I’m not saying everyone should start a podcast. In fact, I have said the opposite many times. There are way too many of them out there…and most are not good. I’m just saying that having a podcast is pretty magical because you get (for free) something that no amount of…

It’d be wonderful if a new year magically marked a new beginning. But 2022, like all years, reminded us that the same things keep happening, that world events continue on in their own unpredictable way and that in the end, we control very little but our own actions and opinions. …

The other day I sat down to write. But it didn’t happen. It just wasn’t there. The words. The momentum. One thought leading into the next. I knew I wanted to say something. I knew what I wanted it to be about. But I couldn’t get much further than that…

It’s kind of crazy to think how recent December 2019 feels. Not that long ago, it seems, we were getting ready for what a new decade might bring us. It’s even crazier when the truth settles in: 2019 was THREE years ago. We are well into that decade. And so…

One morning in the middle of the second century AD, the most powerful man in the world was awakened by his orderly. It could have been in his tent on the front lines of the war in Germania. It could have been somewhere along his frequent and arduous travels across…

There are lots of smart people. There are not a lot of people who can do this smart thing. The poet John Keats called it “negative capability” — the mental fortitude to be able to entertain multiple contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. Or as F. Scott…

There was more than one moment in the depths of the pandemic that the decision to open a small town bookstore seemed like the absolute worst idea in the world — a monument to arrogance and self-indulgence. At first we couldn’t open. Then we didn’t feel right opening. Then a…

Just over sixteen years ago, I bought Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations on Amazon. Amazon Prime didn’t exist then and to qualify for free shipping, I had to purchase a few other books at the same time.

In 1956 Harry Belafonte placed a call to Coretta Scott King. With her husband arrested once again, he wanted to check in with her and see how she was doing and what the movement might need. Except they could barely carry on a conversation, because Coretta kept being pulled away…