Beyond the Ordinary

The world is full of extraordinary. Join me in exploring all that sparks creativity and change.

latest inspiration posts

January's Architect of the Month: EwingCole

Pfizer, Inc EwingCole EwingCole takes a collaborative approach to real estate architecture, engineering, design-build, and construction. Like Clayco, the firm’s objective is to enhance how design and architecture impact the individual.

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel

Although I generally don’t agree with this author on many things, including his politics, I believe this book is required reading for entrepreneurs and investors … Zero to One: Notes on Startups, Or How to Build the Future. Written by Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, the book is assembled from some of the class notes that were taken from his lectures held at Stanford University in 2012. It is very insightful, and I agree with a lot of the main points Thiel makes, especially when it comes to thinking outside the box and innovation. The book starts off with the premise that even though it might not seem like it, we’re currently living in an age of what Thiel calls ‘technological stagnation.’ He basically means that instead of people building new companies or products to solve problems that no one else has thought of, we’re mainly doing much of the same thing that other established companies are already developing. Using examples like the rapid advancements in information technology and companies in Silicon Valley, he illustrates how imitating or copying what another business is already doing isn’t really moving us forward.

Books I Read in 2021

This was a big year for reading for me as I embraced audiobooks and can listen during all my down or travel time. I read a very human story with lots of familiar political friends and relationships Both/And by Huma Abedin and The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes. Both of these books are definitely worth reading.

December’s Architect of the Month: Santiago Calatrava

Santiago Calatrava is a Catalan architect, engineer, and artist known for his beautiful, neo-futuristic buildings and bridges and his amazing ability to create visual statements. I admire his career and his ingenuity and I always look forward to what he will achieve next. Some striking examples of his work are the apartment tower in Malmö, Sweden, its shape suggesting a twisting spinal column. For the Milwaukee Art Museum in Wisconsin, he created a feature that looks like the wings of a bird as it opens and closes. The gravity-defying Alamillo Bridge in Seville is a straight steel-shell tower, filled with reinforced concrete. It leans backwards, counterbalancing a 200-meter span with thirteen pairs of cables.

Two Great History Books to Read Together: Sapiens and A Short History of Humanity

Two great history books that I’ve read and that I recommend reading together are Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe. Sapiens, written by the historian Yuval Noah Harari, does an excellent job of tracing the great story of the rise of our own species and documents humanity’s creation and evolution throughout the ages. Looking into the intersections of biology and history, Dr. Harari takes his narrative all the way back to 70,000 years ago, when the first beginnings of modern cognition began to take place in homo sapiens. He then goes on to trace the start of the agricultural revolution, the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, the information revolution, and all the way up to where we were in 2014: the biotechnological revolution.

November's Artist of the Month: Vaughn Spann

Vaughn Spann is one of the most talented artists working today, and he already is off to a great start in his artistic career despite being so young. His current work centers around paintings that seek to explore abstraction, figuration, and formalism in new ways and from different perspectives, and he’s currently been focusing on portraiture and mixed-material abstractions that have enchanted and inspired viewers. Vaughn was born in Florida in 1992 and grew up in Orange, New Jersey. He now lives and works in nearby Newark, and he received his Bachelors of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers University in 2014 and an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2018.

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Inspiration

I have always had an insatiable curiosity

What causes me to get out of bed every morning is driven by inspiration. Ever since I was a little boy, I was inspired by my insatiable curiosity, which caused me to be a reader, a thinker, and a dreamer.

I can remember being inspired by seeing Bobby Kennedy on TV and watching videotapes of Martin Luther King Jr., and being deeply saddened by their assassination even though I was only 10 years old when I experienced all of this.

As a little boy, rocket flight was a big thing. I remember being fascinated by the moon and the stars and the astronauts exploring them.As humans we are achieving remarkable things that only a handful of years before were just in the imagination.