This week started with the news that my wife’s great uncle had died, and he was one of the kindest, most full-of-life men I’d ever met. He was actually born in the house we live in, and lived across of the street from us until last summer. I’d always love it when the 95-year-old would wheel up our driveway on his motorized scooter to say hello or drop off some tomatoes he had grown in his garden. A lifelong horticulturist, he taught me about the various weeds growing on my …

The beautiful thing about life is that there are billions of stories going on at any second that are worthy of great prose. Stories that either inspire the imagination to dream beyond the scene or captivate the writer with the already remarkable nature of the cold, hard facts.
Yesterday I met a frog with a story.
I was on a break from speaking at the Fair Media Council’s event, walking outside of the Hilton Long Island’s Grand Ballroom, when I spotted a frog on the sidewalk, about 20 yards from the entrance …