My Catch, Your Ball
We have opportunities every day to interact with people and to make a difference in their day. Sometimes hitting a home run is more about seizing the opportunity to make someone else’s day better. Are we taking the opportunities in our daily lives to hit a home run?
Shoeless and Famous
Most people who follow jazz music and its history will acknowledge that Billie Holiday is one of the greats. She had a smoky, pleading, almost heart-breaking style of singing. Not surprising when you know how difficult both her childhood and adult life would be. The pain of her life became the pain in her voice. […]
Not All Challenges are Big Ones: Except to Someone
A recent article in the WSJ outlined a two decade pursuit of one of the significant challenges faced daily by parents of children with long hair. Too young or lacking in the regular habit of brushing their own hair the task often falls to a parent who, seeing the child on his or her way […]
Rain Brings Misery and Hope
In Rio de Janeiro, March is the rainiest month. It is a time when it rains so hard that roads become impassable, fields flood, hillsides slide, often destroying or damaging everything in their path. Life becomes difficult, even miserable for people. And for those people whose lives they built around rutted, dirt roads, living on […]
Same Path, Different Routes
There are many places in this world where you can really connect with nature–through hiking. Hiking, outside of a city or country where the road’s end and the sidewalks disappear, requires the walker to pick their own route. One of the easiest to find but not always easy to navigate are dry river, creek or […]
French Speaking English and English Speaking French
In my ear, there are languages that sound beautiful. There are languages that sound precise. There are languages that sound harsh and languages that are not much more than a whisper, to my ear. French is one of those languages that sound beautiful. When the French speak French, it becomes difficult for me to follow. […]
It’s All Black and White
There is a connection between the precision of an instrument we used to measure and what we find in using that instrument. The Roman physician Galen noticed that blood pouring from some wounds was darker than blood pouring from others. We know that the lighter or brighter red blood was arterial, infused with oxygen on […]
Is it People to the Jobs or Jobs to the People?
Are you the only person out there who hasn’t used a kitchen knife as a screwdriver or the bottom of a mug as a hammer? Are you the person who always has and uses the right tools for the right job? Well, I’m not. I have to admit that I often use tools that are […]