GRIT - Stories of Resilience

"Twas the night before Christmas, When all though the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there..." These are some of the most beloved and well-known verses in all of American literature. Take a short trip with me back in time to 1823 and the writing of this Christmas poem, given by the autho...

Leon Brown just wanted to go home. He was at the police station in Red Springs, North Carolina, visiting his half - brother Henry McCollum, known as Buddy, who was being questioned by the police about the murder and rape of a young girl named Sabrina. He was getting a drink out of the coke machine when an officer came up and said he and others would like to ask him some questions. Leon, who had an...

A very recent article by CNN, based on a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine says that physical activity in the top 25% if the US population can increase your life by over five years. At the same time, physical inactivity can decrease your life span by a similar amount. Little or no physical activity can lead to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some forms of cancer The good news al...

What do pancakes, early in the morning, snickers, a caramel macchiato from Starbucks, a hot dog with fries, a bag of chips and a box of cheezit have to do with the election last week? Do you remember what Jeb Barlett said to his wife Abbey on the plane after leaving Washington, D.C. and the Presidential Inauguration? She had asked him what he was thinking as he looked out the window at the sky abo...

For thirty-five years to the day, Molly Byrd worked first as a secretary, before becoming a long-time legal assistant and mentor to many in the Winston-Salem office of the law firm of Womble Carlyle, now known as the international firm of Womble Bond & Dickinson. That is just a part of her story. For the last eighteen years, she has taught hundreds of people to ride motorcycles all over the co...

Hello Everyone, I am pausing new podcasts for two weeks (October 21 and October 28). I will have a new one on Monday, November 4 and hope to see you then. I am preparing new and, I hope, entertaining podcasts that I think you will enjoy. The short comments today give you a brief preview of some of them, starting in November. Thanks Jim

"The Illness Hidden with a Smile" - the headline in a New York Times opinion piece about the death by suicide of the always outwardly upbeat Kate Spade. With the understanding that no one really knows how another is doing in life, I tuned in this past week to a podcast on The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos, a professor at Yale University. She and her panel of experts on Mental Health issues...

For more than fifteen years, I have traveled to Asheville, North Carolina, sometimes twice a year, holding Continuing Legal Education programs for lawyers and paralegals from that part of the state in the downtown law offices of Van Winkle. Two women who were long time paralegals there, came to almost every program I ever held and became my good friends. Now, with Asheville suffering deeply from t...

Whoever tells the best story usually wins! Whoever ends his or her trial with the most pictures still hanging on the wall usually wins! A trial is a tale of two stories, yours and the other one. Everything you do in a trial, even a negotiation, should help you tell your story. I loved trying cases, before a judge or a jury. I loved to compete. Most trial lawyers do. Everyone has at least one talen...

What do you do for adventure and excitement after climbing many of the mountain ranges in the world and walking the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in the eastern United States? Clark Wright, who has done all those things, took his wife and two daughters with him in June to the Grand Canyon for a week's trip on white water rafting on the Colorado River. Whether it was hanging on...

On Friday, April 19, 2024, Elon University, a private school of approximately 6,000 students, nationally known for being perhaps the premier teaching university in the country, awarded their highest honor, the Elon Medallion, to a man who helped make it possible, Noel Allen, a 1969 graduate of the school, and for more than four decades, one of its leading trustees. When not working on behalf of th...

The Surgeon General of the United States calls Loneliness a major public health crisis on a par with smoking and obesity. It one of the most serious mental health issues we have in this country. In a recent opinion in the New York Times, the writer David French, a lifelong conservative, writes somewhat provocatively about what he calls the loneliness epidemic. While much of his article is full of...

Fall, which gets its name from the dropping of the leaves, begins this month, in September. It gets its name from the Latin word "septem", which means seven as September was the seventh, not the ninth, month in the year under the Roman Calendar. For me, so many things have happened starting in many Septembers, I think of it as the first month of real possibilities. The weather will start...

The Democratic Convention in Chicago - August 16, 1956 - Before he became JFK, John Kennedy ran for the nomination for Vice President in a four-way race that went to two long ballots. After leading on the second one, he ultimately lost to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. That year was only the second time political conventions were televised coast to coast. The conventions of that time had it...

Steve & Louise Coggins - Dynamic Duo - Steve, a well-known trial lawyer in civil litigation in Raleigh, and for the last twenty-two years, in Wilmington, North Carolina, is just half the deal. His wife Louise has done the same, only she practices as a psychotherapist in social work. Here, they talk mental health, in all its forms...depression, anxiety, suicides, therapy, the stigma of seeking...

"Hope is the most powerful weapon in the world, when all else seems lost." These words were written to his wife while he, Nelson Mandela, was in prison in South Africa, not knowing whether he would ever be free. Hope is the underlying principle of my podcast, Grit - Stories of Resilience. Every episode, since its start, has within it the seeds of hope which forms the basis for the storie...

Are you watching the Olympics this year? If so, good for you. If not, it's not too late...there is another week to go. Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Michael Phelps - all Olympic stars of the present and not too long ago past. - two of them gymnasts, members of what is called the "Golden Girls", in honor of the number of gold medals they have won. Then Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympic athlete i...

Think about taking classes in Digital Marketing, International Marketing, talking about and imagining the future. How about Artificial Intelligence? Did you know it is here and coming to our world even more, every day? How about one of your college classes going to Europe for a few weeks, for learning and bonding with other students while meeting people in other countries...say, Spain or France? S...

For over two weeks, a small several weeks old, gray kitten lived alone in a parking garage in the apartment complex where I live. Residents fed him and tried to catch him. Two wanted to adopt him. But no luck...nothing, as he would scamper away to underneath cars where he spent most of his days and nights. Finally, on Saturday afternoon on the weekend after July 4, success! Named after the parking...

"We hold these truths to be self - evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Today, we celebrate with millions of cookouts all over the country, with hot dogs, hamburgers, perhaps some chicken or shrimp, chips, baked beans, slaw, ice cream (homemade if...

The Scriptures tell us that "Weeping may stay for a Night but Joy Comes in the Morning". Inspired by those words from Psalm 30:5, this new podcast is my take on writing a letter to myself, saying and reaching for advice on starting over, doing something worthy, making a difference, finding technicolor moments and overcoming stress. My letter makes me hopeful, as there are so many things...

"Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?" These last lines of the poem "The Summer Day" by the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Jane Oliver, captures perfectly the theme and title of my newest podcast about the future of each one of us. Coming right after last week's podcast about...

Post MacDonald, and the publication of "Fatal Vision" there came more MacDonald, paper backs of Joe's book, the NBC Mini-Series, Duke Hospital, the legal process, and then a multi-years drama over whether MacDonald should get a new trial. Though it all, there were many conversations with Wade and Joe and finally. in 2012, there was a Hearing in Federal Court, where I spent the better...

Wade Smith, one of the best lawyers in the United States for over fifty years, Joe McGinniss, a well-known author of twelve books, including multiple New York Times best-selling books, and I met in 1979 during the Jeffrey MacDonald triple murder trial in Raleigh, North Carolina. Last week, in the Podcast Stories from the Road - Wade Smith, Joe McGinniss and Me - Part One, I recounted stories from...

Wade Smith - one of North Carolina's best trial lawyers in the last fifty years Joe McGinniss, writer of 12 books, including the New York Times best selling The Selling of the President, 1968 and the likewise best selling Fatal Vision, the story of the Jeffrey MacDonald triple murder case I met them both during the MacDonald trial in 1979. We would all become fast friends. Wade and I would try a n...