Going To Paris

Charlottesville November 13, 2026 Arthur Brooks. I wrote a lot about him several years ago. He taught (teaches?) a class at Harvard Business School on happiness. Wrote (writes) a column for The Atlantic on the same topic. He has quite an interesting background. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Brooks I appreciate his approach to the topic as it is evidence based. I recently signed up for his weekly newsletter and just received this week's email. As with most of h

Charlottesville November 13, 2026 I must have missed this day in seventh grade grammar class. Glad to know I can 55 years later start to use the words correctly! Why did the grammar book break up with the style guide? Because it couldn't tell the difference between a clause that restricts the meaning and a clause which, by the way, just likes to hang out with extra commas. The main difference between that and which is whether the clause they introduce is essential (restricti

Charlottesville November 12, 2026 Reading this article reminded me of the Charlie Brown TV specials of my youth. The played one night a year and if you missed them, it was wait until next year. The two I remember the best are the Great Pumpkin and the Christmas one. I can still see them in my mind's eye. I thought this article was a great reminder of what I might have learned from watching those specials. https://www.cbr.com/life-lessons-learned-from-charlie-brown/ Since i

Charlottesville October 12, 2026 THINGS FOR YOU TO THINK ABOUT Your body is a lagging indicator of the food you eat. Your knowledge is a lagging indicator of the information you consume. Your happiness is a lagging indicator of the people you care about. “The information you consume is the soil from which your future thoughts grow.” – James Clear ONE THING FOR YOU TO ASK YOURSELF What choices are shaping your future self? THREE THINGS FOR YOU TO TRY THIS WEEK Unfollow one sou

Charlottesville October 8, 2026 From the Denver Gazette: Welcome to the Wild West, where town names tend to get spawned from jokes, misunderstandings, vague descriptions, and cultural melting pots. Colorado is no exception and given the many tiny towns dotting the state’s mountains and plains, encountering a name that results in a double take isn’t exactly a rare occurrence. 1. No Name: According to Glenwood Springs, this community’s name, or seeming lack thereof, comes from

Charlottesville October 8, 2026 I was very touched to receive this book as a gift from my friends Anna and Jack. They had found it at the Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library (JMRL) Fall Book Sale which is ongoing this week. It reminded me of how we “bought out the store” when we first moved here and filled our bookshelves with wonderful books that we had read or looked forward to reading. We easily bought 80 books. But what really hit me was the title. Was it

Charlottesville October 8, 2026 One of those days where my mind’s guardrails are not up. Too many things spinning me up — and then spinning me up some more. At least now I understand what’s happening when I feel (think?) like this. So I Googled “cognitive distortions” and found these following helpful discussion: Cognitive distortions are biased, irrational, or exaggerated internal mental shortcuts that cause people to perceive reality inaccurately, which can fuel anxiety,

Charlottesville September 28, 2026 The above advice came from this week’s email from Mark Manson. He has a knack for insights that make me think. This week’s advice reminded me of an important clause I learned several years ago but too often don’t make part of my every day life — check my assumptions. How often do I assume something about another person because of how they dress, look and especially their facial expressions. In my mind those assumptions don’t register as a

Charlottesville September 27, 2026 Based on a blog post from Korn Ferry: Today, it’s easy to feel a little dazed and confused. The world can appear blurry at times. Or does it? It’s an existential truth. As humans, we have always clung to our need for certainty. But the reality is, our state of being is uncertainty—which has always been disguised and clouded by our illusions of certainty. So, perhaps it’s time for a new prescription. Because here’s the thing—seeing differentl