All That I Can Give You

My mother makes the best peanut brittle in the known universe. You may think I’m biased, and I probably am, but it is really good. Every Christmas she gives us a very large tin packed with this special treat. It always has a small label on it that says, “Merry Christmas, Much Love, Mom”, in…

Read More

Oh, But Change Of Heart Comes Slow

That’s a line from a song by U2 brought to my mind recently as I contemplated the world around me. I was able to attend a concert by The 1975 this past weekend with my boys. Midway through the show the lead singer, Matty Healy, played a recording of a call to action from activist…

Read More

Human “Being”

A therapist of mine once told me I was a human “doing” and I should be a human “being.” I was bent on performance and accomplishment at the time, and I often failed to experience the relationships and environments around me. If you had asked me at the time what my favorite part of any…

Read More

The Best Thing

I was very fortunate to see Mandy Harvey at the Tower Theatre on Saturday evening. Mandy is an American jazz and pop singer and songwriter. After becoming profoundly deaf following an illness at the age of 18, she left Colorado State where she was majoring in vocal music. Mandy became depressed and quit music. However,…

Read More

Face The Facts

I was fortunate to get to attend the 12×12 Art Fundraiser benefitting the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC) with some dear friends. For 12×12, 175 artists create works that conform to the dimensions of twelve-by-twelve inches. Many of the artists were in attendance and we got to meet and talk to several of them. I also…

Read More

Believing Is Seeing

“At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou I was talking with a dear friend of mine recently. The conversation turned to whether someone is capable of objectively seeing someone or something. Take for instance falling in love. Dopamine…

Read More

We 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 More

Getting To Know You

I apologize for referencing a film I just used a few weeks ago, but I was humming the song “Getting To Know You” from The King and I and I was struck by the lyrics. Getting to know you Getting to know all about you Getting to like you Getting to hope you like me…

Read More

Don’t Panic

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy tells us that “A towel is just about the most massively useful thing any interstellar hitchhiker can carry. Partly it has great practical value…. more importantly, a towel has immense psychological value.” We just got new towels. New towels are marvelous things. They are soft, fluffy and luxurious. The…

Read More

Setting The Curve

When I was in engineering school, I took a few classes early on that were designed to weed out those who were not able or willing to do the work necessary. I remember one particular class, taught by the head of the department. On the first day of class he had us look at the…

Read More