Growing Bolder Community

This is another speech I did for Toastmasters, and so many women could relate to it there were nodding heads everywhere. Men were just confused! As it's winter here in Australia, this performance is on again several mornings a week! DANCE OF THE PANTY HOSE I have some news for you. Do you know why women who wear tights or panty hose never need to go to the gym? That’s because...

Writing essays and posting them on line was certainly a stretch for me when I started blogging right before New Years in 2007, but never in a million years could I have predicted that I'd be reading them in front of an audience in Chicago. But welcome to Essay Fiesta, which is a monthly reading series of extraordinary talent and energy. Chicago's my home town, and it finally gives me a reason to...

I took a short side-trip into the past this weekend, back to the area of central Wisconsin where I spent a couple of years as a teenager. The journey started with a dark blue satin dress and rhinestones and the annual Viennese Ball at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, and ended up the next day revisiting what used to be the farm where we lived after moving from Chicago. An anchor point was...

People often ask if I ever met Jimmy Buffett when they learn that I'm from Key West. Most of them are surprised by my answer. Course I did. Everyone did. The friendly, easygoing persona he projects on stage is exactly who he is. The first time I remember being aware of him was when I was about 14 or 15 and my new best friend was a girl named Tammy...Cassom, Casson, Kason...something like that....

Who hasn’t sat down on New Year’s Day and come up with changes—such as losing weight and exercising more—they’d like to make? Our good intentions, though, can pass as quickly as the weeks on the calendar. Before we know it, we’re facing yet another New Year with the same old list. As Oscar Wilde cynically points out, “Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where...