“Can you teach people to be creative?” is the wrong question. “Can you teach people to use their imagination more productively?” That’s a better question. But, if your goal is...

It was a milk curdling scene. Our 20-year old refrigerator quietly passed away one night.  On the floor, a pool of melted water stood testimony to its incontinence.  Its...

Eager grade school students will keep waving their hands in the air even after a question has been answered.  So, when you call on one of the remaining hands, the student often...

“Halloa! Halloa!  Mr. Phonograph are you there?” Chicago, May 1878   The call rang out in a Chicago Methodist Church as if they were contacting the dead in a séance, coaxing...

“What can you do when you always walk in the same setting, if not dream? As a distraction, in my dreams I built a fairy palace.”     -- Ferdinand Cheval, the postman builder of...

I visited Fu Yue, bestriding a dragon, Joined in marriage with the Weaving Maiden, Lifted up Heaven's Net to capture evil, Drew the Bow of Heaven to shoot at wickedness, Followed...

Each year on December 10, royal blue carpet is spread across the stage of the Stockholm Concert Hall.  Carpeted risers with blue arm chairs are set in two wings.  The risers are...

Business people often say that they want creative employees.  But, they can’t agree on what that means.  (They can’t agree because what becomes creative is unknown, defined after...

Most people believe that time and imagination cannot be coordinated.  A good idea seems to appear unexpectedly, on no schedule at all.  And when an idea doesn’t come, we feel...

“Perhaps it is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.” Akira Kurosawa* In 1920, a ten-year old boy in fifth grade, dressed in samurai hamaka pants and...