Posts Tagged ‘Freedom’
Let Freedom Ring
Popular use of the phrase “let freedom ring” comes from its use in the song “America” (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee), written by Samuel Francis Smith in 1831. Dr. Martin Luther King referenced both the song and the phrase in his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August…
Read MoreLet It Snow
Is it true that no two snowflakes are alike? As is often the case, the answer depends on what you mean by the question. With 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 crystals per year, if you checked a million snowflakes per second it would take you over 31 billion years to check just a single year’s worth. So, we can…
Read MoreOf, By, and For
On July 4, 1776, thirteen American colonies declared themselves to be the United States of America and claimed freedom from the tyranny of the British Crown. It was a dangerous and bold move. They went on to say that they “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are…
Read MoreParadise
When she was just a girlShe expected the worldBut it flew away from her reachAnd the bullets catch in her teethSo, lying underneath those stormy skiesShe’d say, “I know the sun must set to rise”This could be paradise. Coldplay, “Paradise” This was the oddest Easter I have ever experienced. For one, this was the first…
Read MoreBorrowed Not Owned
Have you ever rented a piece of equipment, like a floor sander or wet vac? Maybe you needed a tile saw for a bathroom project or a trencher to put in sprinkler lines. Did you take the time to read the fine print (or maybe not so fine print)? There is always a clause in…
Read MorePaying Attention To Intuition
“Have you ever noticed that you don’t have to teach children to draw? If you put paper and crayons in front of them, they draw. And they usually put the sun in an upper corner with the rays coming down.” The artist Skip Hill made this statement to me one day while we were talking…
Read MoreWe The (Quarky) People
We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who…
Read MoreA Stone Of Hope
I was in Washington DC last week with my 14 yr old son, some of his classmates and a few of their parents. This is an annual trek to the nation’s capital organized by the school to afford the students an opportunity to view firsthand the monuments, museums and locations that detail and preserve the…
Read MoreNot Running, But Remembering
I didn’t run the 18th Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon on Sunday, but I did a lot of remembering. I ran the first 17 Memorial Marathons and co-founded the race. Every year as the race approached more and more people would ask me, “are you ready to run?” and every year I would say yes. This…
Read MoreLeft Behind
Nobody showed you how to live? Me either Get a steady job, couple kids Act decent But I’ve been on a ten-speed thinking about the time as the sun sets Like, what would I do different if I hit rewind and did it again? These lyrics in a song by K.Flay called “Dreamers” had me…
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