I don’t know your opinion of former President Barack Obama, but his recent step in reporting for jury duty elevated my view of him. After all, as the one-time leader of the free world, with a schedule far busier than the average American’s, he could have easily gotten excused. The reasons could have ranged from…
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With Thanksgiving arriving early this year, we’re already two weeks into the overly-long Christmas shopping season. It arrives so progressively earlier each year that I recently remarked to my wife (with tongue in cheek): “Maybe they should move it up to August so they can get it over with.” This absurdity struck me last month…
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During an interview with David Canales for a recent profile of the Seattle Seahawks’ wide receivers coach, he shared several interesting stories. The one that caught my attention the most happened a year after Canales joined Pete Carroll’s staff at Southern California. After just a few years as a junior college coach, Canales considered the…
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A week from today, most Americans will sit down to a table overflowing with enough food to feed the entire neighborhood, let alone one extended family. Since Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, it is easy to forget that the rest of the world won’t be breaking bread with us—nor will many have enough to…
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Eons ago, I learned to type on an old black Remington. A clunker of a machine, I say with only a hint of exaggeration that I had to use a hammer to smash the keys hard enough to make sure they connected with the paper. It’s a good thing that I was more robust as…
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Thanks to President Trump, “fake news” has become a familiar watchword in American society. Critics whose megaphone has been amplified by the internet often aim their guns at the “news media.” That is a catch-all phrase that tars too many with too broad a brush. I no longer report regularly on breaking news events. Still,…
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I recently reconnected with an old friend who lives near San Diego, in the sprawling megalopolis of Southern California. I will never forget driving back to Anaheim after having dinner with her and her husband years ago. All five northbound lanes of I-5 were packed with bumper-to-bumper traffic at 9 o’clock—on a Sunday night. Southern…
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In doing some research earlier this year for a client’s blog, I came across a 2014 Gallup Poll survey that showed nearly 70 percent of U.S. workers aren’t engaged with their work. When I searched the term again more recently, I came across updated Gallup news about a staggering 87 percent of employees worldwide not…
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With our ever-aging car racking up the miles, we decided to rent a car for our recent vacation. Although I had been contemplating this, I derived additional inspiration recently from a friend who told me about a guy he knew who drove his vehicles until they literally collapsed. But whenever the guy went to Myrtle…
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I’m not sure at what age I first heard about the parable of the Pharisee and the publican (tax collector), as related in Luke 18:9-14. But since I grew up in church, I am confident it was decades ago. Yet in recent times, a devotional reading included this so familiar passage, and I found myself…
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