Imagine that you buy a lottery ticket every week, and that one day you hit the jackpot and win fifty million dollars. But you never cash in, and the windfall doesn’t do you any good. Why? Because you never check the numbers, you just keep on buying tickets. I read a blog post recently that used a slight variation of this as an analogy, and the first thing I did was shake my head, chuckling and rolling my eyes at the thought. Who would do [...]
In an episode of a television show I enjoy, one of the main characters acknowledges that he seems to see the best in people even when nobody else can, and he speculates that this must be an asset in some lines of work, but may be a handicap in his. He’s a rookie cop, and the person he’s telling this to is his father, who is also the police commissioner of New York. Another television show has a character who sees the beauty in everything [...]
I spent much of last weekend at the Cathedral of St. Paul. I hadn’t been to the Cathedral since my kids were confirmed, and as I drove into the parking lot on Friday night, I was struck anew with the majesty of the building, especially the way it was lit up at night. So the first thing I did when I got there was a “touristy” thing – I took a few photos before I went inside. I did the same thing when I arrived [...]
“Do you know Jackie Pflug?” my friend Dianne asked me recently. “Have you read her book?” The answer to both questions was “No,” although I recognized the title, Miles to Go Before I Sleep, as a line from my favorite Robert Frost poem. Once I learned the subtitle of the book, A Survivor’s Story of Life After a Terrorist Hijacking, and Dianne started telling me more about the book and the author, things began to click in my memory. The memory was rather fuzzy, however, [...]
“For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway, who was a master of the short story and of tight, spare writing, once made a bet that he could write an entire story in six words. With the above “ad,” he won the bet. This story – both the one by Hemingway and the one about him – has inspired a number of literary organizations and publications over the years to sponsor writing contests challenging participants to write stories consisting of a [...]
A few things I did last week that I have never done before in my life: I walked – and was photographed on – the red carpet at a Hollywood Gala; I attended a baby shower at the home of a Ugandan family living in California; I flew on an official “red eye,” leaving LAX after midnight and returning to Minneapolis just after 6 o’clock on Monday morning. Something I did last week that I have done before – and, in fact, have been doing [...]