Last night, I attended a benefit for a young lady fighting lymphoma. She’s a member of my daughter’s theater company, a smiling thirteen-year-old named Ella. She was diagnosed in June, and now wears the bald head and scarf typical of chemotherapy patients. She has a long fight ahead of her, but she faces it with […]
In the fall of 2013, I was diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer. As cancers go, I was pretty lucky: I needed no chemo or radiation. A skilled surgeon removed it with about a third of my colon, it has not returned, and now I get to make writer jokes about having a semicolon. It […]
I thoroughly disliked Clint Eastwood’s movie Unforgiven. But this line has stuck with me. Goals Status: Marathon: On Track. As soon as I finish this, I’m off to do a three-mile run. Two Square Yards of Earth: Behind Schedule. I’ve started Chapter 3. My writers group meets this week, and it looks like I’ll get […]
These two women aren’t celebrities. Most of us didn’t know about them before last year. They aren’t heroes for seeking our attention, or seeking thrills, or seeking danger–they’re heroes because when their lives called for them to do something extraordinary, they didn’t shrink from it. Ordinary people who did something extraordinary, then went back to […]
There is a host of reasons folks have trotted out in recent years to be disdainful of our tradition of Thanksgiving: The way we celebrate has little in common with the way the original settlers celebrated. It’s a celebration of gluttony. It’s a celebration of genocide. We don’t focus enough on the giving thanks part. […]
Motivational Speaker Josh Sundquist | Bestselling Author of Just Don’t Fall. Josh Sundquist has one leg–and he’s kicking butt. Take a look at his Photos page to see three amazing one-legged Halloween costumes. Oh–he’s also a skier. Not just a bunny-slope slow-on-the-greens skier, either; he’s a freakin’ Paralympic ski racer. He competed on the US […]
Turning Point: 40-year-old cancer survivor prepares for special marathon – TwinCities.com. Cyndi Elias has courage. Take a look at her t-shirt as you’re reading this article. After everything she’s been through, she’s now taken on one of the toughest athletic challenges a human can do. This summer, she ran a 26.2-mile leg of the Million […]