Wrong Way to Give

Jazz great Count Basie learned a hard lesson about giving and receiving when living in Kansas City near the trumpeter known as "Lips" Page.

The ...

Consequences of a Mistake

I was a junior in high school, and I loved metal shop. Metal shop was filled with points of caution. You were regularly working with metal that contained ...

Painful Choices

My wife, an experienced nurse, recently switched jobs. The change had been a long time coming. Jana was excited to join up with two doctors whom she had ...

Apologies to Your Kids

One day, I found my 4-year-old trying to give his 2-year-old sister a drink of water from his cup. Pam's clothes were soaked, and I scolded my son ...

Poorly Placed Trust

The story is told that a national magazine assigned a photographer to take pictures of a forest fire. They told him a small plane would be waiting at ...

Who Is My Neighbor?

Years ago I flew to Minneapolis to give a speech at a conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Near downtown Minneapolis, my taxi was stopped ...

Need for Rest

In The Twenty Four Hour Society, Martin Moore-Ede says our most notorious industrial accidents in recent years—Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, ...

Success Can Be Meaningless

In Actions Speak Louder Than Words, Herb Miller writes: Two Kentucky farmers who owned racing stables had developed a keen rivalry. One spring each of ...

God's Junk Mail

The other twenty million finalists might as well give up. One of the gold-sticker-laden sweepstakes entry forms and magazine sales pitches that show up ...

Billionaire for a Day

Jeff Ferrera of Waukegan, Illinois, was reconciling his checkbook and called First National Bank of Chicago to get his current balance.

"Your primary checking ...