The breakout character can destroy a television show. The most painful part of the original Star Trek series is season three when out of money, ideas, and writers, they decided to service the fans by giving us ever more Spock. The character suffered, the show suffered, the fans eventually realized: we do not always know what we want. Elizabethan audiences loved the character Sir John Falstaff and that included the Queen who put the Elizabeth in Elizabethan. The rogue is a lovable old... Read more

At one point in my life if anyone mentioned “building community,” I would run away. This phrase is the equivalent of someone saying: “Let’s talk.” My mind goes blank and I have nothing to say . . . as hard as that is for some of my past bosses to believe. In the same way, if someone says “Let’s build a community” I know two things. They do not have a community. They have no idea what an authentic community... Read more

When I was a boy, my brother and I would be sent to do a project for Dad outside. When were we done? We were done when the job was done or if it was a long-term project, when it was dark. While there was light, we kept working. There is something in this for right now in my life, just now, in America as it is. This is not the only bad time in world history, I doubt it would make... Read more

Some movies make me stop and watch them, even if I have seen them, maybe especially because I have seen them. One of those movies is The Natural with Robert Redford and Glenn Close. You could teach quite a few seminars on this Shakespearean comedy, it’s that profound, but it revolves around one truth: Nobody is good enough without someone else. There is no “natural.” Great gifts are not uncommon. There is, somewhere in the United States, a farm boy who can... Read more