"There are roughly 11,000 Starbucks locations in the United States, and about 14,000 McDonald's restaurants. But combined, the two chains don't come close to the number of museums in the U.S., which stands at a whopping 35,000."

You may have recognized that ‘story telling’ is a trending topic in the world today. Whether it is a big corporation telling a story of why they exist in their commercials or on social media; a small nonprofit letting the community know their story on a website, or an individual that is sharing their story in a book, blog or in other ways; hearing the stories of others helps us all to ‘walk in their shoes’. Appreciating others’ background and identifying common ground helps us all to connect and we in rural communities can certainly relate to that. Story telling is rooted as far back as the scriptures where in the Bible stories

The decision to intentionally jump off the treadmill of a career composed of ongoing travel, fast paced, intense deadlines and corporate pressure, was indeed planned. Although with 20/20 hindsight maybe it was not as well planned as it could have been. There were times when it really felt like I had fallen off instead. Five years and having spent countless hours on what I call self-work, a completely different life has been created.

Half Time. You may have heard the phrase, of course associated with ball games mostly. Several years ago, a friend of mine suggested I read a book called Half Time, by Bob Buford, which was not about ball games at all. It was about the concept that in the first half of our lives we are busy being successful... focused on ourselves, working our way up in life, saving money and accumulating stuff.