Power Position

Welcome to the holidays!  Just a few weeks left in this year.  Annual reflections are still to come, but not this week.   Granville’s Candlelight Walking Tour happened last night, and it was everything one could want in terms of getting in the holiday spirit.  On top of the tour, one of our local football programs played for the Big Ten Championship last night, which made being in downtown Granville even more lively.

I’ve been listening to the audio version of Brené Brown’s latest book, Strong Ground.  The audio version is read by the author, and I highly recommend it.  Today I want to share a framework from that book that relates to power and how it is used.  There is much more to it than this brief skeleton of the idea that I share here, so seek it out to go deeper if it resonates.  Ok, here it is:

Power Over:  This is traditional, hierarchical power - using authority, control, or dominance to influence others. It's about having power that others don't have and using it to direct their actions. While sometimes necessary in certain contexts, Brown notes this approach often breeds resentment, resistance, and disengagement when overused.

Power With: This represents collaborative, shared power - working alongside others as equals to achieve common goals. It emphasizes partnership, mutual respect, and collective decision-making. This approach builds trust and sustainable relationships because everyone has a voice and stake in outcomes.

Power To: This is about empowering others - using your influence to help people recognize and develop their own capabilities. Leaders with "power to" focus on building others' confidence, skills, and autonomy rather than maintaining control. It's essentially about giving power away to strengthen the whole.

Power Within: This refers to personal power - your own sense of self-worth, confidence, and ability to act according to your values. It's about knowing who you are, what you stand for, and having the courage to show up authentically. Brown emphasizes this as foundational because you can't effectively share power with others if you don't have a strong sense of your own.

Brown stresses the importance of understanding when each type is appropriate, and suggests that we should strive to minimize "power over" approaches in favor of the more collaborative and empowering forms, for a range of valid reasons that I won’t go into here.

It has made me more mindful of how I use my power, and it helps understand other leaders based on how they use theirs.

Sunday Supper

Today looks to be a quiet day at home, so I am inclined to roast a large hunk of meat.  This Korean Style Pot Roast is right up my alley.  This Philly Roast Pork Sandwich looks amazing.  This Salsa Verde Chicken Tortilla Bowl would also be wonderful.

Sunday Music

Jason Isbell recently rejoined the Drive-By Truckers on the Late Show for this performance of Hell No, I Ain’t Happy.  Brandi Carlile returned to the NPR Tiny Desk this week.  Here is an 11-hour playlist of Christmas Jazz Instrumental Music.  And, lastly, this is not music, but it beautiful and thoughtful - here is writer Robert Arnold reading his essay The Big Box of Crayons.  Enjoy!

If you know anyone who might like this essay, please share it with them. 

Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to.  Let me know how I can help.

Peace & Love,

Chill, Dude

I started to relax around 9:30am Thanksgiving morning. I made a double batch of that Apple Cider - Bourbon punch, and stepped out into the driveway to watch the Turkey Trotters cruise by. Up until that point, I was locked into Planning Mode, intent on serving the holiday meal at 3pm. Every hour for the rest of the day had a specific mission. Prep the Corn Bake. Light the grill. Make the herb mayo. A chain reaction that culminates in the culinary equivalent of splitting the atom - a perfectly-executed holiday meal, with friends and family.

But the bourbon started to flow, the conversations with all of my friends as they trotted by…the schedule became less important. I was still diligent, I kept at the tasks of preparing the meal. But I was less focused on the clock. Which worked out, because an additional two or three dishes arrived that required precious oven time. Oven time that was already allocated. Thank God I decided to cook the turkey on the grill! I moved the finishing of the sweet potato pavé to the stovetop (where it quickly delaminated, separating into a delicious mush).

Things happened when they happened. We all had a great time. Everything was delicious. The food was just one dimension of the day. We crashed hard, going to bed early Thursday night. Friday morning, I attacked the rest of the dirty dishes and pans, fully reclaiming the kitchen. At 1pm, we piled into the car and drove into Columbus. We picked up our friend in Italian Village, then headed south to German Village. We went to The Book Loft, where we met every single book reader from the Columbus metropolitan area. I could have smooched thirty dozen people as we scooched past each other in the narrow hallways and staircases of this famous store.

Some coffee at the adjacent cafe, followed by a casual stroll to Schiller Park had me thinking of Granny Bell, who grew up in this part of town. I wondered where her childhood home was. The homes around the park are wonderful - I had to consult Zillow to settle a difference of opinion regarding their market value. We arrived at Cobra Bar exactly at opening time, 4pm. They served us perfect cocktails, and perfect food. Truly - the burger was world-class, the French fries crunchy and fluffy and potatoey. Popcorn chicken, Asian dumplings - it was all great. Then we scooted home.

Saturday was The Game. I rucked five miles in the morning, then shuffled over to Three Tigers (my go-to joint to watch all the big games). Three pints of pilsner, one Rueben burger and one Buckeye victory later, and I shuffled home.

These three days of go-with-the-flowiness were not completely planned, but embraced as they unfolded. Well, mostly embraced. There will always be a part of me that looks forward to holidays as opportunities to get more work done while the rest of the world takes a break. Even though that was my “Plan A,” I’m glad that I went with Plan B instead this holiday weekend.

Sunday Supper

There is nothing more simple and satisfying than a good pot of pinto beans and ham with some cornbread. Throw some chicken on this Italian Brussels Sprout Salad and atone for some of your Thanksgiving overindulgence. This Slow Cooker Hoisin Garlic Chicken will do nicely as well.

Sunday Music

Bill Evans, 1966. Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen, from just this past Friday. And here’s Alison Krauss & Union Station from earlier this Fall. Enjoy!

If you know anyone who might like this essay, please share it with them. 



Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Thanksgiving 2025

What a lovely week it has been. My schedule allowed me to be home for the most part, which allowed for good, focused work, near daily visits to the gym, and consistent time spent with Rosie - who is growing up so fast and is a very good girl. The cherry on top was a solid week of sound 7+ hour sleep each night. If you want improve your mind state, getting good sleep is probably the surest way to do this.

I’m really looking forward to Thanksgiving. The boys will be home soon. I made a double batch of these pumpkin cookies, putting them in the freezer to enjoy on Thursday. So the wonderful aromas have already begun to waft from our kitchen. Today the tantalizing smell will be from the cinnamon simple syrup I am prepping in support of this Apple Cider Bourbon Punch recipe.

Turkey Trotters who are in-the-know can consider our driveway a cocktail aid station of sorts. Given the chilly temperatures predicted, I may pivot and serve these beverages hot rather than on ice. It’s so fun to see the entire village glide past our house. It conjures the notion of a weird melding of Fred Rogers and Mussolini - all of my neighbors, filing by in a long parade, and we exchange pleasantries as they go by. “Hi, neighbor! Look at you, running so fast. I’m proud of you. Here - have a hot toddy.”

A day to reflect on the many blessings in our lives. A day when everyone is welcome at our table. A day when we have the time to dice, chop, stir, and taste - to produce delicious food, with intention. I am so lucky that I grew up in a household where this type of cooking was done most days of the year. I am so lucky to be able to continue this approach to eating.

Reheating leftovers, recombining them into new and interesting forms. Hanging out, catching up, napping, farting around. Thanksgiving had to be Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite holiday, too - right? “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”

Cheers to a week focused on our true purpose.

Sunday Supper

Here are fourteen low-impact rice bowl recipes that won’t wreck the kitchen as you prepare for the big feast. These easy casseroles are a good way to feed a crowd. And here are twenty five ideas for repurposing your Thanksgiving leftovers.

Sunday Music

This performance by Marcus King at the Blue Note Los Angeles grooves hard. Here is more than three hours of live performances at The Fallout Shelter. And here is more than an hour of electro, chill, hypnotic sounds if that is more your vibe. Enjoy!

If you know anyone who might like this essay, please share it with them. 



Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Surgical Food Strike

The Silver Maples have given up their leaves for the year. I was able to do a final gathering of them this weekend, placing them out at the road for municipal collection. I also put away the last few items that lingered in the garage, so now Lori can park her car in there as well. When the boys pull in the driveway for Thanksgiving, they will naturally assume that no one is home. The cars couldn’t be in the garage, could they?

I returned home late Friday night from Detroit, having attended another quarterly gathering of EOS Implementers. As sometimes happens, I went into this meeting feeling a bit scattered and unsure how much takeaway value I would realize from the meeting. Of course, I left with more focus and energy for the future. As always, a good recurring lesson - honoring one day each quarter, to re-set ourselves, get re-grounded in our long-term vision and identify obvious next actions is a fundamentally good thing to do. Of course the only reason those next actions seem “obvious” is because we take the time to get out of the day-to-day, surround ourselves with intelligent peers and think clearly, without distraction for a few hours.

Waking a bit groggy Saturday morning after a fast, full week, our first order of business was to plan our grocery list, so that we could cook some food for three different friends who are having (or have already had) surgery. It’s such a simple gesture, to help a friend to eat well while they convalesce. I am always happy to do this. The fact that we were doing it for three people at once was a bonus, because I love the efficiency gained from cooking a big batch of something. We ended up making lasagna. I hope that our friends recover quickly, so we can break bread around the same table again soon.

Ray Ray’s announced this week that they were closing three locations. Such announcements by anyone whose business is to feed people always breaks my heart. But Ray Ray’s is still in the game - regrouping, not tapping out. I look forward to the Smoked Turkey Breast I have ordered from them for Thanksgiving Day. They will cook that bird far better than I can, freeing up my oven for more delicious side items. Cheers to James for taking the decisive (if painful) action to scale back.

This time next weekend I will be deep into Thanksgiving meal planning. Between now and then it will be almost pure ideation. But come next Saturday, the menu will be set, and a schedule for shopping, prepping and cooking everything will be drafted. Come Thanksgiving Day, I want everything to glide like a magic carpet, popping a few things in the oven at their appointed times, setting the table, playing some nice music and hanging out with friends and family all day. Throw in a long hike, and it will be perfect.

Sunday Supper

This is the Lasagna that we made for our friends this weekend. These Chicken Enchiladas were considered as well (we decided they wouldn’t freeze as well). This Spicy Chipotle Honey Salmon Rice Salad looks both healthy and flavorful. These Rosemary & Dried Cherry Pork Chops feel very Fall-like (plus, Bon Appetite dropped their paywall!).

Sunday Music

Ben Folds is playing tonight at the Midland Theater. Here is a performance of his from Australia (I don’t think he’s bringing a full orchestra with him this evening). Here is the great Diana Krall doing her thing in Paris a few years back. Lastly this week here is STELLA, performing on a New York City rooftop. Enjoy!

If you know anyone who might like this essay, please share it with them. 



Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Cleaning Out The Garage

“Schedule dumpster for 9/26.” A project that I had assigned myself back in August, the dumpster didn’t actually get dropped in my driveway until November 4th. My cousin Myra’s passing, EO Columbus’ big Momentum event was coming up…a number of things in my life forced me to continue delaying this project. But it got done this week.

The dumpster was scheduled to be dropped on Friday, but it somehow appeared on Tuesday, mid-day when Lori and I returned home from visiting Rosie for one of our “train the owner” sessions at Joel Slavin’s Dog Lodge. I left soon thereafter for the EO event, which consumed the rest of my Tuesday.

I was working on my laptop in the back room on Wednesday morning, and thought I heard a cat meowing. Unsure whether it was actually an odd bird calling out, I ignored it for a while. But eventually a sufficiently clear “meow” reached my ears, and it dawned on me: “Oh, there must be a cat in the dumpster.” So I slid on some shoes and went outside to investigate. There in the bottom of an empty dumpster sat two little kittens. SO cute. It was chilly, and they were small and certainly hungry. So Lori and I relocated Rosie’s crate into our basement and then I climbed into the dumpster to capture them. By some miracle of Facebook finding the right people at the right time, these two little scalawags were adopted before sundown. Because they were willing and able to take the kittens, I made a $100 donation to Whiskers Animal Rescue out of gratitude even though we found a home for the kittens ourselves. What a service it is, to take in abandoned pets. Lori and I were not really in a position to care for these kittens for the long-term. It was a relief knowing that if our own efforts to find them a home fell through that Whiskers would be the caretaker of last resort. Lori and I spent the last couple of daylight hours on Wednesday starting the process of pitching things into the dumpster.

Thursday and Friday kind of came and went for me, though Lori was able to clean and organize portions of our basement (thus making room to accommodate some stuff from the garage). Saturday was Go Time. Lori was off on a half-day hike and Rosie had returned home from her obedience training on Thursday. So I attached Rosie to a lead in our front yard and got to work. By 3pm or so, the garage was devoid of everything. The cobwebs had been knocked down, the floor swept and finally the entire space received a gusty refresh courtesy of my backpack leaf blower. Tabula Rasa.

It was not convenient. It was not fun. In the end, it was satisfying. Cathartic, also. The stuff in the garage had been levying a tax on me for a long time. It’s probably been nine years since I parked a car in that garage. Too cheap to rent a storage unit, too scared to say goodbye to some of the items in there, the garage was charging interest on my inability to process these belongings, and the memories tied to some of them. The table that my parents had refinished. The Maamos Kitchen illuminated sign. My mom’s little PVC-framed greenhouse.

As the rain drops hit my roof here this Sunday morning, I’m so glad that I leaned into this work yesterday. I would have been miserable doing it today. We own things, but these things own us, too. We have to maintain them, use them, or they just gather dust and eventually become useless to anyone. Somehow we improvised around all of the curveballs that arose this week and got it done. When the snow flies in a few weeks, I will be so glad that our cars are sheltered in the garage.

Sunday Supper

This Ginger Chicken & Rice w/ Zucchini soup will warm you up on this wet, cool day. I’m starting to think about the Thanksgiving meal. Once again I think I’m going to lean on Ray Ray’s for the protein - their smoked turkey breast and smoked pit ham are so good that I just can’t bring myself to consume precious oven time and space to take this on myself. Instead, I’m focusing on making a lot of great side items. Christina Tosi’s Corn Bake looks great, as does this Red Cabbage with Walnuts & Feta. Rather than creamed spinach, how about Creamed Kale? This French Onion Soup Tarte Tartin looks very interesting. Instead of mashed potatoes I’m (gasp) flirting with the idea of prepping a Potato Pavé ahead of time, then browning it off on Thanksgiving. Hopefully this sparks some holiday meal ideas for you.

Sunday Music

When the Doobie Brothers visit NPR’s Tiny Desk, we listen. Emily King brings an entirely different (and beautiful) performance to the same space. To wrap things up this week, I share with you Jazzbois playing a recent set in Montreal. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Common Knowledge

Yesterday the cool, windless Fall weather made it easy to collect the leaves and stage them out by the road last night. The White Chicken Chili that Lori made was the perfect evening meal. This has actually been a big chili weekend. Friday night’s social gathering involved a chili potluck. I saw fit to enjoy Skyline Chili for lunch, while the Buckeyes handled their business against Penn State. And then Lori’s chili last night…I’m here for it. As with every season, we need to distance ourselves from certain dishes in order to enjoy them anew.

I have come to understand that this fatigue/renewal cycle extends beyond just the sense memory of taste. Sometimes we forget knowledge, facts, important things, and we need to re-learn them. This happens both individually and collectively at the level of community/society.

When a community “forgets,” some members of the community actually still remember - but not enough remember for it to remain as “common knowledge” at the community level. I’m not sure what the percentage is, but once we lose it, the common knowledge for that subject becomes debatable, rather than broadly accepted as true.

Here are some things that are no longer common knowledge, at least at the level that they once were:

• We have forgotten what our civic duties are.

• We have forgotten that we can only spend beyond our income for so long before going insolvent.

• We have forgotten that we can only experience community-wide benefits from vaccines when most of us take them.

• We no longer recall just how horrible World War II and fascism were.

• We have forgotten how wrong the ideas underpinning white supremacy are.

• We have forgotten what it feels like to be hungry.

• We have forgotten that might doesn’t automatically make right.

• We have forgotten that lying is bad, and counterproductive.

• We have forgotten how inconvenient and uncomfortable it is to live under autocratic control.

• We have forgotten what it means to be a good ally.

• We have forgotten that tariffs function as taxes on consumers.

• We have forgotten that we need experts, because we can’t know everything ourselves.

We have collectively forgotten many things. In this collective forgetting, there are still those who retain the knowledge - and they are trying to remind us of what we once knew.

Truth isn’t going anywhere, though. Truth is undefeated.

This phenomenon of collectively forgetting important lessons is best explained perhaps by the author G. Michael Hopf in this quote “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” We’ve had quite a run of good times, but difficulties are returning.

As the leaves and air temperatures drop, I am preparing for an especially cold winter. I have some sadness around the fact that we are retracing some of these fundamental steps. Humans are inefficient, yet we do make undeniable progress.

We are known for helping each other, for working together. This is how we transcended all the other species on this planet. As we transition to harder times, let’s work together.

Sunday Supper

This Texas-Style Chili was my contribution to Friday’s potluck. This Baked Kale Rice w/ Halloumi looks very satisfying. This Chicken au Poivre sounds delightful, and pairs well with this White Bean Salad w/ Fennel & Celery.

Sunday Music

Here Mumford & Sons cover Nine Inch Nails’ song, Hurt. Here is Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers performing Learning To Fly at Bonnaroo 12 years ago. Lastly, here is GoGo Penguin, Live in Manchester. Enjoy!

If you know anyone who might like this essay, please share it with them. 



Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

This Old House

We’ve lived in this house for 21 years. One reason that we chose it is because it was move-in ready. With both Lori and I working hard building our careers, we had neither the time nor the money to buy this house and then immediately renovate it. We’ve updated mechanicals, roofing materials, and even refinished the kitchen floor once over the years. We’ve painted some walls and replaced most of the appliances along the way.

It’s time for something more substantial. With the boys mostly off of “the payroll” and the last tuition payment sent out, we now are in a position to start saving for a major renovation to this place. Whatever we do, we want to pay for it with cash rather than financing it. Our mortgage rate is low, and we don’t want to rent money at a higher rate - either in the form of an entirely new mortgage, or a home equity line of credit. So, we’re setting cash aside, and dreaming when we have a few moments to spare.

Zillow says that the house was built in 1835. At some point, the foundation was jacked up and two courses of block laid on top of the original stone foundation, turning the cellar into a basement suited for short people. The house has had multiple additions over the years. There are hand-hewn beams supporting the first floor in the oldest part of the house.

When Freddie went off to college, the thought experiment of “what are the criteria for the ideal living situation” began. We have no idea where our children will end up living, and we’re not inclined to try and follow them around. Instead, let’s make sure we have ready access to a decent airport. The ability to move around without a car is appealing. Plenty of good restaurants, cultural events, outdoor activities…all of these would be pluses. When we run down the list, the status quo looks pretty good.

But the house needs attention, and the whole notion feels like a slippery slope. This project is definitely going to be more than a simple refresh. The windows need to be replaced. And if we’re going to live here another 20+ years, an enhanced 1st floor master, including a laundry is warranted.

Exactly what our plan looks like depends primarily on how big of a war chest we can amass. This depends on how patient we can be, and also on how urgently certain things need to be done around here.

It seems certain that we will have to vacate the premises while the work takes place. Moving out (and putting our belongings into storage) will be a great forcing function for purging the non-essential. When we move back in, we will be lean and mean, in terms of having no unnecessary possessions. The notion of slimming down in this way resonates, given all of the eldercare experiences we have had.

Picking the right partner(s) seems critically important. I can think of no more stressful scenario than being part-way through a project like this and having a contractor flake out, or having some major disagreement arise. If anyone reading this has direct experience with a project like this, I’d love to pick your brain sometime for how you navigated the complexity of it all.

So, it’s exciting to think about how good the end result will be. And scary to think about the twists, turns and challenges that may lie between here and there. This feels like it could be our last big project. I want to get it right - not just because the stakes feel high, but because I’m acutely aware that the future owner of this house will have to live with our decisions.

Sunday Supper

I made these Coq Au Vin Meatballs last night, and they are delicious. This Autumn Lasagna seems warm and cozy, like a Fall sweater. I may have shared this before, but since I’m making this tomorrow I will share this Slow Cooker Mongolian Beef recipe. It will percolate all day, which will smell wonderful.

Sunday Music

Here is Australia’s answer to a boy band - the talented Parcels, at the NPR Tiny Desk. Billy Preston & Eric Clapton performing Billy’s Will It Go Round In Circles? I am a huge fan of Margaret Glaspy - here she is covering John Fogarty’s Have You Ever Seen The Rain? And here is Margaret’s uber-talented husband, Julian Lage in a full, hour+ performance in Bristol, England for your Sunday listening pleasure. Enjoy!

If you know anyone who might like this essay, please share it with them. 



Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

One Day

The lawnmower was humming. I had just enough time to finish cutting the grass and take a quick shower before heading into Columbus to see dear friends for food and fellowship. The collection bag was full, so I cut off the engine and removed the bag, shaking its contents into the other leaves that I had gathered and set out at the road for municipal collection.

An older man in a red pickup truck had pulled in to my neighbor’s driveway, clearly wanting to speak with me. I walked up to his truck, and he asked me for directions. The location he was seeking was on the west side of Columbus, some 45 minutes away. When I told him this, he was surprised, flustered, and looked to be disappointed at the news that he was so far from his destination. As we talked, it became clear to me that he was confused.

He didn’t have a phone, or a map. And I didn’t have any faith that he would remember my verbal directions to get him home. So I invited him to park his car, come in and meet Lori and we would figure out a way to help him navigate home. As he was parking his truck, I popped into the house, giving Lori a heads-up that we may have a person with dementia who needs our help.

I quickly finished mowing the grass and returned to the house. Lori and I agreed that the best approach to getting him home safely was for me to accompany him in his truck, while we followed her as she drove our car. That way if we got separated, I would still be on hand to navigate to our destination. When I explained this plan to the man, he balked. He didn’t think it was warranted for me to accompany him. He felt fully capable of staying on our tail and following us home.

Concerned that his self-assessment may be far from reality, Lori and I decided that speaking with the police about our concerns was the best next step. We didn’t want him or anyone to be injured if he returned to roadways, following us. I spoke with the dispatcher, and she sent an officer over right away. He was a very professional young man. Patient, a good listener. He asked the man some questions, and it became clear that the officer shared my concerns about the man’s competency.

This led to lengthy conversation, additional police and EMT personnel, and a fair amount of stress and nervousness for the poor man. Everyone worked together really well, asked great questions, conferred with their more senior personnel, and collectively landed on the outcome: the gentlemen needed to go to the hospital for further examination. This was the surest way to keep him safe. I suspect that if I had stuck with our initial plan and somehow got him home, he might have functioned just fine in that familiar environment. Outside of this safe bubble, all bets would be off for him, I believe.

When he woke up Saturday morning, he considered himself to be a fully functional adult human being. By sundown, he was sleeping in a hospital, because more than a half dozen people determined otherwise.

If we live long enough, some version of this day is coming. The last day you fly on an airplane. The last time you drive a car. The last time you see a friend or loved one. The last day you can be trusted to move about the world independently.

Twenty years ago, I might have written out some directions for him and gone on to meet my friends. I’m glad I was there to help, but I’m not that far from being elderly myself. If I can stay fit and avoid the Big C, I figure I have 10-15 years of robust adventure. It’s time to start elevating my adventure time, because my day is coming, too.

Sunday Supper

With rain and cooler temperatures moving in, it is finally time for some comforting soups and stews. This Butternut Squash Congee w/ Chili Oil looks great. So does this Tortellini Soup. And how about this Quick Chicken & Dumplings?

Sunday Music

I simply love Madison Cunningham’s music. Here she performs My Full Name live. This song is on her latest album, which just dropped last week or so. Here Brad Mehldau performs Elliott Smith’s “Better Be Quiet Now.” Let this nearly 30-minute set featuring Nate Smith, Lalah Hathaway, James Francies and Derrick Hodge from the Montreal Jazz Fest make your Sunday morning. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

LIttle Totems

An effective estate planning tip: Line up the people who are going to serve as your financial and health care powers of attorney well in advance - so far in advance that their service is merely theoretical. So far into the future that they have no idea what they’re signing up for.

Myra was smart this way, roping me onto her team more than twenty years ago. Honoring that promise began in earnest almost a year ago. Last year she hit the cancer trifecta - coming down with a bad case of breast cancer, followed by melanoma, followed by a weird blood cancer that nearly ruined her kidneys.

She was remarkably upbeat and positive in the months that followed, very accepting that her time was coming to a close - but happy to manage these conditions and enjoy as much time as she could. Two Sundays ago she was re-admitted to The James for her final visit. The call came just before 2am Tuesday morning informing me that she had passed.

I had a meeting in Columbus on Wednesday, and swung by Westminster-Thurber to take a few pictures of her belongings, to begin the process of inviting friends and family to claim objects for remembrance, or utility. Her possessions are mercifully few. The big scale-down happened when we moved her from her independent living apartment into the skilled nursing unit. That is when we inherited her cat, Jasmine. Jasmine is a lovely 13-year old girl. I will think of Myra often as I interact with her cat in the days ahead.

She was my father’s first cousin - her father and my dad’s mom were siblings. But I always called her Aunt Myra. A lover of the arts, she took my sister and I to see the Nutcracker at Christmas time, and to many other musical and theater performances. I remember a trip to the Neil Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta. I also remember her taking me and the Secrest twins to see Eddie Murphy perform standup comedy at the old Veterans Memorial. As it turns out, Dwight Secrest is the funeral director overseeing her cremation.

She held a Master’s of Religious Education degree from Oberlin, and was a lover of travel and all global cultures. She would frequently bring foreign guests to family gatherings, which was always so lovely. Myra is easily one of the most positive people I’ve ever known. And she lived life to the fullest - always on the go and engaged with many different organizations. She made many positive impacts on people, and will be greatly missed.

So there I was on Wednesday afternoon, looking through her belongings. Feeling sad, feeling her absence from that space. Feeling a sense of urgency to get her stuff moved out so that someone else could move in to the room. This is the time when many people might cling to the “stuff,” hoping to stay connected to the loved one who has left it all behind. Having some experience with this urge, I was able to resist it. I took just one small item, made in Puerto Rico. It will hang from our Christmas tree as an ornament. With the exception of last year when she was hospitalized, I believe that Myra spent every single Christmas with my family. So this little totem will carry that forward.

Sunday Supper

Myra once made this Greek Lemon Chicken Soup for me and my sister. This Palestinian Sheet Pan Chicken Dinner would be right up her alley too. Why not these Crunchy Queso Wraps, while we’re at it?

Sunday Music

Any time Tom Waits releases a new performance, we all need to take a few minutes to check it out. The British band, Wet Leg, recently performed at the KEXP studio. This performance by the trio of Bela Fleck, Edmar Castaneda, and Antonio Sanchez is well worth a listen, too. Enjoy!

If you know anyone who might like this essay, please share it with them. 



Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

A Long Conversation

This Fall weather has been surreal. Sunny, blue skies with highs in the low 80s/high 70s, rinse and repeat. Leaf collection occupies a higher percentage of my mental attention than it deserves - the real work of Fall leaf collection hasn’t quite begun. It will escalate exponentially for the next 4-5 weeks, before tapering off around Thanksgiving. We have yet to see anything remotely resembling sweater weather this Fall.

I found my mind returning to Maamos Kitchen this week. Some of the warmest memories that I have of that era comes from when customers would buy gift cards from us, giving them to friends who were going through some challenge. Grief, a new baby, medical convalescence, Meal Train-type stuff. Our food was sufficiently high in quality and variety that we really were the perfect solution in those situations. Nourishing people through whatever struggle they may be going through is one of the highest honors someone could have. A dear friend had knee replacement surgery this past week, and requested a batch of the Asian Beef Basil from meal kit version of the Maamos Kitchen adventure. Remember meal kits? Yeah, we don’t hear much out of Blue Apron or Hello Fresh these days, do we? They’re still out there, plugging along.

Something came through my social media feed this week that has stuck with me - a quote from the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche: "Marriage as a long conversation. When entering a marriage, one should ask the question: do you think you will be able to have good conversations with this woman right into old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time in interaction is spent in conversation.” I think this really hits the nail on the head. Elvis may beg to differ, but buddy, if you don’t enjoy long talks with your spouse, it ain’t gonna last.

Whether it be a significant other, or just a close friend, our enduring relationships have great conversation as the connective tissue. How does it feel to talk with this person? Do they expand your thinking, make you laugh, elevate your self-esteem? Do they energize you, or leave you feeling flat? Do they help you make sense of the world? The ability to listen, and thoughtfully respond, back-and-forth is an essential human skill.

In new relationships, you need a little patience. We don’t always get to the good stuff right away. The real stuff, the raw stuff - not everyone can go there immediately. And sometimes it takes some shared experiences, like late-night strolls through Las Vegas casinos, coastal golf in a 4-club wind, or a stroll across the Oval before a big football game before you can build the library of call-backs that will enliven your conversations until you are both a ripe old age.

So, don’t sleep on the importance of conversation - look for those who light you up, and cultivate the skill to do the same for others.

Sunday Supper

This is not the same as the Maamos Kitchen recipe, but this Thai Beef Basil comes close enough. I’m making this Coconut & Lime Rice Pudding as a dessert, substituting pineapple for the mango. This Skillet Chicken w/ Mushrooms & Caramelized Onions looks amazing.

Sunday Music

In honor of Jeff Tweedy’s recent released triple album, Twilight Override, here is his visit to the NPR Tiny Desk. Tweedy has risen to Leonard Cohen-level status as a lyricist in my eyes. Madison Cunningham has a new album titled Ace coming out Friday - here is a live performance of Wake, from that upcoming album. Lastly, I offer this live performance by Nina Simone in Antibes back in 1965. What a talented artist.

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

What We Permit

I found myself reflecting on the concept “What you permit, you promote” this week. A nagging issue in my professional life feels like it is coming to a head. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t…I’m mulling it over. But there are lots of common examples in life where this concept plays out.

When there are employees who habitually arrive late to work without consequence, other employees take the same liberty. Then you have a real problem. College roommate issues, like who does the dishes, personal hygiene, having guests in a shared space, etc. all can stack up to create some real tension between people.

Moral and ethical things - like someone who reneges on a bet, or tells a racist joke. Every once in a while, maybe you let such things slide. But if it repeats and you continue to allow it…now you’re complicit with the conduct.

Experience teaches us this hard lesson of permit/promote, and informs our future behavior. While I have always had dogs, and loved them, they have never been as well-behaved as I would have liked. To hopefully promote different standards with our new dog Rosie, we have enrolled her in a three-week training program that includes three days of training for Lori and I. Rosie will be our best-behaved pet ever, and I will be a better dog owner.

Our federal government, designed by it’s founders to have three co-equal branches of government, have recently failed to play their historical role as a check and balance on each other. I wonder how this might affect voting trends in next year’s mid-term elections.

It’s hard to think that every decision we make is setting a precedent that we must honor forever. Sometimes it feels this way. At my age, I rarely have a problem telling someone when I am making a one-time exception, and sticking to my guns if they try to repeat the occurrence. That’s basically all we can do when someone takes liberties that bother us.

Experience is the best teacher. Make accommodations sometimes, and see how they play out. You will regret some of them! That’s part of the journey. That’s how you figure out your non-negotiables.

Sunday Supper

This Cola-Braised Beef w/ Chili-Lime Onions is good. So is this Spicy Honey Chicken w/ Broccoli. Oh, so is this Skillet Salmon w/ Quinoa, Feta and Arugula. Get cooking.

Sunday Music

This Sunday morning, enjoy this set from Maxwell at the NPR Tiny Desk. Sierra Hull recently performed there as well. And here is a full 2-hour performance by Tedeschi Trucks Band w/ Warren Haynes from earlier this month. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Great Meals

This weekend I shifted from bagging the leaves in the yard, to raking them onto a tarp and dragging them out to the road. We are now at the “tapping the leaves” stage of Fall, but the tree canopy still has plenty of leaves to give back to the earth. The 86-degree heat partially made the decision for me.

The air was considerably cooler at the Culinary Vegetable Institute, up near Lake Erie in Milan, Ohio yesterday. Members of EO Columbus traveled there to enjoy to enjoy an evening together. The CVI is essentially the R&D lab of the Chef’s Garden, a niche wholesale vegetable distributor led by the Farmer Lee Jones. At some point (in the mid-1980s, I think), the Jones family farm was on the brink of bankruptcy and foreclosure. They decided to try a different approach that was something of a “Hail Mary” attempt at turning the enterprise around. Instead of producing commodity crops for low margins, they decided to explore a wide range of niche crops, selling them at high margins to Michelin-starred fine dining establishments around the world.

Elite chefs from around the world travel to Huron county to play in the CVI kitchen and sample new varieties of interesting fruits and vegetables. Farmer Lee spoke to our group last night, and one thing stood out more than anything else: flavorful vegetables tend to be more nutritious. When your customer base is made up of the world’s best restaurants, flavor is everything. It turns out that replenishing the soil with a wide range of cover crops and other regenerative farming techniques ensures there will be more micronutrients in the vegetables, and more flavor.

Chef Jamie Simpson delivered an outstanding meal to our group. I have no professional culinary training, and I’m not a food critic. But it is hard to imagine a higher standard of cooking technique applied to a meal. And the ingredients were off-the-charts outstanding (including the beef for the Beef Wellington - yes, they serve proteins, even though their focus is on the vegetables). The highlight for me was the dessert - a Black Sesame Cake, paired with Grilled Eggplant Ice Cream, Basil, Potato and Red Pepper. When I saw this item on the printed menu, I immediately thought “This is an homage to Baba Ganoush,” one of my favorite summer dishes. Tiny sprigs of basil were placed on the eggplant ice cream (eggplant puree was combined with a creme anglaise ice cream base, so it had some sweetness). The potato was an ultra-thin waffle-cut potato chip, with dark chocolate brushed on one side of the chip. Lastly, the red bell pepper was somehow (no idea the technique) incorporated into a caramel sauce that complemented the cake and ice cream.

This meal will certainly stand as one of my favorite dining experiences. I’ve been fortunate to have enough of these special nights that I recognized it as it was happening. The most special meals are not solely about the food. They are very much about the people with whom you are experiencing it, the atmosphere, and even the circumstances of the days leading up to that moment. In this case I was at the end of a very packed 4-week stretch on my calendar, where each day felt like every hour was committed to a specific task. Last night was the first time in quite a while where I felt I could relax - and I was able to do so with people I have known and admired for a long time. The air was cool, the night sounds magnificent.

Like comedy, for a meal to be extra special, there often needs to be an element of surprise. In this case, I drove to Milan with minimal expectations. I knew that I liked Farmer Lee Jones, but had never heard of the CVI or Jamie Simpson. Cruising up the nondescript gravel driveway, I was not expecting the beautiful building, or any of the food that would be served.

The CVI is just two hours from Granville. Put together a group and book a seating. You will not be disappointed.

Sunday Supper

This week I continue to celebrate eggplant. The Spiced Roasted Eggplant is simple, and wonderful. This White Chicken Chili is something to explore as the air gets cooler in the week ahead. These Black Sesame Rice Krispie Treats are a perfect homage to last night’s dessert.

Sunday Music

This week’s music recommendations are inspired by the playlist I enjoyed on the drive home from Milan last night. Here’s a vintage video of Martin Sexton performing Glory Bound. Here’s The Police doing their thing just 43 short years ago in England. And here are the Talking Heads back in their heyday. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Different Outcomes

The killing of Charlie Kirk this week has dominated much of peoples’ focus. Those among us who share Kirk’s worldview had to confront the brutal reality of gun violence in a way that is seldom required. Such events rarely hit so close to home, but this week they did.

As an American, I am grounded in the belief that all people have a fundamental right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Someone robbed Charlie of his ability to enjoy these things, and did so with relative ease. If the suspect now in custody is convicted of this crime, our system of criminal justice will impose a severe penalty. But that won’t bring Charlie back.

It is no mystery that gun violence kills more people in the United States than anywhere else - both in the aggregate and adjusted on a per-capita basis. The gun homicide rate in the U.S. is 25x that of other high-income countries. This has been true for many years, with no meaningful change in the rules for how we are allowed to own and operate these deadly devices.

This reality is a collective choice. If changing our relationship with guns ever becomes a sufficiently high priority, we will elect people that will propose legislation to change the way that we access and use guns in our society. It is our responsibility to do this, if we truly want such change to happen. Our system is far from perfect, but I still believe that if We The People are serious about changing our society, we can do this through the ballot box.

I understand the dynamic tension between our different rights. I think we should explore striking a different balance between the right to bear arms, and the right to breathe. That other societies enjoy a much safer day-to-day reality is undeniable - what can we learn from them?

If we wish to lose weight, we must change our diet and exercise. If we want to earn better grades at school, we must change our study habits. If we want to increase our collective safety from gun violence, something needs to change.

Since we have not yet insisted on this change, we must accept the harsh fact that this is the world we have chosen.

Sunday Supper

I made this Chicken Salad this week (substituting dill pickle relish for the capers). I also made this Minty Fruit Salad. Let’s use the last bit of summer sweet corn to make this salad with Sweet Corn, Tomatoes, Feta and Mint.

Sunday Music

Here is a recent performance by John Mayer. Here is Norah Jones performing the Cannonball Adderly classic Why Am I Treated So Bad with Questlove and Christian McBride. And John Batiste performing What A Wonderful World. Lastly, here is a song that Jesse Welles wrote in response to this week’s tragedy.

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Dancing With The Universe

I can’t believe that I was able to fill two yard waste bags with leaves yesterday. The silver maples are dropping them fast. It feels early, but it’s really not. This year is damn-near over. By Christmas, our youngest will have earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Neuroscience (and, fingers crossed, landed his first post-college job).

It’s deep enough into the year to know that some of the goals I set at the start of the year are unlikely to be achieved. This doesn’t bother me, really - because outcomes are never guaranteed, and things take the time that they take. I feel very good about my focus, effort and energy this year - and will maintain it for the rest of the year.

Falling short of ambitious goals used to create a lot of inner turmoil for me. My inner critic can be fierce. It paralyzed me at times in the past. That hasn’t been the case this year, and I’m committed to keeping that chattering monkey as quiet as possible for the rest of my life.

The most effective way to silence that monkey for me has been simply to take consistent daily action. James Clear and his book Atomic Habits has been instrumental in me getting my mind right about this stuff.

What I am building cannot be built in a day. But if I stack enough good days together, it will come together. I like the path that I’m on. I believe it will take me where I am trying to go. And I have all the patience, focus and flexibility that I need to adjust to the changing world and keep making progress.

There have been a couple of instances recently where good things seemingly fell into my lap. Some people might interpret these things as the universe (or God, or karma) rewarding me for my efforts. My sense of it is different. In each instance, the goodness of the thing was not obvious at first. It would be have been easy to miss both opportunities by overlooking their potential.

But I maintained an openness and a curiosity that stimulated deeper conversation, which eventually revealed the mutual benefits of collaborating with some other people. So we’re going to be working together in various ways, and I’m excited about where this work might take us.

Lori will tell you, I have a rich inner life. I can think, and think, and think myself into circles. This year I have had a much higher bias towards action - trying things, assessing how they worked, adjusting and taking a new round of actions. Actual engagement with the universe (rather than thinking) is the most effective and efficient way to learn.

Last week I learned the term “Zone of Proximal Development” - this is the sweet spot of learning and growing, where something is challenging enough to be engaging while avoiding either boredom from being too easy or frustration due to being too difficult. I like this term. It rhymes with “Productive Discomfort.” This is where I have spent a high percentage of my time this year - “In The Zone,” so to speak. This is where I will try to spend even more time in the future.

Sunday Supper

Bird’s Haven Farms had the cutest little Fairy Tale Eggplant at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday. Lori found this Sticky Tofu & Fairytale Eggplant recipe, which was both easy and delicious. This Crispy Chicken w/ Lime Butter looks amazing. So does this Beef Fried Rice. Of course, I liberally add fresh summer vegetables to everything - you should too. Think of these recipes as guidelines rather than doctrine.

Sunday Music

I love Ben Folds. This concert from a couple of years ago in St. Paul, Minnesota is great. Speaking of piano-based crooners this week - here is Billy Joel’s full concert to close out Shea Stadium a couple of years ago. And lastly, here is piano gal Norah Jones with Margaret Glaspy singing Get Back (one of my favorite songs in the past few years. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Private Tutor

This interview by Patrick O’Schaughnessy of Joe Liemandt on Invest Like The Best (video version here) was so captivating that I listened to it twice so that I could take notes. Liemandt is Principal of Alpha School, a private school that is leaning heavily into generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to support student learning.

Researchers have long known that one-on-one tutoring is pretty much the best way to teach students. The best homeschoolers among us validate this, I believe. This insight has been kind of meaningless, given that there has been no practical way to achieve this one-to-one student ratio at society-level scale.

But what if a GenAI can accurately assess any student’s knowledge, and help them to efficiently build on that knowledge over time? The scalability of this technology opens up the real possibility of every student having their own private AI-based tutor.

Some benefits of a GenAI tutoring to consider:

No Skipped Lessons: The student catches a cold, has an orthodontist appointment, or simply plays hooky? No problem, the AI simply picks up teaching them right where they left off previously. In the current model, students can fail to absorb key lessons, which makes learning future lessons more difficult.

Staying In “The Zone”: Like any good video game, a well-designed GenAI will keep the student engaged in the “Zone of Proximal Development” - where it is never so easy that it becomes boring, nor so difficult that the student feels overwhelmed. So, student engagement in the process is higher.

Pacing & Outcomes: The AI will allow students to progress through lessons at whatever pace is right for them. And regardless of a student’s pace, every student can achieve the same learning outcomes. (The phrase “No Child Left Behind” comes to mind here.)

Configured properly, this AI-based approach to instruction has a lot of potential.

At Alpha School, students currently only have two hours of AI-based instruction each day, and their standardized test scores are through the roof. This high performance of the students does not appear to be due to coming from privileged backgrounds. Yes, this cutting-edge alternative approach to education has attracted lots of wealthy households, which could skew their results. But Alpha School has plenty of examples of students who come to the school behind their age-based peers, and the GenAI instruction efficiently gets these students caught up to them.

The efficiency and effectiveness of the instruction creates time for the students to engage in lots of other activities. This typically takes the form of content that students love. Examples include Alpha Animation Studio (teaching public speaking and storytelling skills), How To Buy Stuff (personal finance), and Alpha Mad Scientists (emphasis on the meta skill of learning to learn).

The Alpha Model shifts the role of the teacher significantly. Instead of grading papers and writing lesson plans, Alpha’s teachers become more like guides, offering motivational and emotional support to each student. They find what makes their students tick, and create enrichment experiences accordingly. By reclaiming time that students historically have spent sitting at desks, the Alpha School model gives them the time and space to explore things of specific interest to them, fostering a growth mindset and a higher degree of self-directed learning.

I have no doubt that the Alpha School approach is imperfect. But it seems to have the potential to disrupt what I call the “Starting Line” problem that we have historically observed - Children that are born into households that are unwilling or unable to support their early development are left behind the proverbial “8 Ball,” always playing catch-up to learn at the pace of their grade-level peers, typically falling further and further behind.

If GenAI-based tutoring could both allow our brightest children to flourish, while at the same time lifting up the performance floor for students on the other end of the performance spectrum, this would be a massive step forward for humanity.

Sunday Supper

This Labor Day weekend, this Grilled Za’atar Chicken w/ Garlic Yogurt and Cilantro would be great. Or these Hot Dogs w/ Pico de Gallo. Nothing says summer like Zucchini & Corn Fritters.

Sunday Music

This set by Nate Smith + KINFOLK a the NPR Tiny Desk will make your toe tap. This concert by City & Colour is beautiful. This jam session by Toshiki Soejima at POMPOSO will put a smile on your face. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Forum

I must have referenced Forum in past essays, but I don’t recall ever fully explaining it. The concept of Forum was introduced to me by Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO). I joined the Columbus chapter of EO in the Fall of 2004, and have participated in Forum on a monthly basis ever since.

Forum is a confidential monthly gathering in which 6-10 EO members, led by a trained peer Moderator, share their experiences with each other. It's essentially like having your own personal board of directors, comprised of remarkable leaders who are there to support you through the toughest business challenges and celebrating your victories.

Its structure and format include the following:

• Monthly meetings employing special protocols to support a trusting environment.

• Groups typically consist of 6-10 entrepreneurs from non-competitive industries.

• Led by moderator-trained EO members, not paid facilitators.

• Provides a highly structured and safe environment for members to discuss deeply personal and professional challenges.

Forum is a fundamentally different way of interacting. Sharing experiences rather than giving advice, practicing humility and a beginner's mind, and listening with head and heart. The key principle is that members don't give advice; they speak from first-hand experience, letting you draw your own conclusions on the best manner to proceed.

The Forum practice is central to EO's mission of supporting entrepreneurs not just in business, but as whole individuals, recognizing that entrepreneurship affects every aspect of one's life. It follows a prescribed agenda, which includes everyone sharing a monthly update of their “Top or Bottom 5%” events, and closely examining some combination of the most important and most urgent items in their lives. Life’s most notable events are saved for examination in Forum. We typically can share the other 90% pretty easily with just about anyone.

This monthly practice of reviewing our lives, sharing them with Forum, and being present for my Forum mates to share their experiences has absolutely made me a better person. I have a deeper understanding of myself, I’m a better listener and a better communicator.

I don’t see any reason why this approach to learning and growing can’t work for just about anyone. We all experience the ups and downs of life. Tapping into the experience base of a trusted inner circle greatly magnifies our perspective, allowing us to navigate things more effectively. The willingness of all participants to be open, honest and vulnerable creates trust, which enables depth. I’m happy to share more about the mechanics of Forum if you’d like to explore this concept yourself.

Sunday Dinner

This Swiss Chard, Leek and Goat Cheese Tart looks amazing. It feels a little early for this, but Turkey Chili is starting to sound good to me. This Corn Salad is another great way to bask in the glory of summer sweet corn. And this Blueberry Crumble would make for a wonderful dessert.

Sunday Music

Here is Deep Sea Diver in a recent performance at KEXP. Adam Miller with some Sunday grooves at Studio 606. And here is Gillian Welch & David Rawlings at the NPR Tiny Desk. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Building Something

This week was so full, so engaging on every front. It didn’t exhaust me, because I managed my sleep well - but the entire 5-day workweek felt like a non-stop gauntlet taking me from one thing to the next…straight into a weekend gauntlet of moving our oldest son back to school in North Carolina.

He and I agreed that “Hotel Bell” has been downgraded to “Motel Bell” - the amenities have slipped since the last time he was a full-time resident here. Rather than fresh-squeezed orange juice and Eggs Benedict for breakfast, guests at our establishment now receive the dregs of the morning coffee pot and some Eggos. This is intentional on the part of the hosts. Why would any little birdie fly out of the nest, if the nest was the Four Seasons? He’ll be glad to return to a domain over which he has complete control, and his parents look forward to the same.

The concept of chaos has been on my mind this week. One reason for this is that I am constantly questioning how I am using my time as I build my EOS practice. I’ve been saying “yes” to a lot of things, using the rationale “This will help me grow my practice.” Of course, the path to my intended future isn’t completely well-paved with clear signage keeping me exactly on-track. As with anything new, we try things, learn and adjust as we build. Our experience with Rosie is exactly the same. Training this sweet little pup the ins and outs of being a Bell takes time, and not all tactics are effective.

On a macroeconomic level, I think we are seeing this with the Trump administration’s massive revamping of our our country’s approach to levying tariffs on imported goods. This is a substantial renovation of the U.S. government’s revenue model, and is hotly debated in terms of whether it will create net benefit for our society.

Starting anything new and meaningful means mucking about. At first, you will never be sure if you are doing enough of the right things. In fact, a great many of them will be the wrong things. But the only way to learn is to take action, then process the feedback. So I’m taking action and adjusting on both the business front and the pet training front. Only time will reveal what is working, and what isn’t.

Creating a “new normal” isn’t a passive exercise. Take action, accept the chaos, learn, adjust - and, eventually, simplify into something that works. I don’t know any other way to go about it.

Sunday Supper

We made these Stuffed Peppers for dinner last night. This Chicken & Zucchini w/ Charred Scallion Salsa looks really good. Cowboy Caviar is a great way to take advantage of the summer’s bounty.

Sunday Music

Andrew Bird, live in Amsterdam twenty years ago. Sturgill Simpson at the NPR Tiny Desk. I’m With Her, live earlier this year. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Late Summer

The boys are both home. The bounty at the farmers’ market is amazing. The puppy is minding her pees and poos. My personal productivity dropped this week, but these and other factors all merged, prompting me to downshift a bit.

I made this Peach Tart Tartine yesterday. Those Red Haven peaches that John got from up near Lake Erie were as phenomenal as ever. Such an easy recipe - I can’t wait to make it with apples, probably around Thanksgiving.

School starts for the Granville kids on August 20th - just ten days of summer left. Henry is heading back to Durham soon. The transition from Summer to Fall is sneaking up fast. The days are still hot, the evening pavement warm to my bare feet. But the rhythm of life is about to return to “normal.”

Snapping fresh green beans brings my mom back into the kitchen for a moment. The squeak of a porch swing conjures melancholy. So much undone this season. So much that I still intend to do. Staying mostly in the moment, but sense memories sometimes remind me of the past.

Next week I will lay more bricks to build the future. This week was for living in the here and now.

Sunday Supper

This week I share three recipes that lean in to all those cherry tomatoes that are so perfect and available right now. The first is this Slow Cooker Gochujang Chicken & Tomatoes. The next is Dijon Chicken w/ Tomatoes & Scallions. Finally I offer Crispy Halloumi w/ Tomatoes & White Beans for your consideration.

Sunday Music

Big Thief at the NPR Tiny Desk. The War On Drugs, live on KEXP. Death Cab For Cutie, back at the Tiny Desk. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Summer Fruit

I had forgotten how intense training a puppy can be. That sneaky little Rosie can soil the floor in two seconds if you aren’t paying attention. After a couple initial days of frustration, Lori and I locked into a better operating mode that significantly reduced the number of of “oopsies.” But there is a Rosie Tax - everything that we do right now requires extra energy as we ponder this little poop/pee grenade that can explode at any moment. This sincere focus is how we bond with the dog. I’m not sure the bonding mechanism was ever this clear before.

I recently enjoyed the best nectarine of the year - perfectly sweet and juicy. All the stone fruit are at their peak right now. Tomatoes, too. My friend John is making his annual run up toward Lake Erie to buy Red Haven peaches next week, and is kind enough to pick some up for us. When they arrive I try to drop everything and start baking pies, or at least prep and freeze them for later dessert-making. They’re that good.

In this time of summer bounty, I’m reminded of how fruits are often at their peak just before going bad. This is true for certain other foods, too. But it’s this time of summer when the pattern is most apparent.

Human life might follow a similar arc, at least for some of us. Improving a little each day until life gets really sweet, and then some major health function fails, taking us out. If I could choose, I would choose this pattern for my finite life. So far, so good. Dr. Peter Attia differentiates between “health span” and “life span.” The goal is to enjoy really high function and robustness through most of our life, followed by a brief but definitive loss of function. Perhaps this is where the phrase “ripe old age” comes from - living until we achieve peak sweetness, then quickly devolving to the point where we’re ready for the compost heap. If our decline is the last portion on the Circle of Life, the goal would be to have it be the shortest part of the circumference.

Right now I’m enjoying this really “green” new dog, and all of the perfect summer fruit. Hakuna Matata.

Sunday Supper

With sweet corn coming on, we should definitely consider making some fresh Corn Chowder, or these Fresh Corn Pancakes with Blueberry Sauce. This Cucumber Avocado Salad is always a favorite. These Grilled Pork Sandwiches with Grilled Plum Chutney and Cabbage Slaw seem perfectly timed.

Sunday Music

This live set from more than decade ago features Diane Birch, an artist I only recently discovered. Bruce Hornsby sits in with Goose to jam. The great Keith Jarrett playing Somewhere Over The Rainbow never will get old. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,

Back To Basics

Well, you knew it and I knew it. Once I returned to the “doggie dating pool,” it wouldn’t take long for a new dog to make it’s way into our home. Lori found her on Petfinder. She was being fostered by New Albany Pet Rescue. They were calling her Gigi. Part Terrier, part Mastiff, she is a long, slim, brindle-coated girl with a white stripe running down her snout and chest, and four white little socks on her feet.

When we visited her at the foster home, she was a bit tentative, especially with me. She warmed up though, and shared a few tail wags and kisses. On Friday, she visited us, and was more curious and friendly. When Karen offered to let us keep her right then and there, we figured “why draw this out?” She’s a good girl, so now she’s part of our family.

This takes us back to the beginning - the early part of pet ownership. The part where we train her, and she trains us. The part where she is watched by us, every second, so that we can catch and correct any behaviors that need correcting. It is a version of time travel. We are reviewing all past dog training decisions and outcomes, deciding which to repeat and any new methods that we want to employ. Lori and I are collaborating closely, to ensure coverage and consistency. Every dog makes us better at having a dog.

So a fair amount of focus and energy are going to go into this little girl for a while. A return to basics - and not just on the dog training front. We’re going back to basics in many ways. I’ve been running hot, saying “yes” to lots of things which have added complexity to my life. These are good things, but no more additions like this for a while.

We’ll be walking more, to give our girl every opportunity to do her business outside, where we will throw a party every time she does so. (There have been only two weeks in the past year where my average daily step count fell below 10,000, and they have happened since Nova passed away.). I’ll probably have an earlier bed time for a while. When the “baby” sleeps, you better sleep too. Lord knows I’ll be getting up earlier.

While we’re in “puppy training mode,” we’ll keep things simple. Eventually, a new normal will materialize, new routines will firm up. It was quite a week - I shot a personal low 36 on the front nine at Denison Golf Club - the second week in a row of good play (I shot a 40 on the back nine the week prior). It’s been quite a year, actually. Work, play, sadness, joy. Life keeps rolling.

Welcome to Hotel Bell, Rosie. We’ll do our best to give you a good life, and this effort will make our lives better, too.

Sunday Supper

Goodness gracious it has been hot and muggy! After a few more days of rain, the weather forecast is for temperature to drop. In the interim, my focus is on chilled foods. These Green Goddess Chicken Salad sandwiches look amazing. Grilling this Flank Steak w/ Worcestershire Butter will at least keep the heat of cooking outside. This Panzanella Salad would be good, with or without the Lamb Chops (I would grill the lamb chops, again to move the heat outdoors).

Sunday Music

We can’t return to basics without reviewing our ABCs. The guitar playing of Toshiki Soejima is not a bad soundtrack to enjoy while sipping coffee and solving Wordle this morning. These jazz covers of Beatles tunes are another relaxing option this Sunday morning. Enjoy!

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Have a great week ahead!  You can do anything you set your mind to. Let me know how I can help.


Peace & Love,