Way back in the 50s, when I was but a wee tadpole, my Paps took me fishing on Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River. Don’t recollect what I caught, but vividly remember it was on a big, fat, black lure he called the Arbogast Jitterbug. And ever since I was that crankin’ 5-year-old, there’s never been anything quite […]

Until that night, and oh what a night it was, Genther hadn’t shown much prowess at the plate. First baseman are usually power hitters. Genther was a powder puff. It was a night game in July. The air was still, making the heat even more oppressive and butch wax totally worthless. His folks were there […]

Charlie Brown’s best friend, Linus Van Pelt, clings to his security blanket as he gives his friends wise advice. Dr. Victoria Grady sees this same type of “attachment behavior” stalling the progress of Fortune 500 executives as they try to enter the digital age. Do you have a mental security blanket that is holding you back? […]

Grief struck us, in the deepest dark of night, heralding the news of death.  Like a thunderbolt, it struck without warning, piercing our happy households in an instant – shattering lives. No time to prepare emotions as in an extended illness or an expected loss of an ancient one.  No time for good-byes, no time […]

After reading a book of correspondence between a Zen Master and his followers, I knew I had to meet him. His message was so pure and inviting….and his smile was beaming like a searchlight looking for me.   I found out he would be visiting a Zen center in Chicago and the next day I […]

Faceless portrait photography encapsulates captivating details and striking compositions. 

Wieners and Beans In March of 2000, Evan Chrapko and his brother, Shane, sold their two-year-old internet business for more than half a billion dollars. Internet.  That’s the key word, right? Unless I miss my guess, right now you’re probably thinking, “So two guys made a lot of money on an internet startup. Big deal. […]

Eli Schwartz was head of SurveyMonkey’s SEO team. Shutterstock, WordPress, Blue Nile, Zendesk and countless others came to him for advice. Eli can tell you how to improve your search engine performance without having to master algorithms, keywords, or any of the other traditional approaches. He and roving reporter Rotbart are waiting for you right now at […]

In the scene from Cool Hand Luke, [Below] Luke just found out that his mother died, so the tone of his performance is tender, soulful, sad—completely unlike the obnoxious and irreverent premiere performance in 1962, which was intended as a parody. Singer-songwriters Ed Rush and George Cromarty wrote the song in reaction to a Christian radio station […]

“Nevertheless, in capitalist countries financial success, for those who succeed as for those who do not, is still, if not a truly satisfying adventure, at least a symbol of adventure. Americans are known for the importance they attach to money, the simplicity with which they say what everything they buy costs them, and their tendency […]

What They Didn’t Teach Me at Oxford, I Learned in Jail In his 3,000-year-old book, Ecclesiastes, King Solomon tells us of the stages and phases of his life, his fads and fancies, his regrets and realizations. Then he gives us his final conclusions and advice. Next to the Good News of John, Ecclesiastes is probably […]

Tim Redmond is not a televangelist. But the owners of small businesses from every religion have come to him for more than 35 years to be taught how to dramatically improve the performance of their businesses. Plumbers, electricians, landscapers, remodelers, and other small business owners come to Tim to learn principles found in The Bible. […]

On the day I was born the nurses all gathered ’roundAnd they gazed in wide wonder at the joy they had found.The head nurse spoke up, said, “Leave this one alone.”She could tell right awaythat I was bad to the bone.[Chorus]Bad to the boneBad to the boneb-b-b-b-Badb-b-b-b-Badb-b-b-b-BadBad to the bone– written by George Thorogood

“Lalo” Schifrin (born June 21, 1932) is an Argentine-American pianist, composer, arranger and conductor. He is best known for his large body of film and TV scores. He is a five-time Grammy Award winner, and has been nominated for six Academy Awards and four Emmy Awards. Schifrin’s best known compositions include the “Theme from Mission: Impossible,” […]

The Killing  It was a brisk winter day and I witnessed a killing.  A single rifle shot to the head and the victim’s body dropped to the ground, eyes going lifeless as it crumpled.  Six strong men began a repeated and well-rehearsed ritual. Four of them lifted the body, carrying it to an improvised scaffolding. […]

One More Step The wind shreds his words, “We’ll be blown off”. But it’s always just one more step. My hands are cold. On a knife edge of ice, he has the burden of attentiveness. His misstep will pull me off with no warning.  Roped together, if I’m blown off, he leaps down the opposite […]

I don’t care if it rains or freezesLong as I’ve got my plastic JesusSitting on the dashboard of my car.Comes in colors pink and pleasantGlows in the dark cause it’s iridescentTake it with you … when you travel far.  Get yourself a sweet MadonnaDressed in rhinestones sitting on aPedestal of abalone shell.Going ninety I ain’t […]

“ee-MAY-us” From the Good News of Luke, chapter 24, verses 13-35   That same day two of Jesus’ followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking […]

When to Write it Down, and When Not. If relationships matter to you at all, never put a negative emotion into writing. Spoken words land softly on their feet like a cat that has fallen from a tree. But written words often land with a thud, and the crack of a fractured relationship. My son Jacob […]

THE FOLLOWING IS FROM OWL! AT THE LIBRARY ON TWITTER “Whenever I’m depressed, I remember the penguin in a Penguin Books sweater.” 109-year-old Alfred ‘Alfie’ Date, Australia’s oldest man, has 80 years of knitting experience under his belt, which is why the nurses at his retirement home asked him for a highly specific, peculiar favor. […]

I sit in my chair on a balcony of broken angels overlooking the crooked path leading up to a tower. This place, so familiar to me, looks so different. As if in a dream, my memories lie to me what it used to look like.   That tree wasn’t there. The path never went this […]

She stretches, muscles rippling like currents of the Nile. She’s beautiful and knows it. Her head held high reminds me of the sphinx. She rules this realm with calm assurance, her palace partially draped in shadow. It’s peaceful here, a quiet corner of the jungle protected from the crazy fusion of wacky signs and flashes […]

Extremely very cool postcard from REDBUBBLE

Ken Lindner is in professional development, choreographing the careers of many of the nation’s most successful broadcast personalities, including Lester Holt, Deborah Norville, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Leeza Gibbons, and Matt Lauer. Ken’s approach is simple: Make better choices; experience better results. A Cornell Law School graduate and the author of six books, Ken shares with roving reporter […]

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A married couple with a combined age of 127 rode a tandem bike 3,800 miles from the West coast to the East coast. The 12-week adventure taught the husband and wife a multitude of lessons about teamsmanship, resilience, spontaneity, the goodwill of strangers, the beauty of nature, and the satisfaction of checking items off their bucket […]

postcard of Eilean Donan Castle created in watercolors by Farida Greenfield on Zazzle.

Introduce an unexpected mental image. Stick with the one you chose. Bring it back from time to time. Create a sense of time and place around the person. Never forget that it is the person – not the time or the place or why you were there – that is the focus of your writing. Choose […]

“On September 11, 1660, Samuel Pepys tried a new hot beverage for the first time, recording in his diary: ‘And afterwards I did send for a cup of tee ( a China drink), of which I never had drank before.’ Whether he liked it or not Pepys didn’t say, which is a shame, as it […]

How Many Stars are in our Milky Way Galaxy? According to Jos de Bruijne, a scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA) who works on the galaxy-mapping Gaia mission, the current estimate is between 100 to 400 billion stars. How Many Galaxies are there in the Universe? In 2020, it was estimated that there are around 2 […]

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, […]

“To live sanely in Los Angeles (or, I suppose, in any other large American city) you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist (firmly but not tensely) the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in […]

Thirty-five years ago, he patrolled a stretch of beach as long as two football fields on a Caribbean Island whose name I cannot remember. He pushed a wheelbarrow full of ice as he pranced from one end of his empire to the other, the music of his voice rising and falling over the sound of […]

“But hear what? Hear what? The Bible is hundreds upon hundreds of voices all calling at once out of the past and clamoring for our attention like barkers at a fair, like air-raid sirens, like a whole barnyard of cock crows as the first long shafts of dawn fan out across the sky. Some of […]

An Extremely Very Weird Coincidence Three weeks ago Indy Beagle told the Tiny Tribe to “sound off,” so they each told us their names. Indy told me his only goal was to make sure rabbit hole readers knew the names of each of the members of his now-complete Tiny Tribe. I say “now complete” only […]

A Wheelbarrow Full of Ice Thirty-five years ago he patrolled a stretch of beach as long as two football fields on a Caribbean island whose name I cannot remember.

“Velo-Granell manufactured orthopedic supplies and artificial limbs. The war with Morocco and the Great War in Europe had created a huge market for such products. Legions of men, butchered for the greater glory and the profit margins of bankers, chancellors, generals, stockbrokers, and other fathers of the nation, had been maimed and ruined for life […]

Roving reporter Rotbart is just blown away every time Ken Blanchard calls and asks to be featured on Monday Morning Radio. Ken Blanchard has sold more than 23 million copies of his books worldwide and a new one is hitting the street. This week, he and his colleague Randy Conley talk with our illustrious roving […]

For real, there was this guy in New Orleans who bought some boots for car tires. He would find popping night spots without enough parking and go to the owners of adjacent properties, telling them of all the trouble the nightclubbers are making; broken bottles, trash, loitering, vandals, etc. Convinces the owners to let him […]

The life and death of Tony Hsieh, the billionaire CEO of online shoe-seller Zappos, is a master class in visionary business leadership and a cautionary tale about how fame can mask deep problems. Hsieh, who sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion, died in a mysterious shed fire in late November 2020 at age 46. This week, […]

It is easier to increase sales than it is to cut expenses.  In the words of Adrian Van Zelfden, “You cannot shrink your way to profit.” Cost-cutting CEO’s are hailed as geniuses by Wall Street and lauded as saviors by private equity firms because cost-cutting always works in the short-term. But that’s not how you […]

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them […]

The choice between a good thing and a bad thing is never a hard choice. The only hard choice is a choice between two good things. Science is a good thing. And so are the arts. Why choose? Rube Goldberg became wildly famous 100 years ago because his elegantly absurd inventions combined science with art. […]

According to Gino Wickman, many entrepreneurs have no business running their own businesses. In a no-holds-barred conversation with roving reporter Rotbart, Gino Wickman draws a sharply pointed line between those who have what it takes to succeed in business and those who never will, no matter how hard they try. Wickman lists the ingredients of success and failure, defines the attributes […]

In 1968 Archie Bell told 12 times to “tighten up,” then added, “but don’t you get too tight.”