Colorado Gov. John W. Hickenlooper

David Axelrod, President Obama’s campaign strategist, knows a thing or twenty about what it takes to win the Presidency. In a revealing conversation this week with conservative commentator Bill Kristol, Axelrod identified what he called “a leading indicator in presidential politics.”

If you look back, the most authentic candidate tends to win presidential races. Whatever you think of Barack Obama, he’s a guy who’s comfortable in his own skin. Nobody ever said, “Gee, he’s not really genuine.” Whatever you think about George W. Bush — comfortable in his own skin. Their opponents, for different reasons, did not come across that way — Mitt Romney, John McCain both having to accommodate their own views to a growing conservative movement within their party, a populist movement. John Kerry and Al Gore had these authenticity problems as candidates. I like them, but that’s clearly the case.

Later in the interview, as the conversation turned to the 2020 Presidential election, Kristol asked if Axelrod thinks the Democrats might nominate their own version of an outsider candidate like Donald Trump.

Axe demurred at first, hesitating to get into the prediction business four years out from the election. He then noted:

One of the problems for Democrats is, the Democratic Party doesn’t have very many governors any more. Governors used to be a wellspring of candidacies, you know? Now, Democrats have what, thirteen states or something?

KRISTOL: A little more than that, maybe. I don’t know.

AXELROD: I should know this number.

The number is 16.

One of them is Colorado’s John Hickenlooper, who reportedly came close to becoming Clinton’s running mate last year and who is already fielding questions about 2020.

“Hick” as he’s known here in Colorado, does not have an authenticity problem.

My wife and I campaigned for him in 2003 when he ran for Mayor of Denver. He was an unlikely candidate — a brewpub owner and former oil company geologist with no experience in government. We held signs at Speer and Federal that said “Honk for Hick.” We’d met him before he ran for mayor, and we liked him a lot. He’s a very likable guy — friendly, unpretentious, funny, an odd mixture of awkwardness and confidence.

Hickenlooper surprised us all by winning the Mayor’s race. He won his second term with 88 percent of the votes. He is now in his second term as governor.

I remember watching Governor Hickenlooper at an excruciatingly difficult press conference three years ago. I thought, “This is what a President needs to be able to do sometimes.”

His task was to comment on the murder of Tom Clements, whom Hickenlooper had recruited from Missouri to head Colorado’s Department of Corrections. The two became close friends.

Clements was shot dead at his home after answering the door the night of March 19, 2013. It turned out the murderer, later killed in a shootout with lawmen in Texas, was the son of another of Hickenlooper’s close friends from his oil industry days, Jack Ebel.

“We all stand here with leaden hearts and insufficient words,” the governor began at the State Capitol the morning after the murder. Having learned of the tragedy about 12 hours before, he had gotten little sleep. His voice was soft and halting, but he did not break down.

We are so grateful for the time that he gave us. He was a dedicated, committed, funny, caring, expert at Corrections. He had a sense of humor that all of us — you almost can’t describe it. His sense of timing when he would let a zinger fly was so unpredictable and yet so astute. He was a great friend to me and I think to all of us. He helped to define what a public servant is. He did his job quietly and intently.

After about eight minutes, after stating that Clements would be “deeply, deeply missed,” Hickenlooper paused, raised his palms upward slightly. “Questions?” he said. On the video, I can’t hear what the questions were. To the last one, he answered:

This is the hardest thing for me. When you’re in an active investigation, the less said the better. You never know when you say something, you can inadvertently somehow slow down the process that law enforcement is going through. So I’m going to avoid commenting.

I hadn’t planned to write such a somber post about John Hickenlooper, but I’m glad I found that video and was able to watch the event again. I don’t remember how I knew about the governor’s friendship with the suspected killer’s father; there must have been other reports at the time. In any event, I was riveted to the press conference live when it happened. I saw a man contain unimaginably intense emotions while doing his public duty flawlessly.

He made an effective plea for privacy on behalf of Clements’s family. He gave a dignified and moving tribute to his friend. He protected the investigative process by not talking about the wrenching rest of the story. He was emotionally present and disciplined, rational.

March 19, 2013 was the sort of preparation for leadership that a governor in has plenty of chances to go through. That’s why Axelrod and anyone else thinking ahead to 2020 really should know how many Democratic governors there are.

It’s also why I find it reassuring to imagine John Hickenlooper making decisions in the Situation Room or addressing the world media after a tragedy.

I hadn’t planned to write such a somber post about Colorado’s mayor — he is much more widely known for his quirky humor. I noticed that he put particular value on that trait in his fallen friend and Cabinet member.

Frank Bruni in a 2011 profile of Hickenlooper for The New York Times Magazine told a story that Hick has told many times since, about the “running of the pigs.” This was a silly event celebrating the anniversary of the founding of a microbrewery and restaurant he owned at the time. Ten young pigs were set loose to scurry down an alley.

After complaints from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Hick renamed his event the “pleasuring of the pigs.” Bruni’s article continues:

The animals were coaxed along gently and coddled all the while. “We used parasols, little sun hats — we made sure there was no sun on the pigs,” he says. “People would feed the pigs little treats along the way.” Still, PETA representatives complained, telling Hickenlooper he was “objectifying and making a spectacle of pigs,” as he recalls. They videotaped one year’s pleasuring, he says, and “one pig caught its hoof in a grate and had a little drop of blood on its hoof.” To head off the dissemination of that image and put an end to PETA’s protests, he shelled out about $400 to buy all 14 pigs that had been used in that pleasuring and sent them to a refuge for rescued livestock, where they could grow fatter and older without fear of becoming bacon. And the next year, he says, with a sigh, “We did a celebration of prairie dogs.”

The story illustrates a central tenet in Hickenlooper’s approach to life: “there’s no margin in making enemies.” A corollary, which he practiced as mayor, is to share the credit. His dogged, visionary work with 31 mayors of communities in the metro Denver area led to their support for construction of Denver’s fantastic $4.7 billion transportation network that is still ongoing.

I have a feeling I am going to be writing a lot about John Hickenlooper in the coming years. I hope so.

I agree with Malcom Gladwell, who wrote this blurb for Hick’s tell-all memoir, The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and Politics, published last year by Penguin:

Pause and reflect on how thoughtful and intelligent and charming John Hickenlooper is. Then hope to God he runs for president one day.

Cross-post from Medium

Ivanka Trump and father at a 2016 campaign event. (Damon Winter/The New York Times)

Cross-posted at Medium

I wonder what President Trump thought of the profile of his daughter Ivanka that appeared today in The Washington Post.

Titled “Is it a tightrope or a bridge?” the piece appeared on the first page of the Style section with this subhead: “Ivanka Trump defends her father, her causes and her centrist image in a politically divided age.” The authors are Monica Hesse, a staff writer in the Style section, and Krissah Thompson, a Post reporter since 2001 who has been a business reporter, covered presidential campaigns and written about civil rights and race.

My guess is that the President did not hate the story, even though it contained quotes from four unnamed sources.

“They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name,” Trump asserted yesterday during his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Today’s story about Ivanka included this quote from “one Ivanka friend of several years:” I think at times she’s very excited. And at times she’s very overwhelmed.”

“A Republican who has met with her” said the following:

The tumult and uproar that was generated by so much of what this president did in the first month of office has made it to where her capacity is very much narrowed. She is going to be implicitly damned by some of his policies, and it will be very, very hard for her to navigate.

One source, identified only as “a White House official,” credited Ivanka with being instrumental in setting up a roundtable with her father attended by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and top female executives of both countries. The group discussed “ways to elevate women in cross-border business endeavors,” The Post reported.

A fourth unnamed person, described as “a source close to them,” meaning Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, described the couple’s bipartisan tendencies as “secure lines” for people disinclined to reach out to her father.

It should be noted that the reporters quoted twice as many named sources as anonymous ones in their story.

Those named were three Republican members of Congress, Ivanka’s younger brother Eric, the rabbi who delivered a prayer at Trump’s inauguration, the president of the National Urban League, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, and a stylist and TV personality who has known Ivanka since she was a girl.

From all of these sources, named and unnamed, The Post presented a compelling description of the challenge facing the President’s daughter. She comes across as a poised, moderately minded young woman raising a young family, supporting her father, and attempting to avoid becoming an early casualty of the Trump presidency.

Ivanka’s sincerity is routinely questioned on Twitter. But I found the description of her by Rabbi Hier, who has encountered her at Passover retreats since her conversion to Judaism, to be convincing:

Whatever service she attends, she’s among the first to arrive. Sometimes you hear, “Is it sincere, did she just do it for the family?” But my observation is she’s very sincere.

The New York Times a month ago reported that President Trump rises before 6 a.m. each day and watches TV in the White House residence. In a small dining room in the West Wing he later looks through the morning papers — The Times, The New York Post, and — a then-recent addition — The Washington Post.

If he is still keeping to that diet of news, I bet he stopped at the first page of The Post’s Style section today. If he read it, he might have learned a few things.

Maybe he didn’t know that his daughter felt compelled to use a fake name when she showed up for a Solidcore class a few weeks ago and was still called out unfavorably by the gym’s owner on social media.

Or that a Republican representative from New York, Elise Stefanik, hopes Ivanka will continue to reach out to GOP congresswomen who share her commitment to women’s issues.

Or that another representative predicted the President’s daughter will find natural allies in her causes.

“As we get further down the path of people realizing that President Trump is here, and he will be our president for at least four years, they are going to start to focus on what can bring us together,” said Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.).

I thought The Post did a good job portraying the difficult position in which Ivanka Trump finds herself. At one point the authors suggested that she seems to be “caught between a rock and a Trump place.”

It’s one thing to make a mark on Washington; the trick is to not let it bruise you.

No matter how unobjectionable Ivanka’s actions and causes may be, she’s undertaking them against the backdrop of a divisive presidency, in a majority-Democratic city where even a trip to the gym can become a political act.

I am not a fan of her father, but I wish Ivanka Trump success in building narrow bridges in Washington. I hope she does not fall off the tightrope.

If the President did read this profile, I hope he recognized it as real — not fake — news on a subject about which he cares deeply.

Rupi Kaur

Cross-post from Medium

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur is that rarest of books, a poetry bestseller.

I first heard about Kaur’s poetry on a BookRiot podcast. Hosts Rebecca Joines Schinsky and Jeff O’Neal were trying to figure out how a book of poetry by a debut author could be selling so well. Milk and Honey now sits at Number 3 on the New York Times paperback trade fiction list. It has been on the list for 28 weeks. Bestselling poetry is so rare The Times doesn’t even have a category for it.

What gives? Was it a brilliant word-of-mouth campaign? Something smart on social media? BookRiot’s hosts asked listeners to leave comments to help them figure out the mystery.

Milk and Honey began life as a self-published volume in November, 2014, according to information at Kaur’s elegant website. Impressive sales led to a deal with Andrews McMeel Publishing on October 6, 2015.

The book comprises four sections titled the hurting, the loving, the breaking, and the healing. The poems are spare, raw, and real. Many of the poems do not have titles. In the ones that do, the titles appear as the last lines of the poems. There is little punctuation.

The second poem of the hurting section begins with “the first boy that kissed me / held my shoulders down / like the handlebars of / the first bicycle / he ever rode / I was five”. The following poem is superimposed on a line drawing of a woman’s naked body, the words centered between her legs:

you / have been / taught your legs / are a pit stop for men / that need a place to rest / a vacant body empty enough / for guests but no one / ever comes and is/ willing to / stay

Things brighten in the loving section. Listeners to my Kindle Chronicles podcast will no doubt enjoy a short poem titled “the perfect date.” It appears above a line drawing of someone reading a book and states, “nothing is safer / than the sound of you / reading out loud to me”.

I love most of Kaur’s poems, because they seem genuine. The ones that disappoint lack originality and the element of surprise. Here is an untitled example: “love will come / and when love comes / love will hold you / love will call your name / and you will melt / sometimes though / love will hurt you but / love will never mean to / love will play no games / cause love knows life / has been hard enough already.”

Something about that poem reminds me of my romantic youth, when everything in Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet seemed guaranteed to melt the girl I was wooing. The prose poems of Gibran had an aura around them that I’m not sure would withstand a look back, now that I am 66. I see from Wikipedia that The Prophet will enter the public domain in 2018. I may take another look then.

Meanwhile, the poetry of Rupi Kauer has touched me today. I am grateful to the BookRiot hosts for pointing me toward Milk and Honey.

I am sure the author is pleased with the number of books she has sold. But I also suspect she is telling the truth when she writes in a poem titled “to all you young poets” that art “is not about how many people / like your work.” No, your art “is about / if your heart likes your work / if your soul likes your work”.

Well said, young poet!

Jonathan Myers, Co-Founder & CEO at Earplay

This morning I experienced a new skill on my Amazon Echo that totally blew me away.

It’s called Earplay. I heard about it by email from Eli Woodward, a Kindle Chronicles listener in Seattle. “As tech-savvy as my friends are,” Eli wrote, “You are basically the only person I know who uses and enjoys an Amazon Echo, and this seems like an especially neat use of that technology.”

I’m going to write in this Medium post about Earplay’s interactive storytelling, but if you want to hear it for yourself, simply click here and then download the “Earplay Demo” mp4 audio file that I’ve shared from my Amazon Drive.

Even better, if Alexa is within hailing distance from you on an Echo, Tap, Dot, or 6th Gen Fire HD 8 tablet, say “Alexa, enable Earplay skill.” Once you have Earplay as one of your Alexa skills, say “Alexa, start Earplay.” She will ask if you want to play the demo or Cygnus, a sample of a longer radio drama where you play a spy who quickly gets in and out of a lot of tight spots.

You can also hear — play? We will have to figure out what verbs to use for Earplay — Codename Cygnus as an iOS or Google Play app. But I believe Alexa will be the best way to experience Earplay narratives.

Story telling began as an aural form. That’s probably why listening to a well-told story has more impact than reading one on a page or screen. Something in our wiring as a species responds to the sound of a story. Our ears seem better at luring us into a story than our eyes are. We imagine that we are the protagonist, and we keep listening to find out what happens next.

With Earplay’s use of voice recognition, the aural power of story takes a big new step. In Codename Cygnus, the story opens in the midst of a poker game. The narrator addresses you not as a 3rd party listener but as the protagonist himself, a secret agent named Jordan Parker. You are asked if you want to draw two cards. You say “two cards.” With those words, you enter a new dimension.

As the action continues, you decide who Parker is, based on your own personality, or maybe you want to try out traits you seldom display in real life. Will you raise the bet? You determine what happens next by saying either “focused” or “impulsive.” You change the course of the story by your choices.

The most obvious benefit of this is that the listener is cast in an active instead of passive role. I followed the narrative closely, because I wanted to understand my next options. I was in the poker game, making decisions, just as in the Earplay demo, I was in the restaurant deciding whether or not to kiss the mysterious woman with a gun in her purse.

The reason I say Alexa is the best way to experience Earplay is that she is only available by voice interaction.

On the iOS or Google Play app, you can follow the action on your screen as well as by earbuds or your device’s speakers. You see the choices of “focused” or “impulsive” as buttons to tap, or you can say either word out loud. This makes Cygnus feel more like a videogame than a voice-only story. You could of course put your iPhone or Android device in your pocket and continue using only your ears and voice. But knowing there is something for the eyes to encounter is a distraction. I think most of us are lead around by the nose when it comes to what our eyes want to experience.

Sadly, we can’t experience the whole Cygnus story yet on Alexa, which only offers the Prologue. With the iOS and Google Play apps, you get another episode free and then must decide whether or not to pay for the story to continue. Mission 1 costs $7.99 and comprises five episodes, 15 to 25 minutes each. Mission 2 is listed as “Coming soon…”

I can tell how excited I am about Earplay by how much it has delayed putting together today’s Kindle Chronicles, which features an interview with Robert Masello, author of a forthcoming historical thriller, The Jekyll Revelation. It’s 2:30 p.m. ET, and I haven’t even begun drafting the script.

The good news is that I was able to connect just now with Earplay’s co-founder and CEO, Jonathan Myers, who is in the middle of a hectic schedule as his company’s content gathers momentum. You will hear all about his creation on next week’s show, because we are going to record a Skype conversation on Tuesday November 1.

I love that Jon’s background starts with an Boston University MFA in writing. But instead of trying to get short stories published in The New Yorker — well, he may have tried that; I’ll find out next week — he went to work as a videogame designer. His work on Codename Cygnus began in April, 2013, and the app was released to iOS four months later.

It makes sense to me that someone educated in the art of narrative and experienced in videogames is well positioned to make a difference in storytelling technology. I am sure there are others who have been pioneering in this revolution that I have not heard about yet.

But today is the day I learned about Earplay, and I can’t wait to hear what happens next.

Martha and Mary Chapel in Sudbury, Mass., where I will take my folks to a wedding later today.

Cross-post from Medium

Hello, Podcast Mountain!

It’s going to be a brisk climb to complete today’s show, because I need to drive my parents to a wedding in Sudbury this afternoon. That means I will eschew Twitter and other distractions as best I can. Please, Lord. Let me turn immediately to writing the script in Evernote, moving my MacBook Air and microphone into the quilting supply room for the recording, and posting the audio and show notes before I leave for Sudbury in less than six hours.

Which brings me to the mystery of procrastination.

You’d think a creature as highly evolved as our species would be able to wake up in the morning, see a goal, lock onto it and organize time and motion to achieve it. I doubt there will be a hurricane or earthquake here in Cambridge today or other natural disaster to interfere with my humble work. It’s at least 90 percent within my grasp whether I get the show completed in six hours or not. So what gets in the way?

Here’s a theory: After 428 episodes of a weekly podcast, my lizard brain follows an embedded timetable, never mind the frontal lobe’s plan for an early finish. The lizard expects that I will finish the episode right around midnight. The interplay between lizard brain and podcaster brain gets complicated in today’s case, because I will probably return home from the wedding by around 7 p.m., five hours before I usually reach the summit of Podcast Mountain. So I actually have 11 hours of available time, not six.

So what’s the rush, Podcast Man? Don’t you want to see if anyone has retweeted the snarky 140 characters you posted at 3 am about Trump at the Al Smith Dinner? And how about Cozmo, your new robot toy? Don’t you want to teach him to recognize your face now that the light’s better than it was last night when he arrived?

Rather than trying to ignore my italicized friend, I hereby acknowledge its voice and will try to make a deal. I could easily waste another 15 minutes coming up with a clever name for my adversary — strike that — my creative partner. Keep going. I’ll go with Bud.

“Hi Bud. Good to see you again here on Podcast Mountain. I’d love it if we can stay off Twitter, Facebook, HuffPo, and the rest until the show is up. Otherwise Mom and Dad are going to be on edge, afraid they’ve kept me from my work just to drive them to Bridgie’s wedding. When I pick them up, I want to be able to say, ‘Good news! The show is done!’ And BTW, when we get back home let’s plan on binge-watching Game of Thrones and Goliath. Nonstop till midnight. Tweeting at the same time and strumming the guitar, learning that Travis pick for Landslide. Total distraction, maybe with a bag of Cheetos. Deal?”

You’re dreaming, Podcast Man. And with your amusing post here I just snookered you out of an hour when you could have been starting the script. But you know what? I’m kinda touched that you’d reach out and even try to get me to cooperate. So we’ll see. Get going.

I’ll let you know how it turns out. One way or another, you’ll have my interview with ace Kindle blogger Bufo Calvin to listen to by tomorrow morning. And much more.

Cross-post from Medium

“Alexa, play Beach Boys music from 1969.”

“Sweet, sweet music whenever you touch me baby, whenever you’re near.” Great song, fetched from the tens of millions of songs I could choose this morning in the kitchen, thanks to Amazon Music Unlimited via Echo Dot.

I’m still trying to get my mind around how my life is better with tens of millions of songs instead of a mere 2 million. That’s the difference $8 a month makes with my Unlimited subscription. It would be $10 if I were not a member of Amazon Prime.

I am paying for possibilities. The chances of finding the music I want are greater. My cloud library of tunes just got way bigger. It has my favorite song from high school, “I Got Rhythm” by the Happenings. When I delivered copy and layout for my school newspaper, The Panel, to The Winchester Star, my life was good — another deadline met, another issue full of good stuff. One day that song came on as I was coming or going to The Star, it was sunny I’m sure, and that song came on the radio of the Chevelle. I cranked it up and bobbed my head.

“In this fast and troubled world we sometimes lose our way, but I am never lost. I feel this way because….dit dit dit dit rhythm dit dit dit rhythm…I’ve got rhythm, I’ve got music, I’ve got my girl, who could ask for anything more?”

“Alexa, go back 15 seconds.” She got it almost right, returning me to the beginning of the song, so I could write down the lyrics.

“Alexa, play it again.”

“Old man trouble, I don’t mind him. You won’t find him round my door.”

Who could ask for more?

Photo taken by my daughter Roo May 29, 2016

Hand in hand

across the dune,

two friends set out

for the beach.

Sun warms their calves,

turns her hair to gold.

As usual,

my grandson has a plan.

His shoulders square,

arms swing wide,

bold steps aim

at the big blue.

This is what we do

at the beach:

Walk and talk

about this and that.

Each generation shines

brighter than the last,

more inclined

to make everything up.

As if we were the first

to scamper

on little bare feet

toward forever.

Cross-post from Medium

Cross-posted from Medium.com

Each Friday, I create a 45-minute podcast about Amazon, the Kindle, authors, and eBooks. I’ve been doing it for eight years now and have never missed a show. I love this weekly challenge. I call it Podcast Mountain.

I reach the foothills of Podcast Mountain on Tuesday or Wednesday, when I record a 20-minute interview for the show. This week it’s Tina Pohlman of Open Road Integrated Media talking about their eBook release of Gerald Durrell’s The Corfu Trilogy. On Sunday PBS will air the first episode of a Masterpiece Theatre series, The Durrells on Corfu, based on the trilogy. The show looks terrific — tales of a family living large and small on a gorgeous island off Greece before the second World War.

Thursday begins my ascent of Podcast Mountain. That’s when I edit the interview. I trim my guest’s my ums and ahs, tweak the audio levels, and add interview-related links to the show notes. Tina did me a great favor by using Voice Recorder on her iPhone while I recorded our Skype-to-phone conversation with Skype Recorder. She then emailed me the audio file, and I used it for her track instead of what Skype was hearing over the phone line. Presto: pristine audio as if we were chatting in the same room.

Today is Friday, my 428th ascent of Podcast Mountain. My self-imposed deadline is midnight for posting the show to the interwebs. It’s now 8:30 a.m. in Cambridge, Mass., so I have plenty of time, right? I’ll write in my Moleskin journal, watch the shiny campaign lures float by on my Twitter stream, ask Alexa to play music by the new Nobel Laureate in Literature.

I am about to write the show’s script in Evernote, which will take several hours. Then I will move my Yeti microphone and MacBook Air to Darlene’s quilting supply room, which has great acoustics because of all the colorful fabric on the shelves. I will follow the script lightly, adding digressions and last-minute changes, which I hope make the show not sound like I am reading from a teleprompter.

Later today, probably after my hour of guitar practice, I will become discouraged at how little progress I’ve made on TKC 428. Fantasies of clicking the Publish link before supper will have vanished. Another late night. Worse will be despair that the show’s shape is not yet visible. What’s my Tech Tip? Which news items will I talk about? What do I possibly have to say that will add to anyone’s understanding of the new Amazon Music Unlimited subscription? Why do I only have a thousand listeners after all these years? Who cares if this episode even gets finished? This whole thing is dumb.

Somewhere on the other edge of despair I will feel a tiny bit of traction. Something will catch. I will record a snippet of Norah Jones’s commentary about her music in the new Side-by-Side feature of Amazon Music Unlimited. It will sound smokey and warm in Logic Pro X. This is going to be a great show. I can’t wait to hear it on my iPhone 7 tomorrow morning. From that moment of traction, preparation of the show will mainly be bliss. Audio gremlins can still sneak in to mess up the party, but they always retreat in the face of my relentless belief that This Episode Is Going to Be Fantastic.

The view from the summit of Podcast Mountain is out of this world. All the week’s work is captured in zeros and ones on the Internet, available for listening anywhere in the world. I have said what I want to say as well as I can say it. I have connected with an intriguing guest in the intimate dance that occurs when you are talking with someone you don’t know well and you both know the red light of a recording device is on. I have learned a few new things about technology and books. I can see forever.

I am sixty-six years old, retired, in great health. I intend to climb Podcast Mountain every week for as many years as I am granted. If you’d like to join me, you can Google “Kindle Chronicles” on your computer or subscribe for free on your phone at the iTunes store or Google Play.

Time to lace up my boots and get going. See you on up the trail!

I want to write 500 words daily, so I’m starting with 50. I love Leo Babauta’s six-week habit-formation plan. It’s why I now begin my day with 15 minutes of sitting meditation, eat vegetables at lunch, and practice my guitar for an hour each afternoon. Habit trumps discipline every time.

(Cross post at The Kindle Chronicles)