Thank You, Seth

Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people. ~Seth Godin

About a year ago, 23Sep2011 to be exact, I took up a challenge by Seth Godin to start a blog and to write a blog a day for an entire year.

I don't know Seth, had never heard of him until a month before when I heard him speak at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. I know him now only through his message on stage that day and the books of his I have read.

His way of thinking strikes a chord with me. He says we were all artists and we should share our art with the world, sharing our art is a gift we give to the world. By sharing our art we connect with others. Connectedness is the way of the future.

I had been thinking prior to hearing him about starting a blog. His challenge of a blog a day in one of his blogs gave me the kick in the butt I needed and I started blogging.

Through 29Jan2012, I blogged every day. I thought I posted on 30Jan but apparently I posted that days blog on the 31Jan. So, on 30Jan, my streak was broken. It restarted then broke again on 27Mar after which, work became very hectic and the blog a day faded to something like a blog a week.

In some respects, I am disappointed that I broke my streak. But, the thing that got in the way, my work, was because I had started a Leadership Training course for which I developed all content and was the trainer. That activity, a complete labor of love, consumed me completely work weeks on end. Many a work day would pass where I suddenly found myself to be the only one in the office and the clock showing I had been there for 12 or more hours.

So the blog streak broke and I am okay with that. Over the course of 365 days I posted 255 blogs which amounts to about a 70% completion rate. More importantly, I jumped back into a personal art form that had been stagnant for quite a few years. I found myself reveling in the written word again, found myself growing in creativity with every post. For this joy, I say, Thank You, Seth Godin.

Hershey Bar Squares

There's a smile in every Hershey Bar ~Hershey Advertising Slogan

One of my fondest memories of my youth was the big, milk chocolate Hershey Bar formed into squares. To me, the squares were a palette of chocolate gold.  They were a rare treat in our family. Those rare times we sunk our teeth into the chocolate morsels were when my father had been out of town on a business trip and would bring home a Hershey bar to share with us kids. He didn't bring home bars. He brought home a single bar and from that bar, we kids were each treated to a single, delicious square. 

There was not much disposable income during the years I grew up. We didn't have a lot of things nor did we visit exotic locales....exotic other than central Wisconsin where we vacationed practically every summer in our personal compound of tents and sleeping bags on our 'summer estate'. Of course, with the lack of disposable income came with it a lack of things. We didn't have latest cool bikes like my friends and our clothing was frequently hand me downs from our neighbors or custom creations formed on a sewing machine by my mom.

The one thing we never wanted for as children was the unconditional love that seemed to ooze from my parent's pores. They loved us completely every day of our lives, a love that still is a staple of the family in which I was lucky to be raised, a love uniquely shared between me and my siblings and my Mother and with the memory of my departed Father.

Their love was manifest in listening to us speak from the depths our souls even when the revelation our souls made them uncomfortable. It was manifest in the shoulder to cry on when love broke our hearts. It was manifest in encouraging us to choose a path in life that revealed who we were born to be rather than who they thought we should be. It was manifest in the discipline we received when we crossed the line from acceptable to unacceptable actions. It was manifest in the sacrifices they made to ensure we were loved especially in those time when we were unlovable.

Love is a funny thing in that the more love you give away the more love you receive. The love we received is now a love that is being passed down through the generations. I see that love in myself as I give it to my children. I see it in my children as they express it upon my grandson.

A workmate was selling candy today for his/her child and I bought one. I ate that Hershey bar, the entire bar all by myself one square at a time. The experience was much more than a mere chunk of chocolate that melted in my mouth. Every square of the Hershey bar embodied the love I felt as a child and every square I put into my mouth melted my heart.

Your Children Are Not Your Children

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. ~Kahlil Gibran.


I've never confessed this to anyone before but I think it's about time. I am a closet reader of Dear Abbey. No, I don't read the column in the closet. I typically read the column between the sheets, in those moments between waking up and getting out of bed right after I read the daily Dilbert and just before I check the news on Zite from my iPad or iPhone.

I don't read Dear Abbey for the advice she bestows on people who, by their questions, alert the world to their alarming lack of common sense. I read the column purely for the entertainment value. My favorite columns move along the line of;

My boyfriend is the most loving man in the entire world and he is absolutely perfect for me but, there is a small problem that has me concerned and I don't know what to do. He drinks a lot and cannot hold a job because he shows up for work drunk. He gambles away the money I earn from working two jobs which makes it hard to pay the bills. What should I do?

I wish, just once, she would just tell the person to get a crowbar, extract their head from deep up their butt, dump the idiot and get on with life. How these people grew up without any common sense is something I can only blame on their parents. Today's column, a rebuttal from an older column, helped solidify the lousy parenting theory in my mind.

In a recent column, I encountered a mom who freaks out because her college age daughter won't return her text messages. Here is the column in question from 26Jun2012:

DEAR ABBY: My daughter, "Tammi," is attending college in a neighboring state. When I text or call her, she doesn't respond. I have asked her to please just text me back saying she's OK. She says my texting her once a day is "overkill" and I should stop doing it so often -- once a week is often enough. I feel it is disrespectful of Tammi not to respond to my texts, even with a simple "OK" or "fine." She texts her friends all the time, so I don't think five seconds is too much to ask of her.I'm willing to compromise and text Tammi every other day or every three days. She is my only child and I want to know that she is well. Am I being unrealistic or asking too much? -- TAMMI'S MOM IN NEW JERSEY

My comment would have been. Hey Tammi's Mom…get a life. The end product of having children is to grow them into fully functional, INDEPENDENT adults. Kids are not there to make you feel better, not there for you to hover over and 'protect' from the boogie man. Face facts, you can't protect your kids from injury especially when they are away at college becoming adults. Answering your texts is not going to prevent harm. You only want contact to assuage your own anxiety not to help your children become an adult. If you have not prepared them o be independent by the time they have entered college then you have FAILED as a parent.

Another parent commented that I pay the cell phone bill so I better get a call or I'm going to cancel the phone. Please! You job pays you the money so you can afford the phone. Should you be required to call them back when not at work? Should you be required to let them view your Facebook account because they pay you the money for your internet access?  If you need to force your child to call then you too have FAILED as a parent. Forcing your kid to call will also push them away emotionally which is just the opposite of the closeness you seek.

When my daughter went away to college, she encountered other students who came in clueless as how to wash their own clothes or cook a meal that required more skill than microwaving a bowl of water and dumping in raman noodles. Some of them were even challenged at boiling the water.  She was shocked by the complete lack of life skills these kids learned growing up. I was more shocked that parent's could have so FAILED the children the were blessed with by not teaching these basic skills.

My children learned to wash their own clothes by the age of 12. By that time, they were also able to cook basics. By the time they finished High School, they were prepared to live as independent adults and did so while attending college.

While they were in college, I received phone calls not because I threatened to cut off their phones but because I had invested the time necessary to build a strong relationship with them, a relationship that helped them move from youth into a functional adult hood and they wanted to talk to me. I didn't get calls every day or every week and I was ok with that because I knew I had done my job well enough to  ensure they were functionally adults and had the ability to survive on their own.

To those parents that whine about their kids not calling or feel compelled to manipulate them into calling. While they were growing up, would have been better off growing them into adults instead of kissing their butts until they went off to college. It's time you understand the reason your kids are not calling and you are freaking out about the lack of contact is because, as parents, you have FAILED them.

Two Wheeled Therapy

Four wheels move the body. Two wheels move the soul. ~Author Unknown



I walked out of the office today at 6:30 pm. It was another in a long line of days beginning and ending with both clock hands pointing at the number six. I am not complaining because I enjoy my work, enjoy leaving the office knowing I have completed something, enjoy walking out the doors believing that I have made a difference for the people I lead.

There were very few cars left in the lot, very few cars and one lone motorcycle. My black Honda Magna was standing in the motorcycle stable, my trusty steed waiting to take me home. She turned over at the first button press, roared to life and whinnied as I tweaked the throttle once, twice, thrice sending the tachometer to the redline as my baby screamed and shook with an intense energy begging to be unleashed.

I pulled up the zipper on my leather jacket, put on my helmet, then my deerskin, leather gloves while feeling the rumble of the engine beneath me, enjoying the vibration of a 750cc engine between my legs. Her purr worked it's way through my body making me feel at one with my two wheeled steed. I shifted into gear and took off turning the handle bars back and forth taking me on a serpentine path through the parking lot, around the curbs, over the speed bumps, into the turns and up to the street where I paused as the cages, the wheeled boxes clumsily hobbled on by.

As soon as the coast cleared, I attacked the road and shot into the evening air, the perfect, 58 degree evening air, 58 exhilarating degrees, cool not cold, brisk not bitter. The wind buffeted my body as I flew past the cages, flew down the black pavement gaining speed until the dividing lines blended into one long, white ribbon, flew until any lingering world cares melted away leaving just me on my motorcycle, a naked soul soaring effortlessly through space and time. Utopia. Nirvana. Heaven.

The Binge of 2012

The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little. ~Ray Bradbury


I am seriously considering getting rid of my cable TV subscription. For two weeks I had no TV when the cable convertor box died and, except for some mild annoyance when I could not watch Manchester United play their opening match of the 2012 season, I did not miss having the boob tube active in my home. In fact, for most of this year, I have limited my time in front of the television, limited it to a few carefully chosen shows so it would not consume inordinate amounts of my precious time. These I record and watch on DVR so as not to spend time accosted by commercials.

So, what has filled the void?

I took on an activity at work this year, creating and giving a six part leadership training course, that has brought me great deal of personal satisfaction and required many hours of extended time in the office. The extended office time felt more like play than working so I did not mind putting in regular 10 to 12 hour days for weeks and months on end in addition to time at home once I left the office. Creating the class has required many hours of research on the internet and in books. It is mainly in books that I have invested many of the hours previously sucked away by the tube.

Books are a lot cheaper than cable TV and are a far more satisfying investment of my time. So far this year, I have read 74 books and have many more I want to get through. I am thinking this continued wise investment of my time may enable me to read 100 before the end of the year. I have never read that many books in a year probably have not read that many books over two to three years. I feel I have been on a reading binge for the past nine months.

When I do sit in front of the TV these days, I usually end up feeling guilty because my time investment realizes minuscule dividends when compared to the knowledge that could have been fed into my brain, my personal data bank, that magical organ capable of learning that applying that learning in new and wonderful ways. This guilt feeling is especially troubling when the show I watched was a rerun of something I had seen previously or I suddenly look at my watch and find hours have been lost to emptiness. After watching TV, I find myself wondering how much growth as an individual would have occurred if I had spent that last hour reading a book on leadership or poetry or philosophy or history or a biography or a fictional story.

For me, there are three must watch shows in "The Big Bang Theory", "Dr. Who" and the weekly "English Premier League Highlight Show" and one must watch sport in soccer especially when Manchester United is displaying their magic on the pitch. Getting rid of cable TV would mean that I would no longer have access to Dr. Who or any soccer games worth watching. I would still be able to watch Big Bang but, albeit, with the dreaded commercials. Getting rid of cable TV would mean I could no longer watch the exquisite Champions League matches on ESPN. Getting rid of cable TV would also minimize the amount of drivel available to me on a daily basis.

Getting rid of cable TV would also mean additional coin in my piggy bank, coinage that could be utilized visiting exotic locales instead of 'experiencing' them through the tube. Getting rid of cable would free up additional time to build my mind by learning from the great minds in history. Giving up my cable TV seems like a win-win situation for me.

What would it take for you to give up your cable TV?

08 December 1980

Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger a brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing for the world

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

          - John Lennon

US history books contain reference to the 'shot heard round the world', metaphorically speaking, the shot signifies the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. The shot marked the beginning of a war that freed the American colonies from British tyranny (later to be replaced by our government's own form of tyranny) I believe this was also the start of the demise of the British empire as the influence of Great Britain slowly receded from the four corners of the earth to the little island cluster on the East side of the Atlantic ocean.

Since the phrase was coined, each generation can point to it's own shot heard around the world. For those of the early 1900s, that shot killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and plunged Europe into the WWI, the war to end all wars. In the 1940s, that shot was the bombing of Pearl Harbor which subsequently brought the US out of self-imposed isolationism and full bore into the Great War against Japan and the Axis forces.

For those born in the 50s & 60s, that shot occurred on 08 Dec 1980 in New York City outside the entrance of the Dakota apartments when John Lennon was murdered with four bullets in his back. At the time of his death, I was nineteen and a first year college student. When I heard the news, I wept. I wept with millions of others around the globe that had been moved by John's music and life philosophy. I believe, for many of us, the naiveté of our youth died with John.

For the people of my generation (the Baby Boomers), John was an icon. We adored John, loved his music from the Beatles thru his solo work. Watched with rapt attention his every move. John was a hero well beyond his world changing music. John gave voice to an idealistic youth sick to death of the status quo, sick to death of the horror expressed by our elders in their Vietnam War. John helped us believe that peace was not only a viable alternative to society run amok, but the only viable path for a world bent on destruction.

The music inspired by John Lennon has outlasted the Beatles, outlasted John, and, I believe, will outlast my generation because the thoughts expressed in his lyrics are timeless. His words, 'No need for greed or hunger' are poignant in the light of the scandals like Enron that helped plunge the world into a financial crisis. Who among us can't feel moved by, 'Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do. No need to kill or die for'  when confronted by the horror of Afghanistan, Syria, or Sudan or the many other places in which people are being killed by civil wars or drug wars or gang wars.

These thoughts of John came to me today when I stumbled upon Imagine: John Lennon, a documentary on his musical career, while I was flipping the channels. I watched the documentary previously, years ago. It was a beautifully done film. I watched it thinking it would not have same effect  on me that it had during previous viewings. But it did. 

When the documentary came to the point when John was murdered, I again felt the despair of a beautiful life cut short, felt the pang of my lost youth, felt a haunting in my soul as the scened cut to John playing the white piano in the stark white room while singing 'Give Peace A Chance' a song that has become the anthem of my generation with a message tugging at the psyche of every generation since. And when the documentary came to senseless murder the emotion that had been welling up inside me erupted. 


When John died, I wept.

My Sanctuary

A library is a delivery room for the birth of ideas. ~Norman Cousins


I want my own library. Not one of those monstrous structures housing row after row of dust gathering books, most which, I would never consider worthy companions as I traipse the twisted corridors of life. It's not that I have anything against those books just that my life time is limited and I want to share it with soul mates not acquaintances to whom I am, at best, indifferent and, at worst, disdainful. My desire is for an intimate room, an intimate relationship.

I want a library in my home, a single room with high ceilings and tall, cherry wood bookshelves, crafted of my two hands, bookshelves stretching all the way up the walls to the very top like ivy covering almost every inch of available wall space on three walls except for the fireplace that would blanket me with warmth on chilly days as I read in my comfy chair a sweater on my shoulders and a blank over my legs, a room with oak floors brightly buffed to a reflective sheen on which I can slide from end to end in my sock covered feet. I want these shelves populated with every book with which I communed, with which I became a kindred spirit, with which my view on life was completely and forever altered. I want all three of my copies of Desert Solotaire, the only adult book I have read cover to cover three times or more on those shelves and I want one of the copies housed behind glass opened to my favorite passage.

I want this to be a room full of all my dearest friends. I want to be surrounded the Hardy Boy's mysteries that kept me inside on beautiful summer days during my youth, the pricey text books that carried me through college, the nonfiction books that have taught me an almost infinite number of true and not so true 'facts', my Bible in who's words I find comfort and security, the Quran gifted to me by friends when I visited Turkey where I fell under the spell of the Muezzin's call prayer (except during his predawn call to prayer when I was trying to catch some shut eye before my next big adventure.). There would be a special shelf for all for the Dr Seuss books I read to my kids, my grandson, read over and over until I had lyrical pages memorized by hundreds of repetitions, a place of honor for the Dr's greatest book of all, his alphabet book.

Big A, Little a what begins with A? Aunt Annies Alligator. A, a, A. Big B, Little b what begins with B? Baby, barber, bubbles and a bumble bee. Camel on the ceiling, C, C, c.

The fourth wall would not a wall at all, rather, a floor to ceiling, single pane of glass overlooking a body of water. I love bodies of water. I feed off the energy of raging waves during a storm, fall under the spell found in the tranquility of waves gently lapping the shore that come with the setting sun, absorb the serenity of smooth as glass waters when her heart is calm, contemplate the mystery hidden below her surface, a mystery that forever invites dream like speculation.

In the glass wall would be a door, a magic portal allowing me to commune with the elements, an opening allowing me entrance into Earth's soul, an archway opening to my deck hosting handcrafted deck chairs on which I could sit and admire the beauty of God's designing hand, His artistic flair evident in the water, the mountains, the sky at the closing of day.

All this would exist to be my sanctuary for those days when I wish to pull back from the bustle, when I desire solitude from the human onslaught, when my soul craves communion with the minds of Abbey, Poe, Ziglar and anyone else who's thoughts could satisfy the itch of my curiosity, who's words could feed my desire to walk in intimacy with minds other than my own.