Does it surprise you that a person could notice the strange addition to the cooking instructions on this package, feel the humanity and whimsy and sense of humor of the people who package this bacon, and then choose to buy this brand of bacon from now on because they feel a friendly connection to the […]
Michele Miller and Tom Jones
“I grew up listening to Tom Jones. My mother was crazy about him. She went to so many concerts, he began to recognize her from the stage. I’m crazy for him, too, and whenever anyone dismisses him as a ‘dated pop icon,’ I show them this video. We grew up in the best days […]
Mick Torbay for Tappers
The job of a Wizard of Ads writer is to extract true stories from clients, and then tell those stories in such a way that causes the public to immediately think of that person – and feel good about them – when they need what that person sells. These customer-bonding ads don’t seek to sell […]
St Augustine vs Jamestown
Ryan Chute on Leadership
Read More About Ryan Chute
Video AI Generation
MMRadio_Phebe Trotman
“Never quit on your worst day.” That’s Lesson #1. It’s easy to remember and it’s valuable advice. But the story behind lesson #1 is what makes the lesson magical. Lesson #2 is equally insightful. “You can’t score goals if you’re not on the field.” Phebe Trotman retired as a soccer superstar to become a superstar […]
Billy Joel_and so it goes
Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men
MMRadio_Clive_Savacool
Would you rather (1.) fight a massive wildfire requiring the evacuation of more than 20,000 people, or (2.) bootstrap a start-up, with no outside investors, that will sell an untested app? Clive Savacool has successfully done both. Battling blazes for 25 years turned out to be excellent preparation for extinguishing the many firestorms faced by […]
Archeology 1
Archeology2
Acheology 3
.
Archeology 4
Archeology 5
Archeology 6
Archeology 7
Acheology 8
Acheology 9
Acheology 10
Acheology 11
Pespective_God and Nothing
Perspectives_soldiers_live
James Taylor_Soldiers
Isnt it nice to be home again_James Taylor
Caruso caricature of Toscanini
One year before he created the Laughing Buddha bronze for Toscanini, Caruso sketched this caricature of Toscanini. Enrico Caruso, by all accounts, was a delightful host and friend.
Enrico Caruso to Arturo Toscanini
In 1909, Enrico Caruso created this one-of-a-kind bronze caricature of himself as a laughing Buddha for his friend Arturo Toscanini, the most acclaimed symphony conductor of the late 19th and early 20th century. Born into poverty, Caruso became a multimillionaire operatic tenor who so loved America that he paid his taxes on January 1st each […]
Arturo Toscanini and Enrico Caruso
Arturo Toscanini with Enrico Caruso
Thomas Payne_Honesty
Wizard of Ads Partner Ryan Chute sent the wizard this meme, having no idea he had already written the Monday Morning Memo about precisely the same observation. – Indy Beagle
SLOdownwines dot com
And to make sure they took this college-days-flashback to its ultimate height, the name of this particular wine from SLOdownwines is “Sexual Chocolate.” Do you remember that scene from “Coming to America,” the 1988 movie starring Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall, each playing multiple roles? (Juvenile humor, yes, but distinctly memorable.) – Indy Beagle
MMMRadio_Ryan Erickson
After 16 years as a wedding photographer, Ryan Erickson decided he was barking up the wrong tree. He was making money, but he no longer had passion for his work. So Ryan decided to try his hand at fine art photography, and now he’s thinking of going nationwide! His clients love how his fine-art portraits […]
Why most ads dont work
George Bernard Shaw 1933 sketch
George Bernard Shaw’s most timeless play was “Pygmalion,” which was rewritten as the immortal musical “My Fair Lady.”(video below) George Bernard Shaw said, “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.” “To dream the impossible dream,to fight the unbeatable foe,to bear with unbearable sorrow,to […]
Shaw and the Reporters
In 1905, a hostile group of reporters confronted him to say that his new play was “a superabundance of foulness.” Shaw tried to explain that his characters, “behave like human beings, instead of conforming to the romantic logic of the stage,” but the reporters were determined to brand him as deviant and immoral. Shaw responded, […]
George Bernard Shaw as Quixote
According to the painter, what we see at the end of Quixote’s lance are orange carrots. When you understand the life story of this painter, it becomes obvious that the horse carrying Quixote is the media, and the carrots are the different things he did to bait the media into giving him headlines.
George Bernard Shaw Nobel Prize
MMRadio Charlie Munger
Charlie Munger was the billionaire businessman who built Berkshire Hathaway side-by-side with Warren Buffett. Just weeks before Munger died at age 99, Gregory Zuckerman of The Wall Street Journal spent 4 hours with Charlie in the billionaire’s Los Angeles home and came away with some life-changing insights. This week, roving reporter Rotbart interviews the last journalist to […]
Michael Caine use the difficulty
“When I was a very young actor, there was an improvised scene between a husband and wife going on inside. They got carried away and they started throwing things and he threw a chair and it lodged in the doorway and I went to open the door and I just got my head round and […]
Research 2
Research 1
He was a 5-year-old boy in Dublin, Ireland, when America’s Civil War began. He died in 1950 at the age of 94, and throughout his life he saw himself as Don Quixote. He even painted this watercolor of himself as Quixote.
Mrs Warrens Profession
During the Victorian era, women were expected to maintain a poised and dignified manner, and to obey their husbands. George Bernard Shaw was troubled by the fact that men often made use of “laws that gave him total control of his wife’s person – and her fortune”. His play, ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ (1905) was […]
The Dreams of Young Men
MMRadio_Greatest Hits_Jan 1_2024
Side Hustles, Online Retailing, Military Contracts, Bras, Walt Disney, Firefighters, Business Exit Strategies, and Worms. Those were 8 of the Top 10 Episodes for MondayMorningRadio in 2023. This week, roving reporter Rotbart – with brilliant co-host and son, Maxwell – revisit the highlights of 2023 and share an audio preview of their new book, a […]
Sense of Wonder
“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder… he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.”– Rachel Carson Perhaps the finest nature writer of the 20th century, Rachel Carson (1907-1964) is remembered […]
8 years ago_MMMemo replay
. A Monday Morning Memo Replay from 8 years ago: Nov 23, 2015 More than 500 people have seen the earth from space and 12 have walked on the moon. Most of these people returned home strangely altered. Their families were the first to notice. In 1987 this phenomenon got a name. “The overview effect” refers to what happens […]
a story in black and white part 6
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”– Robertson Davies, Tempest Tost, one of the Salterton trilogy Batiste is married to journalist, musician and best-selling author Suleika Jaouad. The two met as teenagers at band camp. On April 3, 2022, the couple revealed in an interview on CBS News Sunday Morning that they had […]
A story in black and white part 5
“But let’s be very attentive to this; the fact that we are capable of thinking, reasoning… does not mean that we have forgotten about emotions. The emotions are still here. Feelings are still here. And they are accompanying everything we do.”– Professor Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist at USC
A story in black and white part 4
A story in black and white part 3
A story in black and white part 2
A Story_in Black and White
Indy Beagle talks about nursing a grudge
Nursing a grudge is a form of worry, and in the wisdom of Erma Bombeck, “Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” Nursing a grudge is like that. – Indy Beagle
MMRadio Dean and Talya
Riyaz Adat was on death’s doorstep, withering away in excruciating pain in the transplant ward of Toronto General Hospital. This week on a special edition of Monday Morning Radio, roving reporter Rotbart narrates the uplifting true story of Riyaz’s miraculous survival and recovery — reading from the Christmas book Rotbart and his wife, Talya, wrote […]
Pylant Plaque
Iris Sybil Pylant was the mother of Roy’s mom. – Indy Beagle
Woman 13
“It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.” – Alexandre Dumas Would you like to read a little Christmas booklet the wizard wrote about Jesus, the Wise Men, […]
Indy Beagle and Girl with Gun
Garrison Keillor reads a poem about a woman, “In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day” by X.J. Kennedy
Woman 12
“We all know we’re going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.” – Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Woman 11
“For a long time I have hesitated to write a book on woman. The subject is irritating, especially to women; and it is not new.” “Enough ink has been spilled in quarreling over feminism, and perhaps we should say no more about it. It is still talked about, however, for the voluminous nonsense uttered […]
Woman 10
“No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.”– H. L. Mencken
Woman 9
Two women meet. The first one cries, “What have you done with your hair? It looks like a wig.” Her friend answers, “It is a wig.” The first replies, “Well, you’d never know it.” – John Steinbeck
Woman 8
“Men always want to be a woman’s first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a man’s last romance.” – Oscar Wilde “When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.” – Joseph Addison
Woman 7
“A mother takes 20 years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in 20 minutes.” – Robert Frost “Most Men who rail against women are railing at one woman only.” – Remy de Gourmont
Woman 6
“I used to think that these patterns of sex differences resulted mainly from average differences between men and women in innate talents, tastes and temperaments.” “After all, in talents men are on average more mathematical, more technically minded, women more verbal; in tastes, men are more interested in things, women in people; in temperaments, […]
Woman 5
“The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man… – Germaine de Stael (1766-1817) “A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you.”– Adlai Stevenson “A man is already halfway in love with any woman who […]
Woman 4
“Dancing is wonderful training for girls, it’s the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.”– Christopher Morley (1890-1957) “She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership.)”– O. Henry (1862 – 1910) “Women’s virtue is man’s […]
Woman 3
“Women are never stronger than whenthey arm themselves with their weakness.” – Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand(1696 – 1780)
Woman 2
“Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” – Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Tucker Max Mastermind
Yesterday my friend Tucker Max announced an interesting moment in time. After being silent for 10 years, he is about to write a memoir of that decade, and a dozen people are going to get to be part of that process with him as he mentors them into writing their own memoirs as well. Tucker […]
Thomas Jefferson wrote
Volume one of “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies” was written by Thomas Jefferson at age 77, and includes a journal kept by him while Secretary of State during Washington’s administration. The other three volumes consist of voluminous correspondence, ranging from 1775, after blood had been spilt in Boston, to June 1826, only ten days before his […]
Original Draft of Declaration of Independence
NOTE: When you click this image, be patient as the next page will load slowly. It is a Hi-Rez image (8,400 pixels by 11,200 pixels) of page 1 of the original draft of the Declaration of Independence. I suggest you pull that Hi-Rez image onto your computer before clicking forward to pages 2, 3, and […]
Hi-Rez Declaration page 4
Hi-Rez Declaration page 3
Hi-Rez Declaration page 2
Hi-Rez Declaration page 1
MMRadio McShanag
Chris McShanag has worked alongside two physician entrepreneurs to build a business that provides virtual assistants to doctors, dentists, and veterinarians. The service worked so well that Chris and his partners finally realized it would work for any company. Many business owners contemplate moving from one business niche to another, but very few actually do […]
Sly Stone at 80
Sylvester Stewart Stone “In the story before my story, F. L. Haynes, Fred to those who knew him, went to Denton, Texas to set up the St. Andrew Church of God in Christ. The Church of God in Christ was a Pentecostal denomination with roots in Tennessee, only a few decades old at that point […]
1829 Jefferson book fold-out 2
1829 Jefferson book fold-out 1
www.1776.house
Vellum4
Vellum3
Vellum2
The cover is about 11 inches. The pages are approximately 10.75 inches.
vellum1
A Fly Fishing Fanatic in America’s 13 Colonies
I don’t know if he was was an American Patriot or a British Loyalist. All I know is that he owned a 1726 edition of “The Gentleman Angler,” a leather bound book on fly fishing. That book was 50 years old when Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence. Speaking of Jefferson, that same fly-fisherman […]
a songstress and her two little brothers
CONFESSION TIME: I’ve always been a fan of the Bee Gees. But I gotta say, I think I like this young woman’s interpretation better than the original. Listen to both and see if you agree with me. The melancholy tone of her arrangement takes me to that same place Antonio Carlos Jobim takes me with […]
Two Wise Men and Justin Bieber_ with Snacks
“Two Wise Men and Justin Bieber, with Snacks”by Tim “Eye-of-the” Storm, of mauiart.co
MMRadio_Uzair_Ahmed
Good business ideas often die on the vine because of the cost and logistics of bringing those ideas into reality. Uzair Ahmed saw all these missed opportunities, so he figured figured out how to use technology and automation to make these good business ideas come alive. Uzair tested a high-tech, low-overhead system to launch a […]
New Yorker Dec 22_1951
This New Yorker cover is December 22, 1951, by W Cotton.The Wise Men & the Light of Christmas, to the right, is by Jim Serret.The tiny sculpture of The Old Man and the Sea is, of course, by Jane DeDecker.
New Yorker Christmas 2023
Roy answers Indys Question
“You did a great job, Indy. Your question was about whether I was going to teach an updated “Pendulum” in 2024, right?” You have a good memory, Roy. “Touché. I see what you did there.” So are you? “It depends.” On what? “If enough people want it and let Wizard Academy chancellor Daniel Whittington know […]
Aaron Burr and Quixote
Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel after Hamilton announced that he was going to “waste his shot” by firing it high into the trees. Having fulfilled his promise, Hamilton stood there while Aaron Burr calmly shot and killed him. I could find no record of Aaron Burr ever having owned the […]
Ben Franklin and Quixote
George Simpson Eddy published his chronicle of the 1350 books in the personal library of Benjamin Franklin in a publication of the American Antiquarian Society in October, 1924. On page 19, we read, “The Doctor [Franklin] was a friend of Baskerville, the famous English printer, and bought many of the books printed by him. He […]
Alexander Hamilton and Quixote
Alexander Hamilton’s copy of Don Quixote was published in Amsterdam in 1755 by Arkstee et Merkus. In January of 1795, Congress was debating The Report on a Plan for the Further Support of Public Credit. Alexander Hamilton wrote to a letter to Rufus King, dated February 21, 1795, saying, “To see the character of the government […]
John Adams and Quixote
John Adams was Thomas Jefferson’s friend – and nemesis – and like Jefferson, he was obsessed with Don Quixote. In David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book on John Adams we read, “Another child, Thomas Boylston, was born in September of 1772, and again Adams was off on the ‘vagabond life’ of the circuit, carrying a copy […]
G Washington and Quixote
On September 17, 1787, when George Washington finally saw the Constitution of the United States of America adopted after four months of intense debate in Philadelphia, he immediately went to a bookseller and paid 22 shillings, six pence for a copy of Don Quixote de La Mancha. According to MountVernon.org, “this seventeenth-century Spanish allegory does […]
Learning to Draw
“We stopped for coffee afterward, and I asked Jacob why, given his skill at seeing and showing the world as it was, he never wanted to draw the particulars of this world as it is, the world that we found ourselves in, where people met at endless dinner parties. He drew his kids, beautifully, but without […]
Dream Impossibly
Irwin Michnick, the Brooklyn-born son of a Jewish furrier from Ukraine, was a jazz musician who wrote radio commercials and advertising jingles for companies like L & M cigarettes and Ken-L Ration dog food. Bob Levenson was a copywriter at Doyle Dane Bernbach who needed a tune to go with the words, “Everybody doesn’t like […]
American Exceptionalism
“The charge that Obama threatens American exceptionalism is daft. He is, after all, fond of declaring, ‘In no other country on Earth is my story even possible.’” “Things hit rock bottom when conservative Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker flayed Obama for not using the words ‘American exceptionalism’ in his 2011 State of the Union speech, […]
Thomas Jefferson and Don Quixote
The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia at Monticello.org says, “Don Quixote was one of the few works of fiction that Thomas Jefferson was clearly partial to. He used the text in its original language to learn Spanish, and had his children do the same. Jefferson owned a number of different editions over his lifetime.” Monticello.org also lists […]
Apricots
Why not a meadow?Why not a little clearing and a streamto wade in? Why not take our pants off,a little respite from our partnerswho couldn’t see us, who’d never see usno matter what we did? What we did was wrong,the way we did it. It was miraculous, it took hold long afterwe trudged back to our […]
OK Indy whats your question
“Okay, Indy, what’s your question?” Are you going to teach an updated Pendulum in 2024? “I haven’t decided.” What does it depend on? “Lots of things.” Like what? “Show us what you discovered about Don Quixote and the founding fathers and I’ll tell you at the end of the rabbit hole.”