One of my favorite movies of all time, for a lot of reasons, is The Last of the Mohicans. One aspect I like is the struggle to survive on the harsh frontier during the French and Indian War and the three love stories that are interlaced throughout this struggle.
My favorite part is the line that Hawkeye (Daniel Day Lewis) says to Cora (Madeleine Stowe) right before she is captured by the enemy. Hawkeye says, “You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long …

Here is the truth. There is no concrete way to prove that there is only one person out there for you. Ask a million people and get a million different answers. But they are all just opinions. It is like believing in God. You make a choice to believe despite the lack of definitive evidence one way or the other.
That said, here is why I believe there is just one person out there for each of us and it begins with purpose.
God is intentional. You can look at every single …

Most of us were raised on fairy tales of some sort. They were what our mothers read to us before bed, and the first books we learned to read. They were stories told to give us hope or to scare us into good behavior. We believed them, until accumulated experience made us feel foolish for doing so. There is no boogey-man. And there are no magic beans.
I am sure that most little girls have grown up wishing for one fairy tale in particular to be true. A Cinderella story. The …

How is that we can have a prestigious job with great pay that supports our family and even allows the luxuries, but still be bored?
How is it that we can sit in a room surrounded by laughter and charming people and still feel uncomfortable?
How is it that we can slide into bed with the most beautiful girl and still feel less than satisfied when the passion has faded?
How many of us feel comfortable going to a restaurant by ourselves or to the movies alone? Maybe some of us will go, …

Mike, the elevator man, and I love to talk about hunting.
We are both avid hunters and every time he stops into the office to check the elevator systems, we get to talking about the first bow hunt, or the noise this eight point deer made as it rubbed its horns against the tree, or the right way to call in a turkey. This week Mike told me about his disabled relative that still hunts. The boy cannot walk. He sits in a wheelchair. Most of us know that wheelchairs …

-excerpt from OG’s Speculative Fiction, Issue 14
Beneath the border of France and Switzerland is twenty-seven miles of concrete tunnel. The tunnel is the Large Hadron Collider, man’s most recent attempt to delve into the unknown and possibly destroy the world (yes, I am exaggerating here, but only a bit). Simply, the machine collides beams of protons. One result of such collisions is a possible micro black hole, the same things that suck up everything in outer space and have a gravitational pull so strong that light cannot escape.
All dreams of …

In the past nine months, finances have come to dominate my thinking. I have always been leery of thinking too much about money. Money is seductive for me. The more I get, the more I seem to want. I start thinking of ways to make it or acquire it. I wonder what I can sell, or where I can put in a few more hours to get overtime. I start thinking about new careers where the pay is higher. I think about second jobs. I stare hard at the coupons …

By Lisa M. Smith
Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
Here’s a clue:
An optimist finds an opportunity in every problem; a pessimist finds a problem in every opportunity.
If you hate “polyanna’s” and are content to stay in a world filled with black clouds, these tips are just for you. (If you are of the other ilk, you may still find value from this edition by avoiding–or doing the exact opposite of–these guidelines).
Happiness is a state of mind. You can choose to be right, or you can choose to be happy; it …

Do not keep eating things that do not sit well with you. Makes sense, but I still eat foods that tear me up in some way.
No matter how good a deal you think you are getting, the car dealership always wins. Always.
Sometimes I think God made sleep so I could have a lot of fresh starts in the morning.
Procrastinators get less sleep and less peace.
I think the government loves pay raises more than we do.
Some people are like kryptonite. I always give in to them, no matter how many times …

I imagine the Olympics are something akin to the elementary school field days I participated in as a youngster between the ages of four and nine.
The field days were the most anticipated days of elementary school. I remember the air as I walked through the halls toward the open doors that led out to the fields. It was so thick with excitement and sun that I felt like I could walk on it, almost like Peter Pan could fly through the air of Never-Never Land.
And just like the Olympics …