I attended a live broadcast of the Charlie Brennan Show featuring the famous pollster John Zogby, who talked about his new book “The Way We’ll Be.” A listener named Stephanie said, “I have never liked pollsters because they are always asking questions and making predictions. It’s a lot like being a hypochondriac who keeps checking your blood pressure over and over again.”

Zogby’s response: “I am just providing information.” He has been providing information since 1984 and he has a grasp of American trends and a command of the data which is impressive. By the way, when I asked him to…

Pollsters and survey takers are fascinating people. I am currently reading John Zogby’s new book, “The Way We’ll Be,” because the author will be in St. Louis this week and I hope to hear him speak. One of the things that Zogby asserts is that, “Sales, politics, and social trends are all deeply interrelated…”

That quote sort of lends itself to something that I have been having some fun with during this election cycle and that is all of the retailers who are making proverbial hay out of the interest this campaign has generated.

If you go to McArthur’s bakery, for example,…

Earlier this week, I met a friend, Bob Pelley, a therapist in private practice, for a latte and visit at the Starbucks near his office on Wydown and Hanley. I had not been in a Starbucks in awhile because I needed to spend money on gasoline and other incidentals instead of my favorite, a grande skim mocha with no whip! The barista-speak came back to me like riding a bike (they say you never forget how).

Bob is just starting a new practice and naturally our conversation came around, like every other conversation these days, to the economy. One of the…

Last Saturday at an Iowa rally for McCain, a pastor delivered a prayer before the candidate appeared tbat dismissed the other side as followers of a different God whom their God needed to defeat.

The prayer said: “There are millions of people around this world praying to their god - whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that [Barack Obama] wins, for a variety of reasons” and they would think their god bigger than the Christian God if that happened.

The Pastor who prayed that prayer is Dr. Arnold Conrad, who is the director of an association of interim ministers. When I did…

Last week a large group of church members and I went together to a local assisted living home to sing hymns and happy birthday to our most senior member. Our friend was celebrating her 105th birthday.

The birthday girl was born exactly two months before the Wright brothers made their first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk on Dec. 17, 1903.

Her short term memory sometimes fails her now, but she has vivid memories of things from long ago. For instance, she shared with us that she remembered during the Great Depression riding to church in a wagon with a chicken in a…