For two years, our family lived in the town of Bodega, California, where Alfred Hitchcock filmed his horror classic, The Birds. In the film, thousands of birds descend on a seaport village and begin randomly attacking people. No one ever discovers the reason for the birds’ bizarre behavior. It’s creepy, even to bird lovers.  

On July 4, 1776, fifty-six men signed a document that changed the world, the Declaration of Independence. Afterwards, they sat in silence, absorbing the solemnity of their decision—an act of treason against the most powerful monarch on earth.  

On Friday, surrounded by family, we spread Linda’s ashes in Puget Sound near the beach where she was raised. It was such an amazing and beautiful experience. I know I’ll see her again,

On June 2, an elephant from a wildlife park, strolled into a small grocery store in Thailand, walked up to the counter, and began chomping on snacks. Park workers slowly shooed the pachyderm out the door. He exited, still holding a bag of snacks with his trunk.

Over 1,000 people gathered last Saturday in an upscale Minneapolis neighborhood to witness a man sharpening a pencil. But not just any pencil, a giant twenty-foot-tall #2 pencil, to be precise.

On a stormy Philadelphia night, an elderly couple entered the lobby of a small hotel and asked for a room. The desk clerk apologized, explaining that they were completely booked. “But I can't send nice folks like you out in the rain at 1:00 AM,” he said. “You can sleep in my room.