Click here to listen to podcast version. It was a perfect storm last weekend. First, it rained all weekend long. (Why can’t it rain during the week and leave the weekends for sun and fun?) Second, I got a dang cold again (my second one this year – don’t worry – I won’t talk about […]
April 6, 2024
I can already hear the criticism. Shouldn’t the title be Steve Martin and I? Um . . . No. The full title is actually Ruminations about Steve Martin and Me, so as you can see, the “me” pronoun is perfectly acceptable. I read somewhere that grammar debates are the absolute best way to grab the […]
March 23, 2024
Even in my little neighborhood, these months of college acceptances and non-acceptances feel like times of great uncertainty. When I worked in schools, you could feel the anxiety building from the beginning of the senior year. For those students who are applying to colleges, there is stress that is involved. And for the parents, that stress […]
March 9, 2024
Lurking in my lower back, there is a pain monster waiting to get out of its cage. For much of my adult life, it’s just waiting for the right moment – it may start roaring when I’m swimming into a flip turn, executing a golf swing, sitting at my computer for too long, or just […]
September 15, 2022
We had a wedding last weekend. It was perfect. Well, it was as perfect as life these days would allow it to be. Let’s start off with the challenges. First of all, and damn you COVID-19 for still existing, finding a venue for this wedding was stupid crazy hard. Ryan and Yesi scoured Sacramento for […]
April 25, 2020
It may have been the most thoughtless senior prank I ever experienced. As a former high school principal, I don’t love senior pranks. Usually, very little thought goes into them, and they end up being destructive, damaging, or time consuming. Occasionally though — and I mean very occasionally — a group of seniors pulls off […]
February 3, 2022
I was talking to my friend Kevin last week. Kevin and I have ventured through our public education careers with similar jobs as teachers, high school principals, and finally as superintendents. He has been a mentor and a friend for over 30 years, and I truly appreciate our bond and understanding of one another. Kevin […]
Eckhart Tolle
2010
Read: 2022
Non-Fiction, Reading Now
I’m not sure why I haven’t added this book until now. I’ve been reading it and re-reading it for years, and it has helped me through many a stressful time. I love the references to all of the world’s major religions. The main premise is rather Buddhist in nature, seeking the end of suffering through […]
Read: 2022
Non-Fiction, Reading Now
Younger Next Year is a book I keep coming back to. I forget who first turned me on to it, but I read it in my mid-fifties, and it continues to inspire me. The bottom line is that at some point, sometime in our forties or fifties, our bodies want to get old and decay. […]
Marie Kondo
2011
Read: 2018
Education/Leadership, Non-Fiction, Reading Now
I was listening to an architect who specialized in building new schools talk about what classrooms should be. One of his pet peeves was all of the nonsensical and nonpurposeful clutter that occupies many classrooms. He thought that every classroom should contain only those items which are useful for teaching and learning or inspirational for […]
Richard Kiyosaki
2000
Read: 2010 or before
Non-Fiction, Reading Now, Recommended for Young Adults
It’s been on the best seller list since it came out. It’s corny and very simply written. But as a parent and an educator, there’s not better book to give you the big picture of money. We educators don’t think about money. We think about how overwhelming our job is, how wonderful it is to […]
