Good Clean Reads

“Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.“ ~J. Paul Getty

Ever since I won the Willamette Angel Conference, my relationship to money has been shifting. I find myself in meetings among some of the most well respected venture and angel investors having conversations about cap tables, series A and B rounds, among dozens of other serious financial terms that I recognize...

“All man’s troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room.” ~Blaise Pascal

It is summer at last, the season of long lazy afternoons and empty idle hours of wonder. I remember well the endless afternoons of ice pops and sprinklers, taking long walks to see if anything interesting could be found in the neighborhood. This was well before the digital revolution and if you wanted to...

Mark Schoen, an award-winning sexual education filmmaker and founder of SexSmartFilms.com, shares his insights and unique perspective on the differences between sexual health films and pornographic content. His ideas of building a visual frame of reference that can both expand your capacity to communicate and understand your sexuality will change the way you look at sexual content and even your...

“Everybody likes the underdog, because everybody feels like the underdog. No matter how successful you are, you always think, No one’s being nice enough to me!” -Kate Beckinsale

This year’s Soccer World Cup has been riveting as the upsets between highly seeded countries and the lower ranked has continued to surprise everyone in almost every bracket. Perhaps none has been so discussed as the...

“The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.” -Jack Welch

My son hit three consecutive 3 point shots tonight. He rarely shoots like that when he is involved with intense competition. Today was another game in a summer league, where he has been meeting some of his old...

“Smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose….” Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

We love food in our family. The exquisite clean food that tastes like itself only better. My kids have grown up lucky to taste foods from all over the world, prepared by great chefs. We have a favorite restaurant that we frequent for any good excuse, tonight...

“Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.” ~Mignon McLaughlin

Annie Dillard wrote: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” I have long been aware of this fact and have used it as a driving force to accomplish as much as I can in each day. In many respects I feel like my drive to get things done, to...

“Children are one third of our population and all of our future.” ~Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health, 1981

I grew up in an unfortunate family with parents who were unhappy and dissatisfied with themselves and each other. There was little left for the kids and no real relationships developed or were fostered in the house. Culminating in an ugly divorce, the distance between my...

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” ~Albert Einstein

My kids taught me to text. They all have cell phones that they rarely answer except if I am calling, the condition that I set for paying for all their texting. But if I want an immediate response I know better, I text. Texting is actually quite convenient for taking care of the mundane details that...