Healthy cultural soil, counter-rhythms, and the power of Silver Branch Perception I’ve written about humility many times since the pamphlet “Humility: A Humble, Anarchistic Inquiry” first came out in the fall of 2020. As I’ve been preparing to go speak about humility again later this week out west in Portland, I’m reminded how much this […]

Befriending the occasional dark reality that can open creative doors Intellectually, I knew it was likely to happen. And still, I was emotionally caught off guard. My morning had gone great—teaching about ecosystems at ZingTrain’s ZingPosium. Then, later that afternoon I looked at the news. My stomach sank. My spirits went into the tank. If you’re […]

Doing marketing with dignity makes a big difference In the back of Seth Godin’s book The Icarus Deception, he includes what he calls, “An Artist’s Abecedary.” I didn’t know what the word meant, but as per what I wrote last week, Seth’s work led me effectively towards some good learning. “Abecedary,” I now know, is Middle English […]

Why making a difference is as important as making a sale This past Monday, June 27, was the 153rd anniversary of Emma Goldman’s birth. Emma was born in Lithuania, the same small country that’s now the home of artist and author Monika Vaicenavičienė (author of What Is a River?), about whom I wrote a few weeks ago. […]

Start your day at the Roadhouse If you’re thinking of going out for breakfast to eat something you probably never cook at home, you might want to swing by the Roadhouse and order Eggs Benedict. The Roadhouse kitchen crew’s rendition of this classic American recipe is splendid. A buttermilk biscuit cut in half, thin slices […]

#20: You need high hope to get to greatness Fourteen years before we opened the Deli in 1982, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton went out west to travel. In 2019, writer and permaculturist Fred Bahnson published a thoughtful piece about that trip, entitled “On the Road with Thomas Merton.” Aside from the fact that I […]