Gambling Addict Tim Donaghy Talks Addictions, Sports & Mistakes

Former Professional basketball referee from the National Basketball Association (NBA) Tim Donaghy talked to the crowd at Idea Festival who showed up in Kentucky to hear lessons learned and insights from some of the country's top thinkers and leaders, authors, visionaries and politicians.

He obviously focused on his addiction to gambling and how his decisions led to his conviction and prison sentence for game betting. This addiction not only destroyed his career, but nearly destroyed him and those closest to him.

Many of you know the story. Donaghy resigned from the league in July 2007 before reports of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for allegations that he bet on games that he officiated during his last two seasons and that he made calls affecting the point spread in those games.

He shared he started gambling, and how it moved from dabbling to "over his head." Donaghy says, “three hours on game night were intoxicating and anything.” It was about the thrill and the bet for him, something he looked forward to more than anything else in his life.

Although he started gambling at casinos, it soon moved to sports gambling. He had a good idea of who would win because of his knowledge of the relationship between referees, owners and players among others.  When asked by someone, he publicly told us that he passed information on for about 100 games over a three year period.

“The down time between NDA games were long and boring, he says, “My answer was gambling.” Donaghy started out with card games and then it moved into something bigger than himself. Even though he knew he was jeopardizing his career but he couldn’t stop because the high was too high.

As he was sitting in a room waiting for his lawyers, he recalls seeing a white board with a list of the estimated sentence times for money laundering, racketeering and gambling. A frightening moment, he says. He was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in 2008. There, he was beaten up and had his head shaven in order to fit in with the gang who was protecting him at the time. (it was either that or a slow needle process to get a tattoo since there were clearly no tattoo guns in prison).

Since he got out of prison in 2009, he wrote a book and is traveling around the country sharing his story. His major goal of speaking is to get people to think about their decisions and how to avoid crossing the line where there’s potentially no return.

As a result of the betting scandal, Stern revised the guidelines on the behavior of NBA referees during the Board of Governors' meeting in 2007. Despite the labor agreement for referees, which restricted them from participating in almost all forms of gambling, it was revealed that about half of the NBA's officials had made bets in casinos, albeit not with sportsbooks. In addition, all referees had admitted to engaging in some form of gambling.

As a result, there were several other referee-related rule changes made: the announcement of referees of a game was moved from 90 minutes before tip-off to the morning of the game, to reduce the value of the information to gamblers; referees received more in-season training and counseling on gambling; more thorough background checks were carried out; the league declared its intention to analyze the statistical relationship between NBA games and referees' gambling patterns for those games; and the interactions between referees and NBA teams were made easier and more formal.

While Donaghy agrees that some of the changes that the NBA have been positive, he doesn’t think they’ve done as much as they could.

He's done a lot of therapy since he got out of prison and says he’s been gambling-free for four years. “I won’t place another bet again,” he says. “When you have four daughters, it’s enough to ensure you never gamble again.”

When a student asked him a question about his goals moving forward, he responded that it was largely to educate people and to encourage others to think about their decisions and how an addiction can not only end your career and land you in prison but could lose your loved ones as well.

 

The History of Twitter and All Its Magic Moments

An interesting history of where Twitter started and all of it's magic moments leading up to today.

Found on Mashable.

Wes Moore: The Journey of a Generation & How to Transform Our Youth

Wes Moore is a youth advo­cate, Army com­bat vet­eran, promis­ing busi­ness leader, most known for his book entitled The Other Wes Moore and spearheading the Amer­i­can strate­gic sup­port plan for the Afghan Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Pro­gram that unites for­mer insur­gents with the new Afghan Gov­ern­ment.

He is rec­og­nized as an author­ity on the rise and ram­i­fi­ca­tions of rad­i­cal Islamism in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. When he was a White House Fel­low from 2006–2007, he served as a Spe­cial Assis­tant to Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleezza Rice.  In other words, a man who is doing something big, bold and electric with his life and my list of accolades has barely touched the surface.

Wes is pas­sion­ate about sup­port­ing U.S. vet­er­ans and exam­in­ing the roles edu­ca­tion, men­tor­ing and pub­lic ser­vice play in the lives of Amer­i­can youth. This passion came from his own childhood, where he didn't believe he would have made it if it weren't for his mother believing in him and making sacrifices so he could be where he is today.

He had people around him willing to say that this kid isn’t perfect and that he was worth fighting for. He emphasized this message in a recent talk I heard him give at the Idea Festival: Kids need to know that they're worth fighting for and someone is there standing by them to prove it.

Wes shared his journey and what led to him writing the book: The Other Wes Moore. The history and how it plays out: two kids with the same name, liv­ing in the same city. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, dec­o­rated com­bat vet­eran, White House Fel­low, and busi­ness leader. The other is serv­ing a life sentence in prison for felony mur­der, a story of two boys and the jour­ney of a generation.

Here's how the story came to light:

In Decem­ber 2000, the Bal­ti­more Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local stu­dent who had just received a Rhodes Schol­ar­ship. The same paper also ran a series of arti­cles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police offi­cer in a spec­tac­u­larly botched armed rob­bery. The police were still hunt­ing for two of the sus­pects who had gone on the lam, a pair of broth­ers. One was named Wes Moore.

Wes just couldn’t shake off the unset­tling coin­ci­dence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same news­pa­per. After fol­low­ing the story of the rob­bery, the man­hunt, and the trial to its con­clu­sion, he wrote a let­ter to the other Wes, now a con­victed mur­derer serv­ing a life sen­tence with­out the pos­si­bil­ity of parole. His let­ter ten­ta­tively asked the ques­tions that had been haunt­ing him: Who are you? How did this happen?

That let­ter led to a cor­re­spon­dence and rela­tion­ship that has lasted for sev­eral years. Over dozens of let­ters and prison vis­its, Wes dis­cov­ered that the other Wes had a life not unlike his own: Both had grown up in sim­i­lar neigh­bor­hoods and had dif­fi­cult child­hoods, both were father­less; they’d hung out on sim­i­lar cor­ners with sim­i­lar crews, and both had run into trou­ble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across sim­i­lar moments of deci­sion, yet their choices and the peo­ple in their lives would lead them to aston­ish­ingly dif­fer­ent destinies.

If your skin isn't tingling after reading that, then re-read it a bit more slowly and pause after each paragraph.

He was in Kentucky not only to inspired the Idea Festival attendees, but everyone he came into contact with. Moore references a moving memory he had while he was in the army. A sergeant left parting words with his crew, which was: when it’s time for you to leave this planet, make sure that it mattered that you were ever here. What did you do to make humanity better and how did you used your time.

Hear hear Moore's sergeant who is clearly no longer with us, but his words live on.  

What matters in life he asked the crowd? "Education, parenting and service matters," he responded before anyone else. "BUT," he adds, "expectations matter even more. We're products not of our environments but of our expectations." If Tony Robbins and Wes Moore haven't met, they should since they're in the same camp of thinking and something I subscribe to whole heartedly as well. As Tony so often says, "change your expectations, change your life."

Wes Moore was an inspiration and his words not only resonate but sit me days later as I'm sure they will years later. All it takes for people to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Isn't that the truth?

This is also the truth: don’t let where I am ever fool you where I’ve been AND don’t let wherever I am now fool you about where I’m going.

I really love this. As long as our thoughts and our actions can be aligned with the above statement, there's no telling what we can achieve.  

I often think back to my own childhood and who inspired me most. Sure, I had family members and teachers make a huge difference like we all did, but so often, I hear something someone told me I barely knew -- in a hallway, on a sidewalk, on a mountain, in an elevator, on a bus -- in so many random places, that have changed the way I think about the world and had an impact on my decision making along the way.

Believing in kids and taking the time to be present with who comes into your path along the way can change lives. As long as kids know someone is willing to fight for where they’re willing to go and stand by them in the process, they have a chance to thrive. It could be the difference between success or death.

Wes adds insight that my grandfather also shared with me growing up. "Take the 5 second pause on all decisions. Whenever we make flash quick decisions, that’s when we get into trouble." I'd modify that timeframe to 5 minute pause, but you get the idea. This obviously doesn't just apply to kids.

Ask yourself: what’s the best case scenario about what I’m about to do and what is the worst case scenario about what I’m about to do? Take the pause and understand that there are people fighting for you and making sacrificing for you and that can change the entire direction of where you’re going.

He said he probably wouldn’t have written the book if it wasn’t for the other Wes. "My story isn’t interesting unless you understand my story in context," he says in response to the question. On the surface, they can look at these two people’s lives and what they have in common except for a name.

A split decision can either close or open doors and many times we don’t even realize how thin that line can be. "That’s why," says Wes, "its important to add a bit of compassion to how we look at the world."

That brings up the question of how do we all think about second chances? There’s not one person in the world who hasn’t needed a second chance in our lives, is there? And, it's important to remember that there’s a very thin line between second chances and last chances.

Aneesh Chopra: Blue Buttoning Our Own Data Will Fuel Innovation & Empower Americans

If you haven't heard of the name before, Aneesh Chopra is the United States Chief Technology Officer, where he serves as an Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Technology within the Office of Science & Technology Policy. Whooah Nelly, that's a mouthful of a title.

In other words, he works to advance the President’s technology agenda by fostering new ideas and encouraging government-wide coordination to help the country meet its goals from job creation, to reducing health care costs, to protecting the homeland.   

I had a chance to listen to him speak at the Idea Festival recently, where his talk focused on the President's mission and goals, with a central core theme to make it happen: working from the bottom up, not the top down and opening up data so others can create and innovate with it, and we, as a nation, can thrive.

Here's what they're currently focused on within the above framework:

• Putting more people back to work
• Boosting access to capital for high growth companies
• Turning job seekers to job creators
• Unleashing the mobile broadband revolution
• Modernizing 35,000 schools  
• Making government services transparent to job creators
• Open Government aka the Start Up America initiative
• Patent reform
• Catalyze breakthroughs

Technology was a big part of his message as he echoes Obama's pitch, "for our families and our businesses, high speed wireless service and mobile is the next train station, it’s the next off-ramp..it’s how we’ll spark innovation, new investment, new jobs." He also referenced Silicon Valley start-ups on more than one occasion, including Instagram and Crowdflower.

He sees cloud computing and mobility unlocking major potential and accelerating productivity in key sectors.

Aneesh says that there's an aministration commitment to unleash market opportunities by framing current or proposed policies to inspired entrepreneurs and gaining valuable policy feedback for iteration with an emphasis on healthcare, education and energy.

Where is the puck heading?

"We need breakthroughs," he says. "The only way is to tap into new hubs outside Silicon Valley." Hear hear Aneesh.

He also talked about education dominance, pushing software that adapts to how students learn, inspiration for the proposed ARPA-ED. They want to open up the data to teachers and make it accessible to them and their students, regardless of where they are in the country.

Another challenge they face he throws the audience's way is the clean energy revolution. They're hoping that ARPA-E investments and NIST standards activities will spur creativity.

He cites the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as an example, America's center for weather data. The weather industry is worth about $2 billion he reminds and "they're fueled because of open government data." 

Aneesh adds, "we can also encourage market transparency." Healthcare.gov is a comprehensive catalog of insurance options, an effort to create more transparency than ever before. You’ll be able to find pricing data, how often an insurance company charges a premium, and how often were people rejected (denied coverage for whatever reason).

He also mentioned “Blue Button”, a public/private initiative that scales, where veterans can download their personal health information from their My HealtheVet account. My HealtheVet users who receive VA health care services can also refill their prescriptions and view their appointments, allergies, and laboratory results online.

Why not transfer that kind of tool to other areas and industries he says, such as education. "Imagine if every student could get a downloadable document of his/her assessment, a personalized platform that translates from student performance to market reality. We need personalized platforms for each of our children that can translate into something meaningful. This is the kind of thing that can fuel products and services. Find where the data sits and find out a way to liberate that data.”

He adds, "We're liberating government data & if people can become billionaires because of it, God Bless." The audience laughs. 

He continued to push the open government throughout his talk including in the Q&A at the end, which was incredibly well received. (note: while the audience had visitors from the west coast, DC, the north, NYC and other places, there was a large number of locals - aka the midwest meets the south...in other words, family values and education are high priorities).

Certainly blue buttoning our own data is going to fuel innovation and empower individuals. Isn't it where we have to go? If we don't, we become victims rather than creators of our own lives and destinies in more ways than one.

 

Installation Artist Shih Chieh Huang Transforms You With Luminosity Exhibit

I met installation artist Shih Chieh Huang in Louisville on the steps of the Kentucky Performing Arts Center earlier this month, who transforms spaces with everyday objects. In this case, they were setting up an almost sheer white hollow tube that floated in and around the steps of the center.

His most recent project “EX-I-09″ currently on show at the Beall Center for Art + Technology focuses on exploring the unusual evolutionary adaptations undertaken by creatures that reside in inhospitable conditions.

Huang creates analogous ecosystems made from common, everyday objects. He says, "I source my wholly synthetic materials from the mundane objects that comprise our modern existence: household appliances, zip ties, water tubes, lights, computer parts, motorized toys and the like. The objects are dissected and disassembled as needed and reconstructed into experimental primitive organisms that reside on the fringes of evolutionary transformation: computer cooling fans are repurposed for locomotion. Tupperware serves as a skeletal framework; guitar tuner rewired to detect sound; and automatic night lights become a sensory input.”

If that's not using creativity in a transformative way, I don't know what is...no surprise that artwithoutwalls embraced his work, a non-profit, non-collecting art organization that presents ambitious, unconventional projects in a wide range of media and locations with the goal of bringing "new art" to "new audiences."

Thanks to an intro by artwithoutwalls Director Alice Gray Stites and a fabulous woman I've known for awhile, Ruby Lerner, President of Creative Capital, I not only learned about his work, but was fortunate to attend an opening of his latest at Land of Tomorrow Gallery in Louisville Kentucky. All of this was done in and around the annual Idea Festival, where Huang also presented on stage with other Creative Capital artists.

Co-organized by LOT and Artwithoutwalls, in collaboration with the University of Kentucky's Department of Art, Luminosity (name of the exhibit) features Huang's signature choreographed, kinetic works, as well as videos documenting his practice and sources, particularly his study of bioluminescent organisms.

The space is dark as you walk in, but his brightly lit objects filled with a brilliant spectrum of colors fade in and out in concert with the buzz of electronics. Imagine a purple and pink tinted ocean that you're swimming through with an array of objects buzzing about you (in this case, hanging from the ceiling), that change colors and make noises, all made from everyday objects found in convenience stores and controlled by electronic circuitry which Huang assembles.

His work hasn't gone unnoticed around the globe. Huang's work has exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei; the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai; the University of California-San Diego Price Center; the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid and Burgos, Spain; and the New Museum and Queens Museum in New York. 

Below is a video so you can get a better idea of the experience the artist wants you to have.

AlwaysOn GoingGreen: How Do We Get The Rest of The Country Behind Greentech?

The AlwaysOn GoingGreen event is in San Francisco this week, kicking things off with the VC Funding Outlook for The Global Greentech Marketplace. KPMG Director Craig Lobdell leads a panel that includes:

•  Stephen Eichenlaub, Managing Director, Intel Capital
•  Forest Baskett, General Partner, NEA
•  Anup Jacob, Partner, Virgin Green Fund
•  Anand Kamannavar, Venture Capital Associate Investment Manager, Applied Ventures

Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson does a keynote on Disruptive Innovation in Cleantech. They also had a Greentech CEO Showcase session which included:  
 
•  Brad Kayton, CEO, ZOME
•  William Whittenberger, CEO, Catacel Corporation
•  CK Singla, CEO, Net4site
•  Dan Wallis, CEO, De Villiers Walton
•  Rory Faber, CEO, Strammit Strawboard

Peter Graf, Chief Sustainability Officer at SAP AG led a session on Improving profits through sustainability and Venrock Partner Ray Rothrock led a panel on how do we get the rest of the country behind Greentech with the following panelists:

•  Carrie Armel, Research Associate , Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency, Stanford University
•  Gene Wang, People Power, CEO
•  Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar, Google

Nat Goldhaber, Claremont Creek Ventures Managing Director talked about China and discussed whether it would clean our "clock in cleantech."

Ed Lambert, SVP and Silicon Valley Region Market Manager of Bridge Bank Ed Lambert led a session on water technology start-ups, which included the following thinkers in this area:

•  Bogdan Serban, CEO, Epuramat
•  David Stanton, CEO, APTwater
•  Peter Frykman, Founder & CEO, Driptech
•  Peter Yolles, CEO, WaterSmart Software

Check out the full GoingGreen Silicon Valley program here.

Parag Khanna on How to Run the World by Turning it on its Head (From the Bottom Up)

In his Idea Festival talk, Parag Khanna addressed the shifts we're seeing around the world. He thinks what is happening in the Arab world is the beginning of what we're going to see elsewhere.

Almost all Arab countries are post colonial countries. He says, "most of the 200 countries in the world look a lot like the Arab countries falling apart in the last six months."

And, asserts Khanna, “we’re in for a decade of this at least and watch this unfold for a very long time. At least 80 or 90 countries are experiencing the same kind of decay that a lot of the Arab countries are today. Expect to see a lot more falling regimes.”

We have to not just focus on economic and political issues in a silo. Things are complex so rather than look at how the UN is defining global progress, look at how private enterprise can assist as well. For example, what happens at the Clinton Global Initiative is very different than what happens in the UN, since it is much more representative and accurate of who has the real power.

It includes CEOs, entrepreneurs as well as politicians. This translates into offers from companies who can help facilitate change at a global level. For example, a mining company pledged to support a workforce in a South American country. We should be looking at ways to improve the ways we can measure real change in people’s lives.

The power has shifted when you have cities and mayors who are key in climate change decisions, the fact that that the Gates Foundation commits as much money as most governments do and that Walmart has more gas emissions coming out of their buildings than the country of Ireland.

Diplomacy is the glue at which we urn the world – it’s the relationships, the alliances, the solutions. It's the most important thing that we do and don't even realize it. Khanna notes that we live in a world today where there’s more diplomacy than ever before and yet it’s less organized. 

How do we sort out the moss pit of what exists with political leaders today? He recommends the following principles:

• Diplomacy needs to be inclusive. Anyone who wants to be part of a resolution to a problem should be involved.
• Decentralization – solving problems at the source. People in developing countries with real problems don’t need policy papers or money that is stored in centralized funds somewhere in Paris. It’s much better to give money to people directly if you can through micro-finance through organizations like Kiva.
• Become our own diplomats: each of us needs to think of ourselves as diplomats. Within ten years, everyone on the planet will have a mobile phone or a phone within their immediate family. Everyone will be able to reach everyone else. A lot of these phones will be smart phones and will have telebanking and mobile banking baked in….the latter is growing incredibly fast in Africa.

He ends his talk by saying “the best global governance is local governance," and working from the bottom up, not the top down.

 

Is the Universe Everything There Is? On 20th Century Science in Many Worlds

The Idea Festival, based in Louisville, Kentucky kicked off officially on Wednesday, September 21 at the Kentucky Performing Arts Center, located on a main drag of Louisville which is littered with art galleries, hotels and a restaurants. 

Speaker Suketu Bhavsar decided to take the audience to the fourth dimension and show us simplistically (if that's possible with a topic like this), what the impact of an infinite universe really is.

Albeit a scientist, Bhavsar has a unique right brain charisma on stage and often threw in humor as a way to lighten his somewhat heavy talk. "If the universe is everything there is, what is there to talk about?" he asks the audience. "Time, but time is relative," reminds Bhavsar. "And, space is relative."He shows us a few examples demonstrating how space has geometry that depends upon the density of the universe.

The whole universe is full of galaxies mostly with empty space in between and every one of these galaxies is moving away from us. The space in between those galaxies is actually what’s expanding. Space is stretching out between galaxies all the time.

The geometry of our universe is flat and this means that our universe is endless and it’s infinite. An infinite universe leads to the first and simplest kind of multiverse, he suggests. If we go far enough, then there could and would be another you elsewhere. In other words, everything is possible in an infinite universe.

He asks, “how far until there is a copy of the visible universe?” and refers to Brian Greene’s name for it: Quilted Multiverse.

In the early universe, the quantum field of the rapidly expanding space drops to a lower value in random regions. These regions are bubble universes. 

To give us an image of bubble universes, he asks us all to imagine that we have a room full of steam that goes forever and little droplets fall out of steam.

Regarding these bubbles and how they relate to each other:

• Each of these bubbles will continue to expand and have an infinite spatial galaxy.
• Each bubble universe has the potential to create daughter universes that inflate and become independent universes creating even more universes.

 

Another possibility is that not all the dimensions are curled up. In the Braneworld scenario, ours and many other 3-brane universes could be residing alongside each other and we wouldn’t know about it.

This moves us into Quantum mechanics, which is not deterministic like Newtonian mechanics he says. Quantum mechanics means that there are many arrays of things that could happen, allowing for many outcomes. AND, many things happening in multiple universes all at the same time.

Bhavsar challenges us to also read another book by Brian Greene: The Elegant Universe, and to contemplate the following questions:

Is this science? What is consciousness? What is time? Can we ever truly understand time? What is reality?

On Horses: Heading to Kentucky for the First Time

I’ve always wanted to go to Kentucky, largely because of the visual images I had in my mind since I was a kid.

They go a bit like the ones I had of the Netherlands when it comes to stereotypes: long, sweeping luscious green hills with gorgeous horses scattered to your left and right, all well groomed and perfectly manicured.

Of course, all of these horses in my mind's eye were ready for a race at a moment’s notice and I imagined that these horses would connect with people somehow in ways they wouldn’t in other parts of the country. Where the hell that came from I have no idea, but typically expectations of how we view a culture or a place or a person comes from some tale or fable long buried in a childhood memory.

Both of my sisters center their lives around horses as do a few close friends. I grew up not far from Saratoga Springs, New York home to the annual month-long horse races they have every August, known locally as the “track.”

In upstate New York, my niece rides every week (English), participates in regular competitions, and one of my sisters houses nearly ten horses on her farm. She also holds weekly events at her home where people in the community come to ride and compete (Western).

I spent several years living in Epsom Surrey in England some 17 kilometers outside London where they hold races as well on the "Epsom Downs". And yet, I’ve never really learned the “art” of riding nor have I fallen for the spell that many who live in the horse world live.  

That said, when I see horses, I melt at their beauty and grace. Being on one makes me feel closer to nature. Looking into a horse’s eyes makes me feel closer to understanding humanity.

Listening to their sounds makes me feel more peaceful. Watching them gallop makes me smile. Seeing photographs of horses in all their grandeur and beauty draws me into their world, eager to learn more.

And yet through all that, I haven’t dedicated my life or even part of it to riding. I think part of it is not through a lack of interest but because of other time commitments and passions. 

Living a "horse life" is time consuming and expensive.  I’m amazed at how much time my sister and her husband spend keeping their horses happy and healthy.

BUT oh god, are they beautiful. When I go into their barn, I love listening to the purrs and noises they make in the evening at the end of a long day. Since I’m not much for early mornings, my time in the barn has typically been mid-afternoon or towards the end of the day when they’re either bringing them in from the field, feeding them or they're getting them ready for a trip.

Recently, someone who boarded their horse in one of my sister’s stalls, was selling him to a buyer in California. I happened to be in the area at the time, so was there for the pick-up, which ended up being late at night since things always take longer than they we think they will, such as finding a remote farm on a Route something road in the Adirondacks. 

A massive horse trailer pulled up on the side of this Route something road, put its flashers on and a man jumped out of the truck. His buddy who was sharing the 3,000+ mile drive across country was sleeping somewhere in the truck, in some tiny enclosed area not dedicated to the 8 or so horses he had on board.

We didn’t know a black stallion would be on board nor did the stallion know that he’d have to share a section of the truck with a non-stallion from upstate New York all the way to California. Territorial attitude, control and high energy set in as we moved the horse onto the trailer.

I could see my sister move to angst as she watched the horse’s eyes, which showed fear as he left his known stalls for an unknown journey along side an aggressive stallion who wanted everyone to know he was in charge. 

I started feeling empathy for this horse as well, even though I just met him and didn’t have the history my sister did. The eyes say it all – with horses, with people, with life...Off he went on a journey across this massive wide country, into the unknown, into a new life, like so many of us do and don’t look back.

As I sat on a plane heading to Kentucky, I thought of so many images. I always imagined “driving” through Kentucky since I wanted to greet horse farms and meadows slowly, approaching them from a winding turn, where suddenly you're greeted with beautiful green valleys and hills and horses grazing on a late afternoon.

I imagined waiting for the sun to set as I just hung out with these Kentucky horses whose names I didn’t know, longing for their shadows and their end-of-day laziness to set in as the sun did, with me…..and we'd learn about each other together. And only then, I’d take my Canon out and slowly shoot them in all their glory with the late day sun’s stunning oranges, reds and yellows cradling them from behind.

This is what I imagined for my first encounter with Kentucky. As I’ve learned over the years, life greets you with things in the way life wants to give them to you. This doesn’t mean that I subscribe to fate and destiny and that we have no choice of how we experience a journey we wish to take, but what it does mean is that while we can control so many of our experiences in life, some of them we’re just dished, like spaghetti on a platter and our joy or sorrow comes from how we choose to take in the experience.

While the visuals will remain in my mind and I may see Kentucky again in the future, perhaps the next time by crossing a border from a neighboring state, this Kentucky experience would start by landing at Louisville International Airport late at night without any prior research or knowledge of the place.

I’d land, head to the hotel and see where the next few days would take me through spontaneous exploration, one of my favorite ways to travel. My first encounter with Kentucky may have horses in the journey or it may not, but the one thing remains true regardless of what experience I will have: it will be my first time to his beautiful state. And alas, the pilot speaks. We’re about to land…..

How We Need to Teach Our Daughters and Sons to Think & BE

"We need to teach our daughters to distinguish between a man who flatters her-and a man who compliments her. A man who spends money on her-and a man who invests in her.

A man who views her as property-and a man who views her properly. A man who lusts after her-and a man who loves her. A man who believes he is God's gift to women-and a man who remembers a woman was God's gift to man. And then teach our boys to be that kind of a man." 

The above was posted by a friend of a close friend. Thought it was "spot on" and wanted to share.