Below is Whisper #4 from my latest book, 48 WHISPERS, which is a collection of photographs and personal meditations created across a decade of travel to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the surrounding northern plains.  These words by philosopher Joseph Campbell reveal his understanding of the world’s mythologies and sacred stories as manifestations of the…

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Below is Whisper #3 from my latest book, 48 WHISPERS, which is a collection of photographs and personal meditations created across a decade of travel to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the surrounding northern plains.  It was the day before Halloween, and I found myself standing alone at the Wounded Knee Massacre site on the…

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Below is Whisper #2 from my latest book, 48 WHISPERS, which is a collection of photographs and personal meditations created across a decade of travel to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the surrounding northern plains.  I remember pacing the quiet halls of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on an early Sunday morning as I waited for…

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Below is Whisper #1 from my latest book, 48 WHISPERS, which is a collection of photographs and personal meditations created across a decade of travel to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the surrounding northern plains.  Crazy Horse was born in 1842 near the Black Hills. In the decades that marked his life steamboats would conquer…

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The following is the introduction to my third book, 48WHISPERS From Pine Ridge and the Northern Plains.  Please enjoy. As a teenager our family took a vacation to the Grand Tetons. I was so enamored with the majestic grandeur of the West that I subsequently returned one college summer to work in Yellowstone National Park. I happily…

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In October of this year I had the honor of giving the keynote address at the LBM STRATEGIES conference in Denver.  The 50-minute talk was video recorded, and I would like to share it with you.  I hope you can find a quiet time over the holidays to relax, enjoy, watch, and reflect. What if…

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“Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children?” —Black Elk “The Divine Matrix is the container that holds the universe, the bridge between all things, and the mirror that shows us what we have created.” —Gregg Braden The…

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“To get people out of their misery, out of this genocide, that is the main reason, the motive and purpose of the military operation that we began in Donbas and Ukraine.” —Vladimir Putin Hancock Lumber has a long-standing customer from Pakistan. Each year we ship his company dozens of containers loaded with eastern white pine….

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“Even the most basic outline of his life shows how great he was, because he remained himself from the moment of his birth to the moment he died; because [though] he may have surrendered, . . . he was never defeated in battle; because, although he was killed, even the Army admitted he was never…

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“Man should not be in the service of society; society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that’s what is threatening the world at this minute.” —Joseph Campbell The first mission of any company should be to make work meaningful, rewarding,…

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“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere—it is within each…

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“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” —Henry Ford The traditional definition of winning is Darwinian. Every winner requires an equal and offsetting loser. For me to win, someone else must lose. Picture the Roman Colosseum, where it was kill or be killed—eat or be eaten. According to this view,…

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“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” —Romans 5:12 I’ve found a new favorite book. It’s titled Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman. You may have to search for it, because it threatens too many conventional…

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“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.” —Lucille Ball   In January of 1988 I drove from Bowdoin College to Bridgton Academy to interview for a teaching and coaching job. Upon arrival I found myself sitting on the less powerful side of a large oak desk. Bob Walker, the headmaster, sat opposite me….

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Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe. Therefore the Master takes action by letting things take their course. He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He simply reminds people of who they have always been….

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“To have a comeback you have to have a setback.” —Mr. T Falmouth High School—January 1983. I jump for a rebound. The next thing I know, I’m lying on the court, clutching my right shoulder in extreme pain. I would learn an hour later at the hospital that I’d dislocated my shoulder. Shoulders are pretty…

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“No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” —John Wheeler, physicist Alison and I have been married for thirty-two years. During that time, we have had four dogs, all yellow Labs. Bowdoin, Tampa, Tucker, and Scout are their names. Only the last of which is still with us today. Most dogs…

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Flashback #1: Our daughter Abby is five years old, and blindfolded. In the middle of the screened-in porch hangs a piñata. It’s a colorful donkey twirling gently in the breeze. In her hands Abby holds a yellow Wiffle bat commandeered from the garage. Abby swings and misses, yet all the other children cheer, confident in…

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“If one person in your family commits a crime, the entire family must be purged.” “When you have food in your stomach you can think about the meaning of life, but when you are starving, all you can think about is hunger.” “I never saw a map of the world. As an Asian I didn’t…

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“If you want to be a champion you’ve got to feel like one, you’ve got to look like one, you’ve got to act like one.” —Red Auerbach John Kohtala was the best jump shooter I ever met. If he could get his right elbow above your left defensive hand, he was going to shoot, and it…

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