Category: Confidence & Freedom

Hunger Games

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44 COMMENTS

I live by two simple rules: Rule #1: Never sit in the front row of a comedy or dolphin show. In both cases, you’re liable to be more involved than you’d like. Rule #2: Never shop for food when you’re hungry. Here, you’re apt to buy things that you neither want nor need. And yet there I was, just this past Sunday, strolling into the Hannaford Supermarket around 2pm. I’d been running around all morning. I hadn’t eaten lunch. We were going out to dinner that night and this was […] Click to read more…

Leader Of The Pack

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8 COMMENTS

I run, but not very fast. Drop me into a 5K race and you can pretty much set your watch by my 10-minute miles (not that I recommend this). My children, on the other hand, are rather speedy. Youngest child Jonathan, for example, runs cross country as a high school junior and is solidly in the top seven or eight among his 40+ teammates. As a practical matter, that means that during a race with one (or more) other teams, he finishes in the front third or so of the […] Click to read more…

Rules Of Engagement

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6 COMMENTS

My flight’s landing into McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas last week was aborted at the last minute. Seriously. Not an oxygen-mask-deploying, Denzel-Washington-piloting, grown-men-sobbing (hey, I never said I was brave) abort, but scary all the same. We were coming in for what seemed like a normal landing on a beautiful, clear day. Suddenly, with the runway already visible, the plane abruptly changed its mind and steeply banked upward for several minutes, going back up through the clouds. We eventually leveled off, circled around and landed normally. As the pilot […] Click to read more…

Fly The Friendly Skies

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22 COMMENTS

The truth is, I’m not actually afraid of heights … I’m afraid of falling from heights. This may seem like a minor distinction, but it’s the reason why I have no problem inside an airplane, glass elevator or shaky gondola (a great name for a band), but break into a cold sweat (literally) when stepping out onto a fifth floor balcony. And so it was with some confidence that I quickly and eagerly said yes when my brother-in-law Neale invited me along on a glider (AKA, “sailplane”) ride this past […] Click to read more…

Care To Make It Interesting?

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24 COMMENTS

You’ll be pleased to know that in just a few short weeks, my son Evan will graduate from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee (school motto: We’ve never heard of you either). In addition to his academic work, key accomplishments include fronting a (now defunct) band, co-founding a nonprofit newspaper for the homeless and launching a (recently venture-funded) business. He’s had a great run and, needless to say, we are quite proud. But I have to tell you, the one thing about his college career that I expect to remember the […] Click to read more…