by Dan Hunter | Aug 2, 2017 | You Can Only Imagine
On a platform at the front of the hall was a school teacher’s desk, a single chair, a strip of carpet and a single-pole coat stand. Like eager rock fans, we were student writers waiting in the summer heat to hear the great writer read. Finally, he slouched into the...
by Dan Hunter | Jul 20, 2017 | You Can Only Imagine
Don’t get the big head. My father used to say that to me. I assume that he meant no one likes a swell head, an arrogant, cocky person. We all need humility—some more than others. But, as for the big head, it’s too late. Human beings are born with big heads. Our...
by Dan Hunter | Jul 20, 2017 | You Can Only Imagine
40,000 years ago, Sgt Pepper taught the band to play. The band was Homo sapiens (our species) at approximately the same time—give or take thousands of years—that our ancestors left the savannas of Africa and crossed into Asia and Europe. Homo sapiens spread across...
by Dan Hunter | Jul 14, 2017 | You Can Only Imagine
Every child is an artist. Their early drawings all have a bright yellow sun above smiling stick-like figures standing among loopy red flowers on a green line—the edge of the earth. There might even be a few dabs of blue for the sky. Shades of crayon brilliance. Are...
by Dan Hunter | Jul 14, 2017 | You Can Only Imagine
Sometime before we left tricycles for bicycles, my brother and I played “men.” I was Mr. Black and he was Mr. Brown. We made phone calls and went to work. We turned our tricycles upside down, cranking the pedals by hand to make “popcorn.” Under the porch, the six...
by Dan Hunter | Jul 6, 2017 | You Can Only Imagine
To create means to bring into existence. Creativity, then, is “the use of imagination or original ideas to create something” (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) that did not exist before. (Or failed to pre-exist.) Imagination necessarily precedes...
by Dan Hunter | Jul 6, 2017 | You Can Only Imagine
Total up the number of conferences you’ve attended, divide by the number of panelists you’ve listened to and what do you remember? Out of the swirl of comment, the ebb and flow of panelist debate, what sticks to the palette and nourishes the brain? Not much beyond the...
by Dan Hunter | Jul 6, 2017 | You Can Only Imagine
I met a pair of Peace Corps volunteers at a bar in Bangkok in 1992. They were leaving Thailand and I had just arrived—my first visit to Thailand. So, they gave me a briefing on what to expect in Thailand. We discussed many things: respect for the King, the monks and...
by Dan Hunter | Jun 22, 2017 | You Can Only Imagine
He died before the wheel was invented, before writing was invented and before the first pyramids were built. Yet, we know what he ate for his last meal and what he wore on the day he died. He is known as Ötzi (rhymes with Yahtzee) the Iceman, a 5,300 year old mummy...
by Dan Hunter | Jun 22, 2017 | You Can Only Imagine
“I’m about as creative as a caged hamster.” – My friend who thinks he’s not creative. How creative is a caged hamster? We won’t know until the hamster lets himself out of the cage to find out. (Comparing yourself to a caged hamster, however, is quite...
