I have blogged about 9-11 14 times, starting with Lesser Sons of Greater Fathers in 2008. 9-11 is an American cultural watershed as transformative an event as Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, and the Moon landing.
In an Aug-18-2021 speech to House of Commons, Tom Tugendhat emphasizes the need for patience and persistence to achieve peace.
Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) talks about the benefits of meditation and aligning your efforts with your purpose in two excerpts from his June 2020 interview with Tim Ferris. These excerpts were condensed from the interview transcript Ferris published June-30-2020.
Ipaiku is a character in a “science fiction detective novel” that I wrote some drafts for in 1975-78. This vignette is one of the early scenes in the novel that tries to capture a particular sense of movement beneath the surface or the potential energy latent in apparent stillness.
Unasked questions linger after the death of a parent, along with all of the things that you wish you had said.
Looking back nineteen years on 9-11 I am struck by how it unified America in way that perhaps only the Moon Landing and Pearl Harbor did.
Tips to cut the stress of a startup: plan for learning, take time to recharge, join a peer support group, don’t compare yourself to others.
A review of two short essays by Sridhar Vembu that explore the meaning of capital as the capability of a group or population to meet its own diverse economic needs.
Excerpts from Clayton Christensen’s address to the 2010 graduating class at Harvard Business School on “How Will You Measure Your Life?”
Both of our sons were able to join us for Thanksgiving 2019. It was wonderful. We ended up in a conversation about George Washington, I have included his 1798 proclamation that established Thanksgiving as a national holiday in the US.
I came across a list of 21 “Things I wish I knew in my twenties” by Michael Wade and was impressed by the insights he offered. Here are my top eight.
Octavia Butler rejects inspiration, talent, and imagination as essential to creative pursuits and suggests that habits that enable persistence and learning are the essential element.
I had a birthday this week which triggered from reflections on my life. I prepared a short list of lessons learned for my party. I hope you find them helpful.
I like working with entrepreneurs because I find it easier to deal with their psychological challenges and the small team dynamics of a startup than the political problems of an enterprise.
Humans like to give and to receive without cheating or being cheated: we want to be part of networks of reciprocal gift-exchange. If you want to become a member in good standing of community you will need to “give to get.”
Some personal reflections on my father and a stroke he suffered in June 1994 when I was launching a new company and expecting my first son in a few weeks.
For Thanksgiving 2018 I wanted to recap how the events of the first Thanksgiving feast: here are excerpts from “Mourt’s Relation” and “Of Plymouth Plantation.”
I take a fair amount of inspiration from dreams, which I believe are a way for the mind to reprocess memories into new configurations, the same way that a mixmaster can beat eggs or potatoes into a smooth consistency. I think dreams are a way of reprocessing experiences and distilling additional insights and learning.
Christmas afternoon finds me reading “Courtesy.” It’s an essay by Ian MacLaren (pen name for Scottish author and theologian John Watson) that offers a recipe for keeping the spirit of Christmas alive in daily life. Here are some excerpts I found useful, the last finds me still clearly in the “before picture.”
No man is a failure who has friends. Clarence’s parting observation to George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” is good advice for all of us on Christmas Eve. Watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” has become a Christmas tradition in our family in recent years: it’s one of the few black and white movies my boys will watch. …
