Allen R. Hunt's Blog, page 16

Summer Reading 2012

Thank you for your recommendations for summer reading. Hundreds of you responded via email and on Facebook. Wonderful stuff!

In an ambitious move, I am taking 5 books with me on vacation, all recommended by you. A number of you asked for the list ahead of time, so here it is. I will post reviews when I return - of as many of these as I can read while not turning vacation into work!

Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (recommended by EC, Sarah, and Franklin)

The Last Great Game by Gene Wojciechowski (recommended by Mark)

The Noticer by Andy Andrews (recommended by Kay)

Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder (recommended by Wheeler and Tom)

20 Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pabo Neruda (recommended by Chris, the wildcard of all wildcards,   >>>>>   Read Entire Post

Photos from The Rally

Check out the photos from our motorcycle rally to benefit the severely abused children at the Murphy Harpst Children's center. I posted them on my Facebook show fan page   >>>>>   Read Entire Post

What They Didn't Tell You at Graduation

Great piece by Charles Wheelan at the WSJ today. I've taken the liberty of shortening it just a bit. Numbers 7 and 9 are truth bombs!

Here is what I wish someone had told me at graduation:

1. Your time in fraternity basements was well spent.

The same goes for the time you spent playing intramural sports, working on the school newspaper or just hanging with friends. Research tells us that one of the most important causal factors associated with happiness and well-being is your meaningful connections with other human beings. Look around today. Certainly one benchmark of your postgraduation success should be how many of these people are still your close friends in 10 or 20 years.

2. Some of your worst days lie ahead. Graduation is a happy day. But my job is to tell you that if you are   >>>>>   Read Entire Post

Thanks for and from "Chase"

Many thanks to you for helping as we generated more than $17,000 to serve the children at the Murphy Harpst children's center. Our motorcycle rally provided tremendous fun not only for those of us who participated and gave, but also for the children at Murphy Harpst who were blessed by all the fun, attention, and interest in their lives.

Photos will be posted soon from the day - I have so many that I am trying to pick the best 20 or so to share here. Please check back soon for those.

In the meantime, let me share about a young man named "Chase". This week, Chase will be discharged, and one of the discharge gifts that Murphy Harpst shares with kids is a dog tag that reads "All things are possible for him who believes" (Mark 9:23). The team at Murphy Harpst talked about his new life with a family that plans to adopt Chase. What a remarkable contrast is their love   >>>>>   Read Entire Post

Give Me Your Wisdom

The time is near. I need your wisdom. What is the best book you've read this year?

My family and I will be going on vacation in a few weeks, and I am looking to take three excellent books with me. Last year you responded with great recommendations, and I actually had time to read six of your suggestions.

I am looking for suggestions in three areas:

1) Fiction - I love good novels. Bring your best recommendation on!

2) Business/Leadership - The Dream Manager is the best one I've read the last few years. What recent book has been powerful for you?

3) Wild Card - This area could include faith, science, bio, history, or something else that you found helpful.

You always give me good wisdom, so I look forward to hearing from you with your recommendations. After the vacation, I will share the results and my reviews of the books I   >>>>>   Read Entire Post

5 Facebook Rules for Teens

My show will tag team with WSB TV tonight to discuss social media, parenting, and kids. As part of that conversation, here are some starting points from several experts for parents in guiding their kids' use of Facebook.

5 Facebook rules for Parents and Kids

Similar guidelines apply to other social networking sites. This can be a starting point for discussing Facebook with your teen.

1. General comments

Facebook has a wide range of privacy settings available, and in general you want all the privacy you can get. Most of the horror stories about social networking involve kids making information public and/or making contact with strangers. The rules below are generally designed to avoid all contact with strangers. The key concept is to use Facebook only to interact with real personal friends.

Consider the following statement from the official Facebook terms:

We recommend that   >>>>>   Read Entire Post

Lesson from a No-tell Motel

I think I just stayed in a No-tell Motel. I've been travelling this week, mostly in Chicago, and I am not very familiar with this area. So I booked an economical room online at a "hotel" that got good reviews.

When I arrived, they said I could not check in before 5:00. If I wanted to do so, it would be $15 per hour. Same hourly rate if I wanted to stay any later on check-out day too.

Upon entering the room, I noticed two things I usually do not see on business travel. Mirrors for three of the four walls. And an ocean-sized whirpool right in the middle of the room where usually there would be furniture. Also, the only refreshment offered at the "hotel" was wine by the bottle. Strange?

I made it safely through the evening (amen). But I learned yet again, that when you do not know where you're going, you can land yourself in some uncomfortable places. It's true geographically and it's true spiritually. Always   >>>>>   Read Entire Post

Everybody Needs to Forgive Somebody

In the final stretch of a complete re-write of my book on Forgiveness. The more I got into it, the more it became an entirely new book. Included some powerful new stories and how to discover the power of forgiveness in your own life. Even a new title: "Everybody Needs to Forgive Somebody."

Hope to have it out for you this   >>>>>   Read Entire Post

Mother of Holy Week

Stephanie Decker's dream house in Indiana took 9 months to build and 9 seconds to fall in a recent tornado. With the house disintegrating, she grabbed her son Dominic, 8, and daughter Reese, 5, and ran to the basement. There, she wrapped the kids in a blanket and climbed on top of them. Protecting.

"I remember the whole thing," she said. "I stayed conscious the whole time. They needed me. They had to have me, so I had to figure out what to do." She held on tightly to the children as the house fell down around her. Braving.

"Everything started hitting my back, beams, pillars, furniture - everything was slamming into my back. But I had my children in the blanket and I was on top of them, reaching around holding them." Unwavering.

Then she realized she had been badly hurt, with her leg appearing as if it had been severed. Fighting back the tears, she said: "It was cut off or it was barely   >>>>>   Read Entire Post

TIcket to Ride for Kids

Compassion. Jesus says all eternity hinges on it. In fact, He says that when you serve a hungry person a meal or offer a drink to a thirsty person, you are doing so directly to Him.

And that is one reason why "Gregory" matters. An apartment manager in Atllanta heard an odd scratching noise coming from a vacant apartment. He made a note to check that the next day. But he forgot. On the third day, he walked by that apartment again, and heard the same noise. So he opened the door, expecting to find a mouse or a raccoon inside.

Instead, he walked through the vacant apartment and found nothing...until he got to the rear bedroom. The manager opened the closet and found a little 7 year old boy, covered in cockroaches and eating with his hand in a jar of peanut butter. That little boy, "Gregory," had been left behind by his parents when they moved. They abandoned him. And he finally made his way to the Murphy Harpst   >>>>>   Read Entire Post