a daily blog on well-being and how to feel better by Mark Barger Elliott…

Last night we happened upon an amazing bakery that offered desserts you selected from a magnificent display that were made to order in the kitchen. The prices were perhaps three times what you would pay in a normal bakery. As we marveled at the skill of the pastry chef, a server with a big smile…

I was talking with a colleague yesterday about the kinds of questions people ask and realized (for the first time) the difference between asking someone, “how are you doing,” compared to, “how are you feeling?”  The first question invites us (consciously or unconsciously) to reflect on tasks we are engaged in (the things we are…

“I can remember having a conversation with Johnny Cash,” shared producer Rick Rubin, “and telling him we were going to make the best album he’d ever made. He looked at me like I was insane. He felt like he hadn’t made a good album in 25 years. At the time he was playing dinner theaters…

Danny Meyer founded the restaurants Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and the chain Shake Shack. He is known in the restaurant industry for his best-selling book Setting the Table which describes his intentional approach to hospitality. One of the most fascinating points he makes is regarding prepositions. He writes, “Hospitality is present when something happens…

Seamus Heaney is considered one of the most significant poets of the 20th century. In his late 40s, after Selected Poems, 1966-1987, was published, his writing took a shift in tone and content. For example, Heaney began to use words such as “spirit.” A few years later he published a book of poems called The Spirit Level. The…

I had put on consignment in an upscale used guitar shop a 1960’s vintage electric guitar that I no longer played. After six months, it hadn’t sold so I went to pick it up yesterday.  I asked the manager what vintage guitars were selling these days, and she said very rare high-end guitars and those…