The past few days have seen many articles on the Philadelphia police arresting two black men in Starbucks. Let’s look at the New York Times article, Starbucks Arrests, Outrageous to Some, Are Everyday Life for Others, for example. It begins PHILADELPHIA — The video of the police arresting two black men in a Starbucks, viewed more than 10 million times online, quickly prompted a full-blown crisis: accusations of racism, protests both in[…] Keep reading →

When I was a kid, my mom and stepfather switched from salted butter to unsalted. I remember the unsalted tasted bland, like nothing. I couldn’t stand it. Some time later—maybe weeks or months, I don’t remember—I tasted salted butter again for the first time. It tasted terrible! It was way too salty. Of course, the amount of salt in the butter didn’t change. I did. My taste buds had adjusted[…] Keep reading →

“It was inevitable. The scent of bitter almonds always reminded Dr. Juvenal Urbino of the fate of unrequited love.” Have you paid attention to the opening lines of Love in the Time of Cholera, the novel by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez? I hadn’t for decades and missed richness, complexity, and depth, paralleling a richness, complexity, and depth I missed in nature, my relationships with others, and my relationship with[…] Keep reading →

Lies We Tell Ourselves When We Pollute We all want clean air, water, and land, yet pollute more than necessary. Leaders act with responsibility, accountability, and self-awareness. Our leadership vacuum on the environment I hook my audiences easily in my workshops on my podcast, Leadership and the Environment, by saying, Raise your hand if you like pollution, rising sea levels, and more plastic in the ocean than fish. No hands ever go up. I continue, Now raise your[…] Keep reading →

The more I cook for myself, the more I appreciate nuance, subtlety, complexity, variety, and so forth in food, as well as the expression of the person who prepared the food. Also, the more I see others as stuck in the yummy phase, which describes the United States population increasingly in number and increasingly in areas beyond food. What’s the yummy phase? The urban dictionary defines it effectively: The period[…] Keep reading →

I grew up learning to avoid eating as much as I could or wanted. That is, I learned to try to stop eating before I was full. Eating became an exercise in self-restraint. It was hard. I don’t think I picked up this practice from my parents. I think it came from society. I think I learned to view food as unhealthy, all the more so the better it tasted.[…] Keep reading →

As much as I learned at West Point, the food wasn’t great. I don’t like food that doesn’t taste good, especially when it costs a lot, like at a hotel, so I don’t. The hotel happened to have a big bowl of apples in the lobby, so I ended up eating a couple in the morning for breakfast, then a couple more throughout the day to make up for avoiding[…] Keep reading →