Has your life ever been changed by a chance meeting with someone? Mine has. Over three decades ago, quite by accident, met author Jerry Ellis while he was working on his first book. He uttered a few sentences to me that changed the way I saw the world and my place in it. We recently reconnected to talk about that day and what has transpired since!
Educating a half-wild kid with a poor outlook on the whole affair was the task at hand for Grade School Principal Ellis DeWeese. Dedicated to teaching and to the future of his students, he found a way to redirect at least one kid’s ambivalence by employing the old “flag program” trick. I was that kid and I’m glad to have been duped by the King of Stealth education himself.
Sometimes a book has a great impact on us, but how grateful would you be to learn how the story almost never was? Here’s the story of such a book and the little known tale about it’s scrappy rise to literary classic. The secret ingredient? Love. Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls.
What do you do when you literally find a skeleton in the closet. Kansas City artist Jeff Becker answers that question with the tale of George, the resident skeleton of the Odd Fellows Lodge he purchased. A tale that leaves you pondering what you intend to do with your time on earth!
My Grandmothers understood the power of storytelling, the best way to get values and ideas into even their hardest-headed grandson’s noggin. Whether they were from the Bible or from the collection of good ol’ Aesop’s Fables, stories were a tool used for daily instruction anywhere my Grandmothers happened to be. In this episode, I reflect on one of those stories, the lessons of which still guide me to this day.
Within the Realm 