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 […]

Read Ryan Patrick’s profile and contact info.

Read Vi Wickam’s profile and contact info

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.”

“After laying down my pen I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will […]

“Night falls, autumn in 1936, and Werner carries the radio downstairs and sets it on the sideboard, and the other children fidget in anticipation. The receiver hums as it warms. Werner steps back, hands in pockets. From the loudspeaker, a children’s choir sings, “We hope only to work, to work and work and work, to […]

“Hawaii once had a rat problem. Then, somebody hit upon a brilliant solution. Import mongooses from India. Mongooses would kill the rats. It worked. Mongooses did kill the rats. Mongooses also killed chickens, young pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and young children. There have been reports of mongooses attacking motorbikes, power lawn mowers, golf carts, and […]

“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 […]

Remember what I told you in my PS at the end of today’s Monday Morning Memo?“NOTE: That business owner who believed “money is the primary motivator” unconsciously targeted the low-profit Transactional customer in his A & B options, gaining the high-profit Relational customer only in option C.” – Indy Beagle This is the passage to which […]

Indy, Tell the Wizard this is my favorite sentence from Walden. It’s a long’un, but a good’un. “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts […]

A blooming laurel marks the first day of springtime in the front yard of Michele Miller-Nelson, Scottsdale, Arizona

Consider a novel which has survived for almost four centuries, and is still regarded as one of the great masterpieces of world fiction. I speak of Don Quixote, by Cervantes. Its story is of the adventures of a gentleman whose wits have been turned by reading old books of romance and chivalry; he equips himself […]

In the darting of the dayWhen all earth-bound arteries of blackened stone and painted linesVibrate a serpentine rhythm Of humans on their wayTo destinations of assumption I roll forward in contemplation On a wheel turning in my mind Where I am Where I will be Of the slippery way I travelOf a dog running in […]