Telling stories for fun and profit in the cutthroat world of serious business The title on my business card reads, “Raconteur.” It’s a somewhat archaic term that simply means storyteller, but it’s a hell of a lot better than consultant. The word itself has a rapscallion air to it, as if describing someone…
Posts TaggedEssay
The Rewilding Of Christmas
In my efforts to reignite joy in the holiday season, I discover the magical promise of Grandie’s Eve As a child, Christmas always felt wonderfully magical to me. It was arguably a strange mix of mythologies, all of them imagined and none of them real, but combined, they created a sense…
All That Remains
When it’s all over, who and what will live on “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” ―Robert Frost Sometimes, I think of hope as the palliative we use to keep from getting lost or going insane, and not much more. It may…
When Huey Newton Ruled The Roost
When the protection racket fails to produce a beneficial outcome Huey Newton is a bad boy, a hard case, a tough guy. It was kind of the point, and how he got his name. The problem is, he’s so disruptive that we had to kick him out of the house for…
The Man Beneath The Beard
The tricky nuances of visual identity and personal expression I lost the beard yesterday. The whole thing. Kaput. Gone. Adios. Sayonara. I went upstairs with a long, grey beard, and when I came down, it was gone. Just some stubble in the shape of a beard, like the shadow of an…
Stories I Tell Myself
So much of our reality is dictated by how we perceive it, but it’s the stories we tell ourselves that guide us A few years ago, I came across a story that has stuck in my mind ever since. It was about a small-town newspaper in Alaska, which from the jump had…
I Was Told There’d Be More
Ghost signs, finite energy, and the weight of souls “Fuck you,” the voice cries out from below in the darkness. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.” It is quiet for a bit, then the sobbing that ends in a wail rises up, before falling into the now familiar refrain, “Fuck you,…
The Not So Great Outdoors
When I think of my favorite writers, I don’t spend a lot of time imagining them outside. Some of my favorite writers, and comedians, seem to be more of what Jim Gaffigan calls “indoorsy.” I think of David Sedaris, Calvin Trillin, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Bryson, Malcolm Gladwell, and Anne Lamott…
Lost and Found
I was visiting my parents recently and happened to pick up the local newspaper, which was sitting on the kitchen table. There on the front page was the big news of the day, “Lost Items Collected In Lost And Found.” I’m not making this up. I actually had to read it several…
Wild Parties
They found him there the next morning, passed out cold. It was clear what had happened, as the evidence lay strewn all about him on the front lawn of the Baker Lake Resort. So when Lisa Broxson, bookkeeper for the Baker Lake, Washington resort arrived in the morning for work,…