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Erma Bombeck’s legacy isn’t just humor

Last week’s Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop in Dayton, Ohio, celebrated 25 years of the conference. The University of Dayton held the first workshop in 2000 as a one-time event to commemorate the Bombeck family’s gift of Erma’s papers to her alma mater. It turns out once just wasn’t enough, and now there’s no hint of stopping it. The conference sells out quickly and is known to have a long waiting list. I’ve wanted to attend the conference ever since I first began publishing essays and columns in the early 2000s. In 2012, I attended for the first time, and now I can’t ...

Whining about ‘winning’

Don’t look now, but FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and Jim Acosta agree on something: President Donald Trump is “winning” his effort to reshape the media landscape in his second term. Appearing on the “Power Lines” podcast with his fellow ardent leftists Oliver Darcy and Jon Passantino, Acosta glumly proclaimed, “I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out that Donald Trump is winning in his, you know, quest to reshape the media in this country that he’s cracked the code on how to hurt the press in the U.S.” Acosta recently testified at a Democrat ...

Keeping the new hire: Helping employees stay

Last week we talked about how inexperience impacts your organization. The next question becomes just as important: What are you doing to help those new employees stay long enough to become experienced? The research is clear and has been for decades: When looking at employee departures, the first year is when about 30% take place — especially in work areas in which the new hire works with different people. This is very true in healthcare and hospitality.  Why is that? It is because coworkers have a huge impact on how a person feels about their job. It’s not because you made a ...

Trump and Wallace

At the height of the 1968 presidential campaign, Douglas Kiker, a reporter for NBC, noted that George Wallace’s third-party effort was catching fire. Kiker, a Southerner, noted that the Alabama Governor was gaining traction in the North using racism as the engine of his effort. Kiker stated, “All is as if somewhere sometime a while back George Wallace had been awakened by a white blinding vision: they all hate black people, all of them, Great God! That’s it! They’re all Southern! The whole United States is Southern”. This was September of 1968, when Wallace, whose most famous ...

Artificial intelligence and Artemis II

Our April 1st Tree Talk titled “Exploring the Woods with Wonder: Multi-Generational Ways to Share the Outdoors” was an invitation for family meditate outdoors. The slides presented by Valerie Hart included many beautiful images that inspired my childhood memories of time spent outside in a simpler world before Artificial Intelligence and the launch of missions around the moon. Ms. Hart’s presentation was accessible to people who are not familiar with scientific terminology but do enjoy time in the woods.  She invited her audience to look at natural objects and think about ...

‘You don’t own me’

Politicians tax what we earn, regulate what we build and often decide what we can do with our bodies and our money. I like to think I own myself. But politicians increasingly act as if they do. “People should not have power over other people’s lives,” says Timothy Sandefur, author of the book “You Don’t Own Me.” In my latest video, Sandefur challenges the attitude that “freedom belongs to the government and it can parcel it out to us.” Sandefur starts with building permits. “A building permit really says, you’re not allowed to build on your own property ...