I lack self-confidence in many arenas. Put me at a party where I don’t know anyone, and I do my best to look invisible. I’ve had a few jobs where I had to act the part of a salesperson, and I have found that I rarely have the hutzpah one needs to repeatedly ask for […]
January 3, 2026
Happy New Year everyone! First and foremost, I hope that 2026 brings you all joy, meaning, good health, and a heck of a lot of fun. For my swimming, golf, and pickleball friends, I hope the year brings personal records, a new age group, consistent workouts, long straight drives, a few lucky breaks, around the […]
December 24, 2025
My brother Pat is an artist – I’ve written about him before. One of the coolest and most spectacular pieces that he creates is his seasonal studies. He takes a subject – it could be Colorado aspen trees or Arkansas cypress trees or something else simple and yet majestic, and then creates four separate paintings, […]
November 9, 2025
Two Mondays ago, Jill and I channeled one of the great movie lines of all time — from Risky Business. (I’ll substitute “heck” for the original.) Both Jill and I like routines. I find that when I’m in my regular routines, I eat more healthily, I exercise hard and regularly, I sleep a little better than I […]
October 19, 2021
Critical Race Theory. It’s something I had never heard of until September of last year. And then, I began getting very angry emails and people started coming to board meetings to demand that we stop teaching it. The questions were very much like ones featured in the first-ever school board meeting parody on Saturday Night […]
June 30, 2022
I have loved not working. Transitioning from a 60 to 80-hour work week to a 0-hour work week was easier than I ever imagined. I have rested, lost weight and become healthier overall, organized my life, increased my time spent on hobbies I love, and avoided being such a pain that my wife wanted me […]
November 11, 2023
From the time I was 6 until I was 14, we lived in a two-story house on a busy street in North Little Rock, Arkansas. I scored my own (very small) bedroom upstairs. It was directly above the baby grand piano, where my mom would spend hours in the evenings practicing and playing. She started […]
Roland Merullo
2008
Read: 2023
Fiction, Reading Now, Spirtuality
OK. I love this book. It’s one of the few books I’ve read where, after I finished it, I immediately began reading it a second time. I’ve written about it in two separate blog posts, and I have many friends who have read it and loved it after I suggested it to them. It’s a […]
Patrick M. Lencione
2016
Read: 2024
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now
One of my favorite parts of my career in public education is the teams that I have been fortunate to be a part of. I wrote a post on my love of teams back in 2020, celebrating teams that included: History classes that I taught New teachers (and eventually veteran ones too) at San Lorenzo […]
Michael Easter
2021
Read: 2024
Non-Fiction, Reading Now, Spirtuality
After I wrote my blog post on doing something that sucks everyday, my sister-in-law Libby recommended that I read this book. It was an outstanding recommendation. Michael Easter does a wonderful job of telling the story of a highly challenging hunting trip to Alaska, weaving in research on how we 21st century humans have it […]
Fritz Gilbert
2020
Read: 2024
Non-Fiction, Reading Now
After I finished my first year of retirement, I found this book. Mr. Gilbert’s book is thoughtful and introspective in his analysis and reflections. His advice would be to read this book and start thinking about all of this at least three years before you are considering retiring. I would say that anywhere from one […]
