A somewhat overlooked movie, Defiance embodies the universal principles that I espouse in my motivational speaking: Graciousness, Generosity, and Gratitude.

In my keynote speech I emphasize this point: “We Americans over the past couple of decades have spent so much energy trying to keep up with the Joneses that we haven’t taken the time to think about whether we even want what the Joneses have. Do the Joneses have what is delicious to you?”

I try to see all five of the pictures nominated for best picture and that took me to see The Wrestler recently. The star of the film, Mickey Rourke is also nominated in the best actor category and his performance is amazing. He plays a down-on-his-luck, aging professional wrestler whose glory days have passed.
In my [...]

Slumdog Millionaire is an extraordinary movie. A young man who was orphaned and used his intestinal fortitude to survive on the streets becomes a contestant on the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” Some of the scenes are wretching as you view extreme poverty and cruelty. The humor found in the hard [...]

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a brutal, intense, memorable 1 hour and 34 minutes.
Bruno is an 8-year-old growing up in a nice home in Berlin, playing with school friends every afternoon. He is very disappointed when his Nazi official father receives a promotion which requires the family to move to the country.
Bored at his confinement to [...]

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv, Algonquin Paperbacks, 343 pages.
Friday evening I attended a lecture by Richard Louv in Colorado Springs. The lecture was wonderful and his words rang bittersweet as it was also a week that our county commissioners cut our county park budget by 50%.
Louv [...]

August was a delightful month. I did do some reading but it was mostly slightly trashy fiction. So instead of doing an actual book review this month, I am going to send you to a couple of other websites and some material that I have found helpful.
First, my friend Sarah Michel has been a mentor [...]

The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls, Scribner (2005)
Memoirs are an interesting genre to me. I usually like them but I often do not find them compelling. This one by Ms. Walls, however, was a page turner. I could not put it down from the moment I opened it.
Living in the most dysfunctional family [...]

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan, Penguin Press, 244 pages. Pollan’s follow up book to his bestselling The Omnivore’s Dilemma was a timely read for me. I finished it just as the nationwide tomato/salmonella scare was beginning.
Pollan’s main points are 1. Eat food, 2. Not too much, and 3. Mostly plants. Seems [...]

Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Penguin Books, 349 pages
A friend gave me this book for my birthday in January. I did not read it until May. I knew of Mortenson’s mission to build schools in Pakistan and  Afghanistan from the intense publicity surrounding [...]

The Soul of Money  by Lynne Twist, W. W. Norton & Company, 305 pages
I resisted reading this book. What I imagined it to be was another redistribution of income diatribe (and then everyone lives happily ever after…). Which is fine–as long as my income is not redistributed! But I really respected the two friends who [...]