Listen to the podcast here. Meet my friend Heather Zinger. Artist, entrepreneur, healer and joy maker. Heather is the most intrinsically artistic person I know because she pursues her path from a total commitment to artistic integrity. A lot of it I don’t particularly “get,” but I love that she’s so authentic and real. And I think you’ll enjoy that, too. I’ve known Heather since she made her way to Fargo in 2012. I have learned so much from her because she practices art in very public ways and treats the public as a canvas for art-making. Heather is absolutely instrumental for so much of what I am pursuing these…
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Huh, that’s weird.
“We have defined weird as a tool to force people toward the center…but the center is boring. When you care, you care by going away from the center.” ~Seth Godin I completed Seth Godin’s AltMBA earlier this year, and it was an incredibly important four-week sprinting marathon of work, learning and connecting. Because I took that class, I am now part of this massive, dynamic, kind of overwhelming and far-reaching online community. And while I am still in the exploratory phase of learning about the site, I really love the opportunities I have already taken advantage of and the people I am starting to feel a real connection to because…
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Stay present; stay alert
Do we really want to return to all of that? Are we, as highly privileged Americans, really so blind and numb to all that was wrong with before that we will, like lemmings on a cliff, jump right back into what is surely the continuing death of our individual and collective humanity not to mention an enormous amount of the natural world?
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e2 podcast: Tom Schwans
Listen to the podcast here. World, please meet my longtime friend, Tom Schwans. Tom and I went to college for two years together (because he’s two years younger than I am. Isn’t that amazing how math works?) and had really fallen completely out of touch for years and years. Until I had a super fabulous theatre dream about him and our mutual friend Joel Liestman four years ago. It was so vivid, and I remembered it so clearly, that I sent Tom a Facebook message to please give me his phone number so I could recount the dream to him. Thank goodness for social media! On a long drive to…
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I’m launching my new podcast e2 on Saturday!
It’s time to start something new. I mean, surely all this social distancing (if we are privileged and get to stay at/work from home, which I am) is the perfect time to get a little uncomfortable. That is my word for 2020 after all. I’m sending out my first podcast of this new stage, henceforth known as e2, Saturday afternoon. I have a lot to learn, so I hope you’ll tune in, send thoughts/feedback/criticism (remember, I have a theatre degree, so I know how to take criticism!) and let me know if you have a story you would like to tell that is loosely based around any/all of these themes:…
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There is a season
This story originally appeared in the March April 2020 issue of Inspired Home magazine. April is in my mistress’ face, And July in her eyes hath place; Within her bosom is September, But in her heart a cold December. In high school, I sang in an ensemble called the Renaissance Singers. I woke up recently singing the alto line of this beautiful English madrigal by Thomas Morley, completely out of the blue. It’s incredible how powerful our memory for music is. I haven’t actively sung this song in 30 years, but I recalled almost the entirety of my part all these years later. But then I started thinking about the lines of this…
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Pursuing passion and finding grace in the midst of a global pandemic (podcast & zoom check in)
One of the things I’m working on now that I have some extra time is really trying to be strategic about where I want extraordinaryextraordinary to go next. I’m reading books, listening to podcasts, making podcasts (still trying to get a handle on that medium, to be honest. Ugh, technology! ) and thinking about what value I can provide. To that end, I invite you to consider these seven questions: 1. What’s causing you stress right now?2. How are you managing it?3. What could you do to be managing it better? Where can you cut yourself some slack? Where can you offer yourself some grace? If you had a magic…
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Dr Marry, by any other name, would be as sweet…
Over the course of writing this blog, a number of people have queried as to why I refer to my beloved spouse as Dr Marry. Let the querying be put to rest. Quite simply, I call him Dr Marry in honor of Jane Austen. I present these examples of what I speak: “Mr Bennet, Mr Bennet, good news! Netherfield Park is let at last!” Mrs Bennet, Pride and Prejudice “Anne found an unexpected interest here. She felt its application to herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her, and at the same moment that her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table, Captain Wentworth’s pen ceased to move,…
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Welcome to what is next
We’ll start from failure, but that’s not where we’ll spend much time, because that’s not the interesting part of the story. It’s the pivot, the path forged from that failure that has me intrigued, and I think will intrigue a vast audience. It’s the learning, the joy, the discoveries that come from the failure that is where we’ll ultimately spend the majority of our time.
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Two Voices of Hope: Counting Our Blessings, an Epilogue (9c podcast)
In this, our final podcast and post of this journey, we wrap up this nine-week multi-media experience about Dr Marry’s fall into alcoholism and our shared path back to sobriety. But mostly, this podcast is about gratitude. Gratitude for the doctors, nurses and staff of Sanford; the insurance worker at Sanford who eased my mind and the woman on the phone from MN Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The Prairie St John’s staff and residents. Former students, friends and strangers who wrote to lift us up, to share their own journey, to say thank you. Grateful for the friends and colleagues who helped us conceive of this format. Grateful to…