Readiness: Pass it On

Ever see those "DRIVE: Pass it On" ads? Today I drove past one: Babe Ruth, post swing, ostensibly watching the ball vanish into the stratosphere; though, more likely, he was posing for a good photo. This photographic trickery reminds me that we sell an illusion of success and we don't prepare people for the reality they find if they achieve it. We push our kids to strive, but we don't prepare them for life at the top, should they get there.

Those Who Ponder Millenium Falcons

Must . . . not . . . . write . . . about Charlie . . . Sheen . . .

KIDS! I’ll write about kids.

One day, I was wandering through a bookstore by the seaside. It was crowded with people and it was one of those gloriously cluttered places, with teetering piles at the ends of the over-laden shelves. It was a beautiful mess. Books cuddled together on chairs and tumbled out onto the floor. It was the kind of place where you could make a discovery, not some electronic book-vending machine; not a place of credit cards and digital ghost novels. An honest-to-God bookseller's.

With a small summer-reading stack under my arm, I poked and flipped through whatever caught my eye. Turning a corner, I nearly stepped on a young boy -- maybe ten -- who knelt reverently over a gigantic, glossy tome spread open on the floor to a diagram from Star Wars. The title on the page: “Design Specifications of the Millenium Falcon.”