Poetry for Dogs
My book, Throw Me A Bone: Poetry For Dogs, includes 31 poems written purportedly for a canine audience.
It’s available on Amazon — http://poetryfordogs.com — and priced to generate funds for three humane societies. (Writing poetry is not my get-rich-quick scheme, not a pyramid of dogs with you at the bottom. No.)
Empty Nest
I've long heard the phrase: "the empty nest." It has always seemed distant. Now it is here. I'm in it. Here's how it feels. I am empty headed.Not calm-headed. (Calm-headed is great. That happens, too, but this is different.) This is...
Coach Potato
This is about a shirt. (If you were ever to skip one of my posts, this is the one.) Click on the photo to see the shirt, on the Castle Trail at Badlands, South Dakota. (If you don't see a photo, visit Net Cotton Content here: tinyurl.com/GoodShirtMan.) There...
Finding The Words
Words have meaning. So I want to find the right word. My increasing halts in conversation (and here, invisibly to you, at the keyboard) — when I'm searching for the right word — do not (necessarily) represent the onset of senility. It's that I've come to...
Onward On Gender
When I admitted my general confusion here about gender in June, reader responses varied: helpful encouragement — from friends who could teach me about the topic. shared experience — from folks who were similarly confused by the whirl of the world. shaming, flaming and...
Habit, Habit
I'm about halfway through Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business and enjoying it. In the first section of the book, Mr. Duhigg describes much of our individual behavior in the context of habits. In short,...
Teach Me (What I Don’t Know, 2015)
Every once in a while, I publish a list of What I Don't Know. This perennial, shameless display of ignorance was inspired by Rob Emrich, my SpeakerSite co-founder and friend. He loved for us to keep a visible, up-to-date list of what we don't know. Rob knew...
Worship What?
Matt Slaybaugh recently sent me these familiar words, from the commencement address to the graduates of Kenyon College in 2005. I've taken several minutes to digest them anew. I'd read them years ago, back when the speech first hit the Web. I've...
Calling Father
[NOTE: This is written for Net Cotton Content by Helen Hazelwood Isaac.] When I was seven years old, the fathers of my classmates at Columbus School for Girls organized a retreat to a YMCA campsite. There were about twelve father-daughter pairs, and we all slept...
Alone Atop The Mountain
There was a time when I was very resistant to changing my life. This is about that time. I owned a business. Called "Young Isaac" -- after the founding partner, Brooks Young -- it was an advertising agency where I sat all day, but I never did the true work...
Combatting Frenetic Boredom
I was frenetically bored. My friend and teacher, Steve Anderson, helped me realize this. He said: "You bounce out of bed at five every morning without an alarm clock. You run around all day, doing all kinds of honorable, effective things. You...
