by Bruce McIntyre | Dec 1, 2014 | Caregiving
When I went out to chop wood while waiting for the internet to be resurrected, my mind eased over into another category – a relative of dropping, but deeper and wider: Letting go. As in “turning loose on purpose.” Big difference. For example: Dropping a dish is fast...
by Bruce McIntyre | Nov 21, 2014 | Caregiving
The request took me by surprise. “Bruce, we have a gentleman here who needs to get to a sober house. He says he can’t find it,” our receptionist explained. Okay. So, I went out expecting to find a jittery drunk. I shook his hand and looked him over, but he was not...
by Bruce McIntyre | Nov 14, 2014 | Caregiving
I had a lovely conversation with a funeral director in West Tennessee about unusual funeral songs. As we rode along in the hearse across the farmland near Bells and Alamo after a graveside service, he told me this story. He was in charge of the music for the funeral...
by Bruce McIntyre | Nov 8, 2014 | Serendipity
The summer before my senior year in college, I participated in a studies program in Ibaraki, Japan. One member of our group proved to be especially entertaining. He had mapped out our entire trip, arranging the connections between airports, subways, and train...
by Bruce McIntyre | Oct 31, 2014 | Caregiving, Uncategorized
On October 24, 1901, a 63-year old school teacher named Annie Edson Taylor garnered some fleeting attention. On this day, she became the first person to take the plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel. After her husband died in the Civil War, she traveled all over the...
by Bruce McIntyre | Oct 24, 2014 | Spiritual Stuff, Uncategorized
The blue of this water defies description. Accented by the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Lake Tahoe demands attention. Now I see what all the fuss is about. Not long ago, my wife and I had the chance to slip out to Lake Tahoe while in Reno to speak at a...
by Bruce McIntyre | Oct 17, 2014 | Serendipity, Uncategorized
Have you heard of the notion of emotionally intelligent signage? The idea is that a sign should be more than a rule. Rather, the sign ought to convey its highest purpose, while appealing to our better selves, often with humor. Some examples: -Reserved for...
by Bruce McIntyre | Oct 10, 2014 | Serendipity
New experience. The doorbell rings. As I open the door, I witness a semi truck easing down the street and a guy in our yard asking if I’d like to buy some North Carolina furniture. Door to door furniture sales? Really? For a second, the thought of a new bedroom...
by Bruce McIntyre | Oct 3, 2014 | Resilience
Needing to get out of the city, I landed in a northern Oklahoma cemetery. Yes, I’ve been cemetery walking again. Come to find out, I’m not alone. Recently, I sat with a table full of folks from Northern California and Nevada who all admitted to cemetery walking...
by Bruce McIntyre | Sep 25, 2014 | Serendipity
For 700 years, they’ve been holding hands. According to news reports last week, “Archaeologists in England digging at a 14th century burial site made an unexpected discovery: A couple buried together holding hands had remained that way all this time.” Further...
