Click here to listen to podcast version. It was a perfect storm last weekend. First, it rained all weekend long. (Why can’t it rain during the week and leave the weekends for sun and fun?) Second, I got a dang cold again (my second one this year – don’t worry – I won’t talk about […]
April 6, 2024
I can already hear the criticism. Shouldn’t the title be Steve Martin and I? Um . . . No. The full title is actually Ruminations about Steve Martin and Me, so as you can see, the “me” pronoun is perfectly acceptable. I read somewhere that grammar debates are the absolute best way to grab the […]
March 23, 2024
Even in my little neighborhood, these months of college acceptances and non-acceptances feel like times of great uncertainty. When I worked in schools, you could feel the anxiety building from the beginning of the senior year. For those students who are applying to colleges, there is stress that is involved. And for the parents, that stress […]
March 9, 2024
Lurking in my lower back, there is a pain monster waiting to get out of its cage. For much of my adult life, it’s just waiting for the right moment – it may start roaring when I’m swimming into a flip turn, executing a golf swing, sitting at my computer for too long, or just […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
Admiral William H. McRaven
2017
Read: 2021
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now
I’ll get to the title of the book later. This is written about the trials and travails of life. It’s about how life can kick you in the teeth, whether or not you deserve it. He writes about Naval SEAL training and the strength you need to get through that. SEAL training prepares our young […]
