Every marketing guru on the planet (including me) recommends authors develop active blogs with killer content to expand their audiences and push book sales. Since the dawn of the Internet, the quandary has always been deciding what to write about. For those of us with multiple projects in the pipeline, choosing a topic is definitely easier said than done. I have scores of magazine articles in circulation on topics ranging from faith and family to business, health and women’s issues. My specialty has always been celebrity profiles. I have eight books on the market, do a fair amount of speaking, and have decades of business of experience. Clearly, I wouldn’t have time […]
Read more...To Everything There is a Season
“Every blade in the field – Every leaf in the forest – lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.“ ~ Henry David Thoreau Autumn is my favorite season. The cool, crisp air of September is a welcome respite from the sweltering dog days of summer. The woods surrounding our lakeside home pop in stunning crimson, gold, and bronze and I stand in awe of God’s masterpiece. How did He conceive something so majestic? He must have been very cheerful that day. This is a photo of my favorite tree on our property. Although we live amid a canopy of magnificent sugar maples, it’s […]
Read more...The Wonder of God’s Creation
In 2005, I wrote and released two books in my “How Do You Know He’s Real” series. They both feature incredible testimonies by celebrities from the worlds of sports and entertainment. Of course, personal experience is the best way to recognize God’s hand, but we also see His divinity in nature. For a moment, picture yourself walking in a forest of pine trees in the north woods. Do you see the cardinals and the blue jays, the eagles and the hawks? Do you see the little chipmunks, rabbits, and squirrels scampering around on the ground? How about the majestic blue sky filled with billowy clouds and rays of sunshine. Then […]
Read more...A Father’s Legacy
My 80-year-old father passed away on November 22nd from aspiration pneumonia due to Alzheimer’s disease. I gave a eulogy at his memorial service as a final tribute to an incredible man. The following are excerpts from my remarks. Over the past few days, my mom, my siblings and I have been sharing special memories of Dad. Walter “Bud” Hammond was a man of integrity and character who loved us all unconditionally. I treasure the faint aroma reminiscent of his pipe tobacco and the sight of his goofy hats, long pants, and sweatshirts as he mowed the lawn. He had a wonderful sense of humor; he even had his own language. […]
Read more...California Road Trip: “No Embarcadero!”
(This is Part 5 of our California Road Trip Blog. My daughter and I are taking turns posting, this time she has the honors) – photos and text by Kaia Calhoun – It seems against the rules to come all the way to San Francisco and not see the Golden Gate Bridge. We were scheduled to leave for Los Angeles the next day and I hadn’t seen a spec of downtown San Francisco. So, mom go to work on getting us our rental car sooner so we could drive into the city for the afternoon. We spent the morning at my second cousin, Jensen’s, swim meet and making phone calls. […]
Read more...California Road Trip – “Crazy Busy”
– photos by Kaia Calhoun For much of our recent vacation, my daughter and I stayed with my niece Dena and her wonderful family. Their beautiful home is situated amidst the heavily wooded, narrow twisting lanes of a Bay Area paradise. What a great place to grow up; no mosquitoes or blizzards there! Dena’s life as a mother is crazy busy. From dawn until dusk she is running her two kids, Jensen (7) and Boden (4), to one activity or another—swimming, tennis, ballet, play dates, or day camp to name a few—yet she still manages to make nutritious home-cooked meals and teach Pilates. The whole business was a little overwhelming […]
Read more...California Road Trip – “High Horses”
– Photos by Kaia Calhoun Philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.” A sucker for longevity, I have always taken his advice to heart. Of course, the problem with always playing it safe is that life can become a little predictable. On this vacation I vowed to step outside my comfort zone and make some extra-special memories. So rather than doing a conventional Sonoma County wine tasting and bouncing from winery to winery tasting different vintages, Kaia and I experienced a vineyard in a […]
Read more...California – Day 2 (July 20)
California – Day 2 (July 20) July 22, 2011 by Kaia Calhoun So it must be confusing to be reading these blogs for yesterday a day later, and I am feeling a lack of direction for this particular piece, but here it goes. And just so we understand each other, it’s hard to post on the day without staying up super late to write on the day that just happen. So, here we are. Today (meaning yesterday) mom and I woke up nice and early to start our adventures in Northern California. I decided to run. Up a hill. Because they are unavoidable. By the time I reached my halfway point […]
Read more...California – Day 1 (July 19)
My daughter Kaia and I are taking a vacation in California to celebrate her graduation from college. For the next week or so we will be taking turns blogging about our adventures. She is a professional photographer, so the shots you are going to see will be incredible! The first post was written by her… enjoy! July 21, 2011 by Kaia Calhoun Yesterday I woke up to the wet blanket of humidity. It made a habit of looming on top of Minnesota for a few days already, but nothing like yesterday. By the end of the day I heard that the temperature peaked at 95 degrees, but with the humidity […]
Read more...The Beauty of Brownies
There is no doubt in my mind that God was having a pretty good day when He invented chocolate. Technically speaking, human beings can live on manna, but in His infinite wisdom, the Creator must have mused, “Man (and woman) cannot live by bread alone, so how about a little chocolate to mix things up?” Okay, perhaps those weren’t His exact words, but I’m sure that was the basic idea. It’s hard to conceive that something as delectable as chocolate could originate from the bitter cacao seed. It’s even more difficult to comprehend that one day somebody looked at that seed and thought it would be a good idea to […]
Read more...