Who’s On First

Baseball fans will be able to date this essay to 1988. I found it on my hard drive while looking for something else. I wrote it about five companies ago, but it’s just perfect given the season.

9.11.01 (written the week after)

There is a passage in Job (28: 7) that says: “There is a path that no fowl knoweth, neither hath the raven’s eye seen.” Choose that path. Don’t let another day go by without telling the people you love that you love them, and mean it.

Intentions and Attention

Attention is finite. We only have so much to spend per unit of time. Each distraction chips away at this incredible precious commodity until there isn’t enough left to generate virtuous action. We revert to the creatures of habit that we are, with the resulting drop-off in performance which inevitably results in another round of policies, procedures, communications, and noise urgency.

 Written in 2002.

Letter to my Daughter on her High School Graduation

If you are a father of a daughter, this will likely strike a cord with you.  I wrote it in June of 2002.  Still gets me.

Musing on the Nature of Art

This is taken from a long email interchange between me and a very good friend who has since passed.  A terrible blow which makes rediscovering this essay so much the sweeter.  From 2002.

You Need a Craft

This might be one of my favorite essays from 2002 . . . a massive hat tip to two great musicians, one a gifted teacher, the other the man behind the trumpet in the genre defining band, Tower of Power.  Written in 2002

Our Children Are Watching

In 2002 I was thinking a lot about the ethical storm large companies were caught in, the drums of war in Central Asia, and my own journey towards some as yet to be discovered purpose.  From the title you can tell I was thinking here about ethics.

Giving Thanks . . .

I wrote this on Thanksgiving, 2002, a bit more than a year removed from 9.11.01 . . . a good time to be thinking grateful thoughts, even if the reasons weren’t always clear. The list of things I wrote at the end stand up well 15 years later.

Beobush

I wrote this in 2003 as our nation stepped into a war that is still going on today, in the dog days summer, 2017.  It is well worth reading even today.

Omigod, I Think I May Be Getting Stupider

Thomas Jefferson was a big fan of universal public education, rightly believing that ignorance was the breeding ground for tyranny, and education was the first line of defense to freedom and liberty.  In this 2002 essay I explore a series of seemingly unrelated concepts so salve my sense of overwhelm at modernity.