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 26, 2025
Jill and I recently had dinner with two old friends — well, one of them is old (just kidding, Kevin!). For three decades now, our conversations have centered on our kids — their successes and struggles. But this time, the focus was on our parents. I would say that our parents are one of the hottest […]
September 15, 2023
I always appreciate my friend Mikke for his humor, fantasy football banter, and his sense of adventure. But way more than that, I appreciate him because he is a very wise man who has listened and helped me to be my best on numerous occasions. He now serves as an executive coach, and he has […]
February 3, 2022
I was talking to my friend Kevin last week. Kevin and I have ventured through our public education careers with similar jobs as teachers, high school principals, and finally as superintendents. He has been a mentor and a friend for over 30 years, and I truly appreciate our bond and understanding of one another. Kevin […]
April 25, 2020
It may have been the most thoughtless senior prank I ever experienced. As a former high school principal, I don’t love senior pranks. Usually, very little thought goes into them, and they end up being destructive, damaging, or time consuming. Occasionally though — and I mean very occasionally — a group of seniors pulls off […]
Read: 2022
Non-Fiction, Reading Now
Younger Next Year is a book I keep coming back to. I forget who first turned me on to it, but I read it in my mid-fifties, and it continues to inspire me. The bottom line is that at some point, sometime in our forties or fifties, our bodies want to get old and decay. […]
Johann Hari
2022
Read: 2023
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now
My friend Jenn loaned me this book. That means I read it as a paperback, instead of Kindle-ing it. I read less than 10% of my books in hard copy. This was a perfect one to choose to be part of that 10%. This is a book about why we are distracted, and the forces […]
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 […]
David Allen
2001
Read: 2011
Non-Fiction, Reading Now
When I started teaching at age 22, with just two large classes in a high powered high school, I had great ideas. About 10% of my great ideas turned out to be pretty good lesson plans. But behind all of the ideas, there was a jumble. I struggled to keep up with all of the […]
