My summer sabbatical from weekly blog posts was energizing. After several false starts, I finally started progressing on my new book, The Secret Within, which explores the challenge of finding happiness and peace amidst personal difficulties. As promised, I’ll be sharing draft installments on this blog. This week, I’m sharing the preface to the book. …
Summer Sabbatical
Like a movie, life has specific scenes that stick in our minds. Like this one: It was Springtime 1973. I was driving north on Geyer Road in my hometown of Kirkwood, Missouri. A high school friend was riding shotgun. We were Seniors. Soon, friends would disperse like dandelion seeds. As we approached Kirkwood Park, my …
In Memoriam
This past week, I lost a business mentor and good friend, Dr. Richard T. Crowder. Dr. Crowder served as the Chief Agricultural Trade Negotiator in the office of The United States Trade Representative and as Undersecretary of Agriculture for International Affairs. More recently, Dr. Crowder was the C.G. Thornhill Professor of Agricultural Trade at Virginia …
The Power In A Name
I was walking through the neighborhood recently when I saw a woman I recognized working in her yard. Georgia? Is that you? She looked up, and I could tell she didn’t quite recognize me. Breaking the tension, I said, “It’s Tim; you sold us our house on Merritt Circle thirty-eight years ago! “Tim, it’s you!” …
What Is Driving Us Crazy?
Slow drivers, especially those refusing to yield the passing lane, make me crazy. It doesn’t end there. I hate being relegated to a call tree when trying to get an answer to a simple question: "If this is an emergency, please hang up…. Press 1 for English…. This call is being recorded for training purposes." …
The Circle of We
Photo Credit: AI Powered by Dall E 3 “Did you know that if you put 100 black ants and 100 red ants in a jar, nothing will happen? But if you shake the jar hard, the ants start killing each other. The red ants consider the black ants their enemies, and the black ants …
Visiting The Mayo Clinic
The Mayo Clinic rises from the Minnesota Prarie like a flower in a vacant parking lot. Rochester residents wouldn’t appreciate that description, but what’s more unlikely than the world’s top medical center sprouting from a windswept prairie? One doesn’t go to the Mayo Clinic to treat a sniffle. Pilgrims sojourn to this medical Meca in …
The Hubris of Certainty
I have many flaws. Fortunately, closed-mindedness is not among them. I’m allergic to rigid, dogmatic thinking in all its flavors, but that wasn’t always the case. Being open-minded has drawbacks. I have difficulty forming strong opinions because I can easily see valid arguments for the other side. Thank goodness I’m not teaching college. I would …
The Eclipse
I didn’t witness this week’s eclipse; this story is about another totality. On August 21st, 2017, a total solar eclipse occurred in my hometown of Kirkwood, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. Our son desperately wanted to see it. I was less enthused about making an 18-hour round-trip drive for something scheduled to last 90 …
Rules To Live By
I’ve kept a personal journal for nearly half of my life. My journal is a repository for meaningful things I read or think about. Many of the entries find their way into my Sunday blog posts. I was reading my journal recently, and scattered throughout the pages were rules for living I collected over the …
Towards A Life Well-Lived 