William Henry Harrison, the ninth U.S. President, gave a killer speech at his inauguration. It was freezing rain, but Harrison spoke for two hours without a coat or hat. He developed pneumonia and died thirty-one days later, registering the longest speech and shortest time in...
Stage actors face an ironic challenge. They spend almost a month learning their lines, but once the show opens, they have to make eight performances a week sound fresh and spontaneous. Coming across as rote, memorized or pro forma is death on stage. It is...
Bonnie Raitt is an American Treasure. She taught herself to sing and play the guitar, specializing in gritty blues and American roots music. Raitt recently won two Grammys, for Song of the Year and Best American Roots Song, beating Adele, Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Harry...
While skiing on Santa Fe peak with friends, David was describing his favorite run. He said “Get off the quad, hop on chair seven, and take Sunset to Alpine.” It would have been inefficient for David to draw a detailed map without words. Homo Sapiens developed...
Last Saturday, Patrick Mahomes, quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, suffered an ankle injury. That game, against the Jacksonville Jaguars decided who would advance to the Championship round. The next game (later today) determines who plays in the Super Bowl, so the stakes were high. And...
Deborah was contacted by Kristin Duerr, Director of Drama and Teacher of Communications/ Speech at Notre Dame Academy. Deborah donated her book, Out Front and conducted an interactive session with Kristin’s class. A mutual admiration society was formed.For an Eloqui Tip on Motivators, we interviewed...
TIP OF THE WEEK: COMIC BLUEPRINTThe 2023 Golden Globe Awards were like watching paint dry. Winners came to the stage, mumbled about how they were “stunned,” “didn’t expect this…” or delivered a list of people they wanted to thank. But Eddie Murphy saved the day...
Dark Messengers rule the airwaves, spreading fear and divisiveness. Fear of darkness taps into our primal, survival instinct. There’s someone out there with evil intent residing deep within our imagination.Visionaries who lift the human spirit are rare. But they exist to do good in the...
For each New Year, we embark on an adventure. A place of rare beauty is Dinosaur Hollow-- (not it’s real name) private lands in Northern New Mexico that are otherworldly. Hoodoos abound and there are no marked trails. You have to find your way as...
An article in the NY Times: How the Spoken Word Shapes the Written Word by Sarah Barr details how journalists and editors read their columns aloud before publication. They extolled this method to determine sentence length, gaps in logic, superfluous adverbs (very, really) and more. For...