The Clues are Usually There.
Darren noticed a crack in my windshield this week. It’s on the passenger side, down in the lower corner, in a place I am apparently not looking at very often because I had not even noticed it. Once he pointed it out, though, there it was. Definitely a crack. And now, of course, I see […]
What emerges along the way.
The word “era” can be defined several different ways: In my own life, I have had many, many eras. I got thinking about this because in a meeting the other day I found myself saying “I did once have a camping era…..” We’ve talked a bit in this space about our past and our identities […]
Borrow a Landmark.
I prefer even numbers. It’s probably an OCD tendency of mine but I find myself feeling a little relieved when the calendar cooperates with me. Today, 8/8/26, happens to be an even day in an even month of an even year. Beautiful. Some of us also tend to like round numbers: 5, 10, 20, 50, […]
Loss Leaders – and the first thing in the cart.
My friend Wikipedia recently explained to me that a “loss leader” is a pricing strategy where a product is sold at a price below its market cost to draw customers into a store where they are likely to buy other goods. The vendor expects that the typical customer will purchase other items at the same […]
“The horses are fine.”
I have (another) confession: The Fourth of July has never been my favorite holiday because I don’t love fireworks. But there is one thing I genuinely love about this time of year (especially this year!): the Revolutionary War period. I love reading about it, studying it, and watching movies and shows set during that time. […]
The Wrong Place to Start.
I am going to start this post by saying that I genuinely have not been to Target in months. This week I found myself with a little time to kill in a specific part of town, and there happened to be a Target nearby. Before I walked in, I gave myself the usual pep talk […]
Lucky Number Seven.
For thousands of years, people have repeatedly organized important things into groups of seven. Seven days in a week. Seven wonders of the ancient world. Seven seas. Seven colors in a rainbow. Seven notes in a musical scale. Seven deadly sins. The number seven shows up in religion, music, science, mythology, geography, and storytelling. And […]
Olivelle – and Mental Taste Testing.
There is a magical store in Bozeman, Montana called Olivelle. Olivelle was started 20 years ago by a mom and daughter who started with a love of high quality olive oil and vinegar and kept expanding from there. They now offer over 150 of their own products and every time I go there, I leave […]
A different way of looking.
“Early on the morning of 30 January 1990, George Cohon, president of McDonald’sCanada, left his hotel room and drove to Pushkin Square in Moscow. Nervous about the international press that would be covering the opening of the first McDonald’s in this nation and anxious to make the opening perfect, he arrived to see the streets […]
A matter of timing.
When I worked as a high school teacher and then a counselor, I sometimes helped student athletes fill out their NCAA eligibility profiles. One section always stood out to me: Have you ever been paid in any way to play your sport? Typical NCAA amateurism questions included things like: They were not kidding around. The […]
