On The Fly

Podcast  – The Barber Shoppe . . . No man is rich enough to buy back the past.” – Oscar Wilde. With baseball still on hold, that quote certainly rings true, however, vivid memories at unexpected times can flood the present. Driving home from an errand the other night, I happened to turn the car radio to AM 570 and heard this, “Its time for Dodger baseball.” That iconic start to a game on the radio from announcer Vin Scully. “How is this possible,” I thought? There are no baseball games right now. And Vin Scully is retired! That familiar voice on the radio however immediately took me back . . . Cuba, Il., the early 1960s, Main Street Barber Shop. You see, as a young boy, my first memory of Major League Baseball was not a game on television or a visit to a Major League park. The “game” was always background noise, from an old Zenith  AM radio, on a green shelf, in our local barbershop, tuned to 720 WGN Chicago. Monthly, my father would take my brothers and me for our hai...

In this episode – Visions and Ideals . . . If you were to ask me, “When are you most receptive to positive inspiration?” Without a doubt, I would say -  “While cycling.” It’s a joyous experience. You feel the familiar rhythm of your breathing and cadence, and the thrill of effortless speed. Your mind is free to explore new ideas as the wind gently brushes your face. During these experiences, ideas explode into my mind. For me, it’s the perfect time to listen to audio segments that remind me of how important it is to go back and be inspired, once again, by powerful ideas that have shaped my dreams. A superb example of this transcendent experience is taken from the book, As a Man Thinketh , published in 1903, by James Allen. It's entitled Visions and Ideals. And it's one of the most beautiful segments I've ever heard.  It goes like this, “The dreamers are the saviors of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins an...

In this episode - Your Mind . . .   For a moment, picture your mind as a blank slate waiting to be coded. Much like a computer, your mind accepts programming at birth without any instructions from you. In computer language, this initial programming is defined as firmware , “Permanent software programmed into a read-only memory.” That brings up two questions;  Is it possible to re-write the firmware that is your operating system?  Is your firmware open source code or a closed system? What a captivating concept! Today the social and psychological sciences tend to take the view that human beings are 'formed' socially and psychologically by nature as well as by nurture. And there are inherited traits that society can build on and modify. Early in the seventeenth century, it was statesman-philosopher Francis Bacon who, first established the claims of Empiricism - the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience. John Locke in his  E...