The Baseball Card Checklist Issue
Ya got 'em all?
As a kid, I collected baseball cards. Some of my favorite cards, perhaps strangely, were the “checklist cards” – the cards that gave the order of the cards in the entire set. When baseball cards first came out they were sold in packs of five - you couldn’t buy whole sets at one time - so you needed a checklist card to know which cards you still needed to collect. I’ve heard that getting a checklist card was kind of a bummer - one less player’s statistics to immerse yourself in. By the time I began collecting in the late 1980s, the whole Topps or Donruss or Score sets were available, so the checklist cards were less important but companies kept printing them.
And I have to tell you – I loved the checklist card. Maybe it helped the collector in me come to the fore. I would use those checklist cards to verify and re-verify that I did, in fact, possess the entire set, as promised. I tried to divine the organizational rationale behind the card order. The pondering made for a relaxing few minutes of mindless mind-drifting, much like sitting at the ole ballpark during the 5th inning of a steamy July night game.
With the baseball card checklist as inspiration, here is the checklist index of essays published on Solvitur Ambulando. Unlike the baseball checklists, I have organized the articles – lightly around a few themes.
Enjoy this walk down memory lane of the past 18 months on S.A. Unlike with annual baseball cards, this set will grow in the New Year.
Books
In Life, My Spirit Never Walked Beyond Our Counting House
Lessons on business and partnership from “A Christmas Carol”
Three ways to improve your reading to create unique ideas
Reflections on the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
A Beautiful Walk Today, and Every Day
Three books about walking to delight and challenge us
Reflecting on a photo of Wendell Berry, in thought and action
Only 25 Books for the Rest of My Life?
Books to read and re-read
Reflecting on What We Truly Want
And organizing life accordingly
Plato’s Warning to Salespeople
Everything you do affects your soul
Lessons in self-knowledge
Lessons from a hodge-podge of biographies
Gus and Call show the way
Does the Captain Matter When a Rising Tide Lifts All Boats?
Stall Points and The Halo Effect
An index of articles about books on SA
Book Mashups
A book mashup of Silence in the Age of Noise (Erling Kagge) and Consolations of the Forest (Sylvain Tesson)
Mind, Body and Spirit of the Hero
A book mashup of Deep Work (Cal Newport) and Natural Born Heroes (Christopher McDougall)
Interviews
Limitations Are Essential to Human Thriving
A beautiful conversation with mother, author and pediatrician Sherry Shenoda
I Just Want to Be the Best Version of Myself
An interview with marketing maven and advocate for the disabled Geoff Cook
Making an Effort to Show Respect and Esteem
An interview with famed clothier Herb Melton of The Tom James Company
Our Culture Comes from Our Teaching
An interview with Yoga Baum’s irrepressible owner Laurie LeCompte
Silver Medalists
Silver Medalist: Major General Fox Conner
Eisenhower’s forgotten mentor
Lessons from “Silver Medalists”
Because you will almost certainly never “take over the world”
Gift Guides
Down the Chimney St. Nicholas Came With a Bound
Your ultimate 2022 holiday guide
The Greatest Gift I’ve Ever Given*
*According to my sister-in-law
Hit a home run this Father’s Day (2022)
Ho Ho Ho! Merry Christmas, Clark! Whatever, Russ
Your 2021 holiday guide for maximum awesomeness
Living with a Congenital Heart Defect
Five Expectations My Parents Had of Me…
…As a kid with a congenital heart defect
Four Lessons from Reading Letters from 1985
Surrounded by love
Why I haven’t told my kids about my congenital heart defect
Oh, the best-laid plan of we silly mortals
Why do I still drink alcohol and soda, and eat fast food and candy?
Now I have urgency
Training and growing with “Max Bob” Whelan
The Aim: Meet and Enjoy My Grandkids
Control what I can control to tilt the odds in my favor
How I Prepared for Open Heart Surgery
Part 1: Financial Preparation
How I Prepared for Open Heart Surgery
Part 2: Mental and Physical Preparation
Lessons Learned as a Congenital Heart Patient
Guiding spirit and index to the essay series
Writing
On Needing Solitude and Community
The paradox of outstanding writing
The Intimate Power of a Handwritten Letter
The gift of your words tells the story of your heart
Four Reasons to Keep Old Journals
Kids, don’t do what Dad did
8 Newsletters to Help You Live Better
Let these beautiful writings lift up your thoughts and spirit
Writing With the Ears of the Heart
Aurem Cordis
What’s Your Favorite Piece of Writing Advice?
Quality writing emerges from writing – a lot
Thought, Logic and Precision in Business Writing
Strunk and White – and business writing
The philosophy of Super70sSports
Long Live the Cause of Freedom!
Why Churchill’s V-E Day speech is one of his greatest
“Then they said, “Yes, Tai-Pan,” and obeyed.”
Carefully choose words to make profound points
Best of SA, as of September 2022
Contemporary Living
You may hear surprise. You almost certainly will hear joy.
Giving Inadequate Voice to Our Inner Lives
On our diminished emotional vocabularies
How many can one person track?
But I don’t miss it
With Yourself, By Yourself and For Yourself
Having space creates magic
Keep sharp with one small practice
Slight Addition to Graduation Speeches
Yes, pursue your dreams. But more than dreams will define your life and character
Do Ranch Homes Cause Health Problems?
More pondering than proof
Idylls and Rambles
7 Lessons I Learned from My Dad
Father’s Day reflections on wisdom lovingly gifted
Small snippets of joy in daily life
Sometimes there’s part of me Has to turn from here and go
So, what is “it”?
Solvitur Ambulando
On the completeness of incomplete places
The brown unicorn and her blonde-haired friend
Readings to elevate our grateful hearts
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Thank you to my Foster friends for reviewing and editing this article: Jude Klinger, Sam Sager, Sarah Ramsey, and Anthony Pica.
You have a very creative mind! I love the connection of the baseball card checklist to an offering of your wonderful writing - indexed by topic to boot. Thank you for such an easy way for recent adopters of your blog to circle back and catch up. Keep picking up the pen….