I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but I believe the New Year is a good time to take stock of our lives and where we are headed. I grew up during the 50’s in a middle-class neighborhood of row houses on the west side of Chicago, replete with “gangways” between each...

Working in a family business has its plusses and minuses.  For me, the minuses occurred when my buddies were out playing baseball during summer vacation and I was putting in a 60-hour workweek with my father.  But on the plus side, working in a family grocery store...

It was the 70s and a pall hung over America.  The nation was still reeling from its Vietnam experience; the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island incident sparked doubts about the safety and future of nuclear energy and people cued up for gas, sometimes waiting hours...

During a recent dinner conversation with friends, the topics of skiing and golf came up and soon the entire table was putting in their “two-cents worth” regarding which sport was more fun, more challenging, easier to learn, etc. etc. Our conversation was energetic and...

Earl Nightingale was an American author and motivational speaker who came to be known as the Dean of Personal Development.  He believed the world in which we live and work is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations. The maxim that runs through all of Mr....

For Italian mothers, Christmas is the social event of the season—it’s their raison d’être. They clean.  They cook.  They bake.  They orchestrate the day.  In essence, Christmas is what Italian women live for.  So it was that during junior year college Christmas-break...

Our sense of smell has a powerful influence on memory, and early childhood memories seem to be especially susceptible to olfactory triggers.  Several weeks ago I was rummaging through some boxes that haven’t seen the light of day in years; one of which contained my...

Have you ever had your home or vehicle broken into?  If you have, you know first-hand what it feels like to be violated.  But domestic break-ins pale in comparison to the violation America is currently experiencing as a nation. I recently came across a letter written...

Skiers understand that chairlift conversations can be interesting, informative and…arcane.  One day while riding up on Chair 11, a mother and her daughter from West Virginia, joined me.  Almost immediately after lowering the safety bar and exchanging the usual...