Franklin Taggart's Blog

The day I started first grade my Dad took me to my favorite store in the town where we lived, Scott's. Scott's was owned and run by a cousin of his, Scott Taggart. Scott's was a stationery store, but that wasn't all they had. The candy counter was world famous, or at least I thought it should be. The store clerk, Libby would fill up a small bag of whatever treats you wanted...Swedish fish, pixie sticks, cherry coins, Sixlets, and my favorite, Smarties. A quarter bought a bag full. But the reason for this trip wasn't the candy counter. The purpose of this excursion was to purchase something that continues to be one of my favorite things to shop for, school supplies. This first time is still etched in my memory because it was the first time I'd ever needed school supplies of my own. In preschool and kindergarten if you needed paper or something to color or paint with, the teacher had a pile in her tall cabinet by the rest room door. This time I was getting my

A couple of months ago I took my aging Dad to the DMV office to get a new state ID. He uses a walker now, and I'd gone to the door to hold it open for him. He was still quite a way from the door, and another man was coming up the walk at the same time. I motioned for the fellow to come on in since Dad was moving slowly. So the man went ahead and went to the desk where you get your number before going to the waiting area. He received his number and sat down. Dad made it to the number station, and I went to find a couple of seats, knowing that he usually wants to sit close to the counter. I found two seats together at the end of a back row of seats directly in front of him. The row was too narrow for the walker to fit through, but Dad started to push his way through, shoving chairs aside as he went. I had pointed out to him that since this was the back row, there was plenty of space behind the chairs to walk without obstacles, but he insisted on pushing through the narrow aisle.

"C'mon kid...JUMP!" the kids behind me on the diving board shouted. As their pleas became more urgent and demanding, I looked over the edge and trembled, partly because I was cold and wet, and partly because of the terror I was feeling in that moment. At 6 years old I was already a pretty good swimmer. I'd taken two summers worth of lessons, and I could easily get from one end of the pool to the other, but this was the latest in a growing string of false starts in my quest for conquering the diving board. I was the last of my group of friends to accomplish this particular rite of summertime passage. It wasn't for lack of desire; I'd wanted to jump off the diving board since at least the Summer before, and I'd been thinking about it almost to the point of obsession throughout the present Summer, which was nearing its end. I'd come close to jumping twice before this time, and I'd gotten as close as the end of the board before running back to th

I listened to a podcast the other day in which two women were talking about their success online, which apparently had something to do with something called content. In the course of the 50 or so minutes they were talking, the word "content" was spoken between 5 and ten times a minute. Content, content, content. Creating content, content marketing, content, content, content, more content. This generic term has come to mean less and less, and it leaves a taste in my mouth comparable to that brought about by the generic beer I tried after the high school football game all those years ago. I can still bring the taste to mind, and it isn't a fond memory. It used to be that people wrote articles, or stories, or songs, or screenplays, or they made films, or wore out their dad's Super 8mm camera, spending their hard earned lawn mowing cash on getting those films developed, then splicing their masterpieces together on the kitchen table with a pair of scissors and Scotch

Many astronauts have talked about the experience of looking at Earth from space, and a cognitive shift that has been called the Overview Effect. There is a great video that highlights this effect. It features one of my childhood heroes, Edgar Mitchell who died a few months ago. If you have 19 minutes to enrich your life, please take the time now, and enjoy!(full screen viewing recommended) OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo . This Wikipedia article has more information. There is one being. Our sense of separation from everything else is a thought created illusion. It doesn't exist. Our experiences of individuality, with a personal mind, personal awareness, personal thinking, identification with the body, and sense of self importance all fall away. They're sentient. Life itself is held within a greater context of being. That context shows us the folly of our quests to dominate, manipulate and control nature.

Long's Peak and Mount Meeker in the distance Yesterday I gave a talk at Unity of Fort Collins on the common thread that is shared by creativity, service, and thriving. I'll post the talk another time, but for now I want to share a parable that flew in as I was preparing. Before the Western U.S. was settled, an explorer made his way across the plains and found himself approaching the Rocky Mountains. He'd run out of water the day before, and he was looking for a water source. As he walked he met a trapper whose canvas water bag was full to almost bursting. He asked the trapper if he wouldn't mind filling his canteen. The trapper agreed. The explorer took a long drink of water, and he'd never tasted anything so fresh in his life. He immediately felt restored, and he asked the trapper where to find the source of the water. The trapper pointed at a faraway peak and said, "At the bottom of the highest peak there is a lake. That is the source." The explorer expr

We have a rule in our house that whoever doesn't cook the meal does the dishes. While it seems fair on the surface, I'm not so sure. I'm a one pot kind of guy, and I tend to clean as I go most of the time, so that by the time I serve, there won't be a sink full of dishes other than the ones we eat from. My wife is a chef. The table is her canvas, and the kitchen her palette. We own three generations worth of cooking utensils of every variety, and I'm pretty sure that she uses most of them whenever she cooks. Now the bellywaddin' that I cook is comforting and filling. It won't show up on any Food Network shows, but for a hungry family it'll do just fine. Monica's meals are much more of a craft. She never uses recipes, except to bake, and she follows her whims and inspiration until there is a hearty, world class meal on the table. She's Italian, so most of the time it's Mangia! time around our house, which means that when she cooks, I do the di