July 5, 2026
7/3/26
The Toronto Blue Jays offered my son first-round money out of high school. The kind of number that changes a family’s life. He turned it down to go to Vanderbilt.
People said we were crazy. The money is real, and the draft is never promised twice.
He won a College World Series, earned the degree, and went 14th overall three years later. The money was still there. By then the education was not optional; it was his.
I do not share that to brag. The pathway was the point. The bat/arm gets an athlete looked at. The classroom decides how long he stays in the game, and who he is when it ends. – Walter Beede
July 3, 2026
6/16/26
In the Buddhist parable of the two arrows, a man walking through a forest is struck by a hunter’s arrow and left wounded and alone. The first arrow reflects the real pain of being struck. But the second arrow represents all the worries and anxieties that follow. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. The difference lies in whether we fight, deny, and ask “why me?”, or pause, accept reality as it is, and respond with kindness and compassion.
June 16, 2026