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The Genius of Working Less
The story goes (as told by Dan Miller, quoting this book), that while Leonardo da Vinci was painting The Last Supper, he would spend many long days painting atop his scaffold, then would disappear for several days without warning. The prior of Santa Maria delle Grazie, who’d hired da Vinci, tried to convince the painter…
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David Kelley on Creative Confidence
Is creativity a gift or a skill? Are we born creative (or not), or is creativity a muscle that can be exercised and developed? David Kelley, founder of IDEO, which has developed things like the first computer mouse, believes that we’re all creative, but that often our creativity gets stifled along the way. He has…
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The Onions Need Space
It made enough sense this spring. We bought one of those little trays that holds about 30 tiny onion plants. When we planted them in our garden we figured, Why not plant them all? It was more like planting a strip of grass than individual onion plants, but we figured it would work itself out.…
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Ears
Several years ago, a wise old preacher friend was giving me some advice about public speaking. “I want to keep doing it,” he said, “as long as my ears are good.” Although this sounded wise, it also seemed illogical, coming from a man whose main job (in my mind) was to talk. But I think…
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Anatomy of the Potato
I dug up the first of the potato plants in our garden today. I can recall helping my parents dig up potatoes as a kid, but don’t remember it being so much fun! You pull this nasty-looking plant out of the ground and start digging. All of a sudden you come across these big pinkish-purple…
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Coffee
I wonder how many things in life we do for a particular reason, while the real benefit is something completely different and unexpected. I’m reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, which has great advice for writers and anyone who’s creating stuff. She talks about writing like that. While you might start out writing to get…
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Different Beach
While we were camping a couple weeks ago we decided to go take Olivia to a different beach than the one we’d been playing at earlier in the day. She got all excited about the adventure and eagerly got into the boat to visit this distant place, which was essentially just on the other side…
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The Stream and the Song
There’s much to be said about the pros and cons of social media these days. Amidst all fluff, commercialism, time-wasting, there are moments when being part of this global stream of communication is a pure and beautiful thing. The Stream A couple weeks ago much of the world shared in the shock, sadness and outrage…
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The Voice on the Radio
A few weeks ago there was a tornado warning in our area. We’re fortunate enough to live in an area where tornadoes are rare, so it was a weird feeling to stare at the sky wondering if the menacing storm clouds might bring more than rain and lightning. As the storm and the eery silence…
