A walk through the yellow pages

May it never be said that it takes much to entertain me.  That’s why when my brother or sister and I get together we can sit around a table and laugh hysterically while the rest of our families wonder how strange our childhood must have really been. A few days ago Kelly and I headed [...]

Customer Service

Recently our hospice team watched a webinar on the subject of customer service.  The guy teaching it ( Bryan Williams) was in charge of the guest relations department for the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain for years before going into business as an independent consultant.  His material was really good, so I started writing notes -  not [...]

An Easter story

My story goes back more than 15 years, though in many ways it seems like it just happened yesterday.  It happened on this same Saturday – the one between Good Friday and Easter – when I was officiating a basketball game for some high school guys in the church gym.  We were several minutes into [...]

It’s a ‘dogs life for me

Just in case you’re wondering, I’ll be cheering for the Butler Bulldogs this Saturday.  And just to stay in keeping with the Final Four idea, let me give you four reasons why. 1.  They’re from Indiana.  This is not a team recruited from across the nation – this is a team of home-grown talent.  That’s [...]

Hanging Tough

My Dad sent the following out in his daily email.  It’s his list of things to do when you are facing tough times.  I thought it was worth copying and passing along. 1. Recommit to the will of God. God is sovereign and in control.  Your resistance to God’s will isn’t going to change anything.  [...]

This date in history

January 20 has been a big day. In 1892, the first basketball game was played in Springfield, Massachusetts In 1954, the coldest temperature ever in the lower 48 states was recorded in Rogers Pass, Montana (-70) In 1981, the 52 Americans who had been held captive for 444 days were released In 1986, the first [...]

If I heard him say it once…

… I heard him say it a thousand times.  These are some of the things that I heard my dad say over and over again while I was growing up.  They are now as much a part of my DNA as the genes he passed on to me. “It’s never right to do wrong to [...]

The missing generation

I was riding through some Detroit neighborhoods the other day with a person who grew up in the area.  Every block had abandoned homes – some of them boarded up, some of them burned out, some of them with broken windows where looters had broken in to try to find anything of value.  No one [...]

Celebrating 50

Nope, it’s not my 50th anniversary – though I hope to celebrate that some day.  Nor is it my 50th birthday – that’s still a ways off.    What we’re celebrating today is my 50th blog post.  So feel free to put on your party hat and eat a cupcake! Back in May a friend of [...]

Writing the script

I remember the very first script I wrote.  I was in 7th grade, and my history teacher, Mr. Lively (which was a pretty funny name for the man since he was not particularly lively – nice, yes; lively, no), put us into groups for a project.  He assigned us an explorer – and we had [...]