowner and the navigator…I figure myself to […]

While millions of people looked at the partial eclipse of the moon last Friday night, Daniel Sax was building his empire there. In his mind, Daniel was extracting water and oxygen from the lunar surface so that he could sell it to planetary travelers in the future. Daniel says the engineers and technology are available; […]

“A good writer is basically a story-teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.“ – Isaac Bashevis Singer (a fabulous writer, you should read his short stories. The man won the Nobel Prize!)

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” – Sue Monk Kidd  “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” – Philip Pullman  “Stories change people while statistics give them something to argue about.” – […]

“The truth happens to everyone. But stories only happen to people who can tell them.” – Allan Gurganus

“People will remember stories long after they have forgotten your bullet points.” – Laurie Beth Jones

“Those who tell the stories hold the power in society. Today television tells most of the stories to most of the people, most of the time.” ­­– George Gerbner

“A storyteller is in the same business that God is in. You’re creating a world, and the people in it.” – Tom Robbins

“Facts tell. Stories sell.” – Tom Schreiter

“Stories change people while statistics give them something to argue about.” – Bernie Siegel

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” – Philip Pullman

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” – Sue Monk Kidd

Foreword My friend Don has a time machine. He takes me with him sometimes. You should come, too! Every person who rides in Don’s time machine is changed by it. The United States Department of Justice has booked passage on Don’s time machine for countless prison inmates. State and local governments and hundreds of rehab […]

“I think the idealization of women is indigenous to men. There are various ways of idealizing women, especially sexually, based in almost every case on their inaccessibility. When a woman functions as an unobtainable love object, then she takes on a mythical quality. You can see this principle functioning as a sales device in advertising […]

The anima, according to Carl Jung, is the Perfect Woman that exists only in the imagination of a man. We see her with four different faces. Eve – the nurturing mother. Helen – the face that launched 1,000 ships. Mary – spirituality and commitment. Sophia – inner life, search for meaning, the artist’s muse. In 1605, […]

LONDON (AP) – Rock singer Robert Palmer, known for his sharp suits and hits including “Addicted to Love,” died Friday (Sept. 26, 2003) in Paris of a heart attack, his manager said. He was 54. Palmer was on a two-day break in Paris following a television recording session in Britain, his manager Mick Carter said from […]

You get a shiver in the darkIt’s raining in the park but meantime-South of the river you stop and you hold everything:A band is blowing Dixie – double four time.You feel alright when you hear the music ring. Well now you step inside but you don’t see too many faces.Coming in out of the rain […]

“Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” sounds like a song about a guy who is hung up on a girl, but it’s actually about a drug dealer trying to push heroin to a skittish new client. The tip-off is the line “Slow Hand Row.” Eric Clapton, a notorious heroin user, earned the nickname ‘Slow Hand’ back […]

General Electric stood as a beacon of American manufacturing for more than a century. It was once the most valuable U.S. corporation; its logo emblazoned on tens of thousands of products from light bulbs to nuclear power plants. Last week GE announced it would spin out its remaining operations into three separate companies, in effect, […]

“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” – Sue Monk Kidd “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” – Philip Pullman “Stories change people while statistics give them something to argue about.” – […]

My friend Don has a time machine. He takes me with him sometimes. You should come, too! Every person who rides in Don’s time machine is changed by it. The United States Department of Justice has booked passage on Don’s time machine for countless prison inmates. State and local governments and hundreds of rehab centers […]

I met Joy at a rest stop on my trek up to where the polar bears swim. The official name of the Haul Road is Dalton Highway, a too-narrow gravel road with deep potholes, arctic weather, and a caravan of trucks taking supplies to the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay.  It was summer. We were […]