Editor’s comment: This month’s favorite is courtesy (again) of my daughter, Caitlin.  It gives me (and her) chills.

"Do we really need much more than this? To honor the dawn. To visit a garden. To talk to a friend. To contemplate a cloud. To cherish a meal. To bow our heads before the mystery of the day. Are these not enough?"
- Kent Neburn

Editor’s comment:  Dr. Mardy Grothe is a guy I’ve followed since seeing him as a Vistage speaker 20+ years ago. His Saturday night posts (last week is featured below) are well worth your (and my) time. This week’s quotes and notes theme (Insecurity) triggered my blog this month so I thought it a good time to show you his work. Hope you sign up to receive his weekly email; it’s free and highly enjoyable. Marty surely must be by now the leading authority on quotes and wordsmithing as you can also check out his great books like “I never metaphor I didn’t like” and “Oxymoronica”. 

Editor’s comment: Sleep is a big topic in our family so when my friend, Kevin Shaw, suggested this book I downloaded it immediately.  Walker has become acclaimed for his work as a neuroscientist and professor at Harvard and now the University of California, Berkley.  He also writes in a understandable fashion (unlike some braniacs).  The stunning conclusion of Dr. Walker’s work:  Sleep is the most underestimated and underutilized health aid in our modern society.      

Last month I shared expressions that have guided me over time, then invited you all to share with me.  Some interesting responses follow.

"I do not represent blacks or tall women, or women or Samoans or Californians or Americans. Or rather I hope I do, because I am all those things. But that is not all that I am. I am all of that and more and less. People often put labels on people so they don’t have to deal with the physical fact of those people… I simply refuse to have my life narrowed and proscribed."
-Maya Angelou

Editor’s comment:  I’m careful about famous heroes, it’s like they are just as flawed and vulnerable as I am.  But I do hold up a lot of people, both famous and local, as models for my own behavior and this letter reminds me why Bill and Melinda Gates have become models for me.  Hope you enjoy.

Editor’s comment:  A friend of mine and I were praying the other day about his late wife and their adult children in her memory and this song came to me.  By all accounts she was one who lived her life out loud and so I share, in Danni Bowers’ memory one of my favorite songs of all time.