Born in the bayous of Louisiana, raised in the suburbs of Texas, edumacated in Nashvegas, lost in New Zealand, found in Panama, alive and well in DC.

in small ways. with random acts of kindness

Roland Bunch
Jimmy Buffet
Nancy Henderson
Bill & Melinda Gates
Kofi Annan
My grade-school crush
Bob Woodward
Donald Miller
Townes Van Zandt
Anderson Cooper
Those three Mexican fishermen who were a year lost a sea.

Indecision may or may not be my problem. -Jimmy Buffett

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
~ ee cummings ~

If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything -anon

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs - ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. - Howard Thurman (civil rights)

"In the conflicts between man and man, between group and group, between nation and nation, the loneliness of the seeker for community is sometimes unendurable. The radical tension between good and evil, as man sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in man and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. Always he must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; he must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that he will not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. He will know that for all men to be alike is the death of life in man, and yet perceive harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance." From The Search For Common Ground; An Inquiry Into The Basis Of Man's Experience Of Community. –Howard Thurman

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead

“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.” - Albert Schweitzer

“I believe in doing things. That’s the problem with most artists: they just dream and dream and dream. You gotta do stuff.” - Wayne Coyne, Flaming Lips

“How wonderful it is that no one need to wait a single moment to start improving the world.” - Anne Frank

"Adults are always asking children what they want to be when they grow up, because they're looking for ideas".

“the world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth."

“The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” Benjamin Mays,

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind" -Dr. Seuss

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
-Marcel Proust

"We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone." -- Dr. Loretta Scott

"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" - Jack Kerouac

Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things."
- Albert Einstein

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. -Albert Einstein

Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
-Sir Winston Churchill, Speech, 1941, Harrow School

Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty, always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win, unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.
~Richard M. Nixon

In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on."
- Robert Frost

Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
-- Thomas Alva Edison

"You ought to believe something in life, believe that thing so fervently that you will stand up with it until the end of your days..." --MLK Jr.

"A life without cause is a life without effect" - Dildano, 'Barbarella'

My Religion is simple. My religion is kindness
The Dalai Lama

"Compassion without action is pity. The world doesn't need out pity." – one of the popes

"Live must be lived forwards." - Soren Kierkegaard

"I have never had clarity, just faith." – Mother Theresa

"All who wander are not lost." – Tolkien

"The shortest distance between two points isn't the point."

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do, than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain

"Find an aim in life before you run out of ammunition."

“Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow."
- Woody Guthrie

All good things are wild and free."
—Henry David Thoreau

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who
did nothing because he could do only a little."
~ Edmund Burke

“On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967

“We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience- even of silence- by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse.”
Annie Dillard

“God can be with us and help us . . . Only a suffering God can help. ”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Be not anxious about what you have, but about who you are. ”
Saint Gregory

“I have this hunger in me…everywhere I look, I see the evidence of a Creator. But I don’t see it as a religion, which has cut my people in two. I don’t see Jesus Christ as being any part of a religion. Religion to me is almost like when God leaves—and people devise a set of rules to fill the space. ”
Bono

“One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests. ”
John Stuart Mill

“Fear not that your life shall come to an end, but rather that it shall never have a beginning.”
John Henry Newman

“Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we’ve missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy. ”
Douglas Coupland

“…all beauty…is a quiet enduring form of love and longing. ”
Rainer Marie Rilke

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. ”
Albert Schweitzer

“The first trait of love is attentiveness. ”
Simone Weil

“The problem with modern living is that we are too busy to notice that we are being blessed. ”
Henri Nouwen

“Seek the depths of things. ”
Rainer Marie Rilke

“In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't. ”
Pascal

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.” — Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom

North America, Central America, South Pacific, Western Europe

a beach in panama with miles of nothing and everything beautiful, a tim o'brien concert where his son danced a jig that i'll never forget, a secluded trout river in the Winds where few people have stood before and innocent fish are easily fooled, a tattered old rope swing over a cold tennessee creek, an old mexican chapel-turned-temple where cocacola and cheap whiskey are offered to the gods.

travel, folk music, oatmeal cream pies, old comfortable shoes, fiction, guitar, family, friends, good dogs, coffee, applejuice, night swimming, empty journals, the Pacific Ocean, the way latins dance, standing in streams with a flyrod, all-nighters with campfires, Peace Corps, Panama, Louisiana, long runs, cook outs, shirtless summers, human rights...

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