The following explanation might confuse you, but that’s OK. Stick with me anyway. My friend Carmen recently wrote a guest post on her friend Kristin’s blog, Halfway to Normal. Kristin launched something she calls the Love List Project, which is a wonderful idea: make a list of the things you love, consider why you love them, then share what you…
I adopted Haley when I was a senior in college. It was fall 1991, right around the first time I heard Nirvana. She proved to be an odd cat almost immediately. When I got home from working at the college newspaper late at night, I tried to get her to come to bed with me. She would have none of…
A few recent blog posts got conversations started, though most of the insights were shared elsewhere. I’m bringing some of it back here to make sure you get to enjoy input from other readers. My post on the dancing baby video and why adults should follow the little ones’ example drew some comments on WordPress, plus several more on Facebook.…
More magazine, which bills itself as a “comprehensive resource and community for women over 40,” is hosting a Reinvention Convention Oct. 5 in New York. The Web site says: Are you ready to revamp your career? Tackle money management questions? Rev up your style, health and maybe your sex life, too? Then join the editors of More, top experts and…
For the three readers who’ve gotten used to the rhthyms of Newvine Growing, you’ve noticed that I often do shorter posts during the week and a longer, more in depth piece on the weekend. I had one ready to go Saturday but we’re having some Internet connectivity issues at home. Time Warner’s customer service was outstanding — patient, clear, almost no…
Jennifer Worick Jennifer Worick, a crafty Seattle gal with a slew of published books and a couple of blogs, recently wrote a blog post about letting go of rigid expectations and learning to roll with life’s unpredictable nature. It starts: Until a few years ago, I thought I was just a logical person with high standards for myself and others.…
Thanks to Twitter, I learned about the Slow Money conference — I hadn’t heard of it until I saw Stowe Boyd’s 140-character updates Thursday. BusinessWeek writes: There’s a conference going on in Santa Fe this week about Slow Money. The idea behind slow money, modeled on the 20-year-old slow food movement, is to create an infrastructure for investing in local…
John and I have just started watching This American Life via Netflix. Since John worked at an NPR affiliate for eight years, we’re well acquainted with the wonderful radio version but we’ve just gotten the first disc of the Showtime TV series. Ira Glass is a spectacular story teller. I don’t know if his approach is the same for television,…
I met Rob Pasick years ago, when I was business editor at the Ann Arbor News and he was an interesting local character — a psychologist and executive coach and who was working the media not about his day job but about his book “Conversations with My Old Dog.” We’ve stayed in touch off and on over the years, and…
When I first met Sarah Endline at a Michigan alumni event, she had the kind of job lots of MBA students envy, working at Yahoo as the major search engines were really coming into power. When she told me she was leaving the corporate world to start a premium chocolate company, I was surprised. She didn’t have a background in…
While I am a long way from dethroning Oprah’s media empire, I am still excited — August was Newvine Growing’s best month yet for visits. Thank you so much for spending time reading, and thanks especially to those of you who have shared your thoughts and feedback in comments. I find my August numbers especially satisfying because I expected people…
Much has been written since Michael Jackson’s death about his huge influence on pop culture. Don’t get me wrong, I listened to Thriller on the cheap little turntable in my bedroom nonstop, but I think John Hughes got overshadowed because he had a heart attack while everyone was still fixated on the King of Pop. John Hughes transformed my teenage…
My post earlier this week, “Is it true you can’t work harder than your clients?” got people talking — but since some of that conversation happened over on Facebook, I thought I’d copy it into the blog so more people can benefit from the commenters’ wisdom. Julia Collins, owner of Fitness Chick personal training service, said: I want my clients…
Some people don’t pursue their dreams for very practical reasons — they have to pay the rent and they worry that being a musician, artist, filmmaker or writer won’t make any money. A story in the New York Times this week introduced me to Kickstarter, based in our back yard here in Brooklyn. Earl Scioneaux III is not a famous music…
MediaPost recently had an article about a Florida guy named Jason Sadler who is making money from a simple but compelling idea: The idea was simple, if sartorially limiting: Sadler, 27, decided that on Jan. 1, 2009, he would wear a company’s logo t-shirt all day, broadcasting video and photos of himself on various social media, including ustream.tv and Twitter…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a blog post I stumbled onto headlined You can’t work harder than your clients. Diane Sieg, an emergency room nurse turned author and life coach, writes on her blog: As I start my second month of Life Coaching at the Wellness Treatment Center, I am reminded of a very important concept: You can’t…
I grew up in an agricultural state. Michigan grows cherries, apples and sugar beets, among other things, and to live in Michigan is to know the mantra “knee high by the Fourth of July” is a growth measure for the huge expanses of corn fields all over the state.
But I don’t think I’d even heard the phrase “farmers’ market” until I was out of college. Ironically, it’s in super urban New York City where farmers’ markets have transformed both how we shop and how we eat, in both cases for the better.
Believe it or not, the Internet is good for more than watching videos of skateboarding dogs — you can find loads of help on your journey to become a better person. One consistently great site is called Zen Habits. Articles on their Web site include: 20 Things I Wish I Had Known When Starting Out in Life Simple Living Manifesto:…
Do you have a story to tell about change? It could be your own or someone you know or admire. Maybe it’s a business that’s reinvented itself. I would love your input on stories you would like to read here. If you would like to write a guest blog post, I’m open to that. If you want to share a…
For anyone waiting to hear the story of Ben Jaffe, director of Preservation Hall, apologies but you’ll need to wait a bit longer. Ben and I got started on a fantastic interview but technology was not cooperating. He was on his cell phone at a French Quarter theater, preparing to shoot video of a Terence Blanchard show the next night,…
I love serendipity and coincidence. When we visited Ann Arbor last weekend, I was talking to Matt and Rene Greff about how much I’d enjoyed Eat Pray Love — a book I thought would be a lightweight beach read but instead turned out to be a thoughful self-examination of a woman’s journey to rediscover herself after a divorce. She travels to…
I recently started reading The Geography of Bliss — our friends Matthew and Lisa bought it for John and he enjoyed it so I’m taking my turn. Here’s how the author’s Web site describes it: Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss signals the arrival of the next great category of literary nonfiction: the philosophical self-help humorous travel memoir. Weiner, a…
Hip Slope Mama, a Brooklyn-based blogazine led by a friend of ours, turned me on to the 3/50 project with this recent post from contributor Mark Caserta. Since last September, business along Park Slope’s commercial streets has fallen off significantly and my store, 3r Living, has struggled to stay afloat in these difficult, uncertain times. Of course, many of our customers are feeling…
