How does a person "stay afloat" in the high seas of a busy life? The answer is in the Plimsoll Line. Samuel Plimsoll was concerned–very concerned! Hundreds, if not thousands, of sailors were lost at sea each year in the 19th century. The reason? Unscrupulous owners were overloading their ships. Plimsoll published a paper, Our Seamen, in which he...

Seth Godin is thinking ninja. His mind is quick and powerful. It is one of the reasons I read his blog. I like a person who puts their noggin to good use. Because Seth thinks, he makes me think. In Linchpin, Seth discusses how anxiety hinders us from reaching our best. Here's what caught my attention: Anxiety is practicing failure in advance. . . ....

  'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand. He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio." George Eliot, aka Mary Ann Evans   Actually, God could make Stradivarius violins without Antonio, but He did not do that. Instead, God gave Stradivarius his skill and through it the instruments that warm the heart....

You won't recognize her name, but you know her son. She is a mere footnote in the pages of history. He is quoted, celebrated, memorialized, and revered. We know little about her. At least 15,000 books have been written about him. She lived in poverty. She married an uneducated man who could barely scribble his own name. She was a farmer's wife used to eking...

Parsley . . . Sage . . . Rosemary . . . Thyme. Just the cook's ingredients, unless the cook is a poet. As I drove home I switched my XM radio dial to the 60's station and was treated to Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair/Canticle." This English ballad has roots that dig deep into the 18th century, but the folk duo made it famous in 1966....