Inspiring wonderful places to grow up and grow old by fostering care communities and care economies for & by neighbors.
If it weren’t for my late father’s hospice nurse, I’m sure my mom would have fallen by now: he saw her moving about our apartment and told her to use her walker ALWAYS. She listened, and it has saved her from taking some tumbles. (I shared that with my mom’s permission and though this isn’t…Continue reading Fall prevention deception
I got a comment on a recent story I wrote: “You are a gifted “storyteller”—keep sharing.” I wrote back saying that I couldn’t stop sharing if I tried. What’s one of your “couldn’t stop if you tried” wonderpowers? A “wonderpower” is a gift, skill or passion you have that can “wonderfulize” life for yourself and…Continue reading 3 quality questions to help you remember or reveal your wonderpowers
I sat up straight in bed recently with Franklin Delano Roosevelt on my mind. Specifically, how his hardships with polio shaped him into the leader he became. My hardships are waning and not as dramatic as FDR’s, which left him paralyzed from the waist down, but they’ve left me feeling as if the person I…Continue reading Heeding FDR’s call to become fairly radical
I pass a house on my walks with a “ROB ME!” sign in the front yard often. OK, so there isn’t an actual sign, but newspapers piling up on the walkway as good as advertise that no one’s home. If I didn’t live so far away, I’d offer the house dwellers to collect their papers…Continue reading Low-hanging trust building
I put myself in a bad situation: By waiting too long to face the unknown by taking a new path in my career, life “helped” me into action with a blessing disguised as a health crisis. This pushed me to resign, which thrust me deep into unfamiliar territory. So in the end, I confronted the…Continue reading How neighbors can help us evolve and be prosperous
Village Company 360 wasn’t my first pick for a business name, but the website addresses of names I wanted were taken or cost thousands of bucks. The word “company” fixed those problems, and had the added benefit of communicating that my work is about villages and business. Some find the idea of melding villages—caring communities…Continue reading The power of building boring businesses
The world is a great thing for everybody.There are so many things that are good. My heart melted reading those words from my five-year-old great-niece in a Valentine’s Day card to me, and I can’t say them enough. The world is a great thing for everybody.There are so many things that are good. Rather than…Continue reading Words from a child to help reshape our worlds
There’s a senator who would make me lose it. I threw a magazine across a room once to get his face on the cover out of my sight. Another time, hostile tears filled my eyes when I saw him on TV. Mercifully, I began to break free of this torment when the words of Booker…Continue reading A pre-Inaugration Day message
My dad, in his 70s at the time, saw a poster on the University of Dayton campus when he was an adjunct professor there. It read, “FREE PIZZA FOR SENIORS!” Dad was feeling like he could go for a slice, but it didn’t click until he showed up for one that “seniors” meant people in…Continue reading Why what wealthier folks are paying to age well matters to middle income earners
PART 1: To repeat from my recent post: “Certainty—or we can call it confidence—doesn’t come from thinking but doing. Instead of doing nothing because we’re unsure our village-growing ideas will work or help, let’s be citizen scientists and collect our own damned data!” OK, but who’s a citizen scientist and what’s data? Data is information…Continue reading Following our own damned data