Tag: history

Reading Roundup 2023

The most impactful book to me in 2023 was one I wrote with my wife Carol and our youngest son. Stepping Stones: our pathfinding adventures with Asperger’s is our growth journey from accepting “that’s just Philip,” to obtaining a diagnosis on the autism spectrum, to learning how to cope and still succeed. From the distinct advantage of countless wayfinding steps more than 20 years in the making, we offer pragmatic guidance, self-help encouragement, and real reason for hope to all parents and caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder. tinyurl.com/4c6bxw4s

I try to read widely, for both intellectual development and entertainment. Not all my choices pertain directly to my work, or even my personal interests. Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, recommended to me by my physicist son, wasn’t one I’d have chosen on my own, but it did augment what I learned from the Oppenheimer film this year. Even fiction, when it represents a divergent point of view, can add to my useful stores of knowledge. Ilana’s Love, a book by my friend (which, despite the inference from its title is not a romance novel—a genre I usually do ignore!), furnished a thought-provoking perspective on relationships.

I re-read all 4,100 pages of the 7-volume Harry Potter series, (the first published 26 years ago!) enjoying many details and nuances not found in the films. J.K. Rowling is a master of originality, dialog, character development, and plot complexities.

Is it just me, or are subtitles are getting longer all the time? But then there’s John Grisham, whose obviously successful title formula is: “The __.” Nonetheless, the subtitles do help me better remember the content afterward.

The complete list of those I’ve read last year follows, but here are my personal citations for those I’ve found most captivating, memorable, or practical in the following categories:

Work-related: Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need
Biography: Leonardo da Vinci
History: The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush
Science: An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
Nonfiction: Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
Business: Ice Cream Social: The Struggle for the Soul of Ben & Jerry’s
Spiritual: Experiencing God Day by Day
Fiction: What Rose Forgot, and The Man Who Died Twice

  1. Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?, Philip Yancy
  2. Storytizing: What’s Next After Advertising? Bob Pearson
  3. The Klondike Fever: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush, Pierre Berton
  4. The Freedom of Self-Forgiveness: The Path to True Christian Joy, Timothy Keller
  5. A Wild Idea: How the Environmental Movement Tamed the Adirondacks, Brad Edmundson
  6. Black Ice, Brad Thor
  7. The Case For Easter: A Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection, Lee Strobel
  8. The Cabinet of Dr. Leng, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  9. Seeing Red, Sandra Brown
  10. Jerks at Work: How to Deal with People Problems and Problem People, Ken Lloyd
  11. Born a Yankee, Grace Carstens
  12. Missing Witness, Gordon Campbell
  13. Ilana’s Love, Laurel West
  14. Relic, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  15. Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, Piers Paul Read
  16. Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, Nando Parrado with Vince Rause
  17. The Book of Lies, Brad Meltzner
  18. The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World, Ken Alder
  19. Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel
  20. Reliquary, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  21. What Rose Forgot, Nevada Barr
  22. Ice Cream Social: The Struggle for the Soul of Ben & Jerry’s, Brad Edmundson
  23. The Book of Fate, Brad Meltzner
  24. Once Upon a Wardrobe, Patti Callahan
  25. Becoming Mrs. Lewis, Patti Callahan
  26. What’s Wrong With Me? A Journal of Emotional Healing in a Broken World, Royce Alan Alford
  27. Leonardo da Vinci, Wallter Isaacson
  28. Stepping Stones: Our pathfinding adventure with Asperger’s, Tim and Carol Herd with Philip Herd
  29. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, Ed Yong
  30. The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod, Henry Beston
  31. 13½, Nevada Barr
  32. Love Me, Garrison Keillor
  33. Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, Alex Wellerstein
  34. Address Unknown, Katherine Kressman Taylor
  35. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan
  36. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer
  37. The Judge’s List, John Grisham
  38. The Troop, Nick Cutter
  39. The Whistler, John Grisham
  40. The Reckoning, John Grisham
  41. What Was Rescued, Jane Bailey
  42. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
  43. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling
  44. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
  45. Molly’s Pilgrim, Barba Cohen
  46. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
  47. The Bullet That Missed, Richard Osman
  48. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
  49. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
  50. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
  51. Getting Through the Tough Stuff: It’s Always Something, Charles Swindoll
  52. Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need, Todd Henry
  53. The Man Who Died Twice, Richard Osman
  54. Experiencing God Day by Day, Henry Blackaby and Richard Blackaby

Wined & Dined

in the Cradle of Liberty’s most iconic places and spaces

This past week I had the honor to be included in a bit of wining and dining by the City of Philadelphia making its pitch to host my profession’s national conference in 2026. That will be the year of our nation’s 250th Anniversary, and the Cradle of Liberty was polishing its shine for us.

My colleagues and I were treated to whirlwind of visits to the convention center, hotels, and venues capable of hosting several hundred to eight thousand people during what would be a spectacular week full of professional development, learning, and networking.

From the thirty-third floor of the Loews Hotel we gaped at the Philly’s distinctive skyline and riverfront. We toured the expansive Pennsylvania Convention Center, inhabiting the old station of the Reading Railroad (of Monopoly fame). Reflective of that legacy, its grand entrance area depicts the iron rails still leading to the stopblock columns at the end of the line.

We swung by Love Park, Boathouse Row, and the Eakins Oval, where we met the artist painting a 450’ x 75’ mural about Ben Franklin and his kite on a sometimes-parking lot. We lunched at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Its most popular sculpture of Rocky Balboa, now moved to the bottom side of its iconic front stairway, still draws 200,000 people a year.

We toured the Tustin Rec Center, where its new basketball court memorializes Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna. Tustin’s playground is where the former Los Angeles Lakers star frequented when he was younger, and the refurbished court is now making the sport more accessible to children in a safe environment.

We skipped through the Reading Terminal Market (an eclectic and busy gastronomic bazaar of more than 80 merchants), dropped in at the Barnes Museum, called on Ben at the Franklin Institute, and viewed the Fels Planetarium.

But my most memorable moment was a well-appointed evening meal in the National Constitution Center with a grand, inspirational view of Independence Mall. Facing “America’s Most Historic Square Mile” containing Independence Hall, The Liberty Bell, Franklin Court, Declaration House, and many more historically significant sites, I was both enthralled and grateful just to be there.

The abandoned ruins of Scotia Barrens

of pastimes and past times

The other day we took a short trip to the abandoned ruins of nearby Scotia Barrens, tucked away in the mixed hardwoods of central Pennsylvania. We’d heard about them, but didn’t know anything of their origins.

Our directions were to enter at the gate (which one?) and stay to the left at each branch of the trail. We apparently lucked out on our first pick, and found ruins within a few minutes of walking in the early spring woods.

Our first discovery was the concrete block outline of an old square foundation, that still had some duffy steps cut down into the ground in what may have been a cold cellar. But there were few clues to anything else of its history.

But soon, the brightly-glaring graffiti on a concrete structure caught our eyes through the green-tinted brown: an odd-shaped, rusting, reinforced concrete collection of columns and plates with an interior pit, leading to what appeared to be an old spillway.

On either side of this structure were two tall narrow berms that were higher than the top of the structure. Could it be a railway line that permitted an emptying of hopper cars? Yet if there had been a trestle, there was no trace of it. The berms sloped down on either side to the valley floor in 200 feet or so. Clearly they were manmade, and, judging from the size of the trees growing on them, was abandoned some 60-75 years ago.

Leading a hundred feet in the opposite direction from the incongruous concrete skeleton were parallel lines of squat, square posts, each bristling with a stubby, rusty rebar or two. At the other end of this dotted line was another superstructure, likewise decorated in lively graffiti and mystery.

As we headed back to the gate, we met an old man wearing a blaze orange sweatshirt and a white beard scraggling all the way down his neck, and his border collie named Duke. We asked him if he knew anything about the ruins, and he declared he sure did!

His is the only house on the nearby road, we learned. Duke thinks the whole property is his backyard, and the old man allowed that he lets him believe it.

He told us that the structures were from the 1940s when the place was open-mined for iron ore, and washed out of the ground. The berms were to retain mud from flooding away. But the earlier industry was logging to create charcoal the nearby Centre Furnace. In the 1880s, Andrew Carnegie purchased the land and was the first to employ steam shovels to dig an open pit for ore. (“Did you see the pit?” No? Well, follow me!”) Carnegie sold out to a local company in 1890, who eventually shut down operations in 1909. And within a few years, Scotia became a ghost town. Except for its brief respite in the 1940s to meet the World War 2 demand for iron, its days of being reclaimed by nature have continued ever since. The land is now preserved as Pennsylvania State Game Lands 176.

Klondike Fever!

the life and death of the last great gold rush

This fascinating book about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1899 was written by Pierre Barton, the son of parents who were there at the time, although they found no gold themselves. It is both first-rate history and first-rate entertainment. So frenzied was the dash for gold and so scant the information about the rugged mountain wilderness and its immobilizing winter cold, that the rush for richness became a kind of fabulous, entrepreneurial madness.

In his conclusion, Barton writes, “The great majority of those who took part in the stampede were young mean in their mid-twenties. It is this youth that helps explain the impetuosity of the gold rush. The Argonauts were still young enough to want to search for something even though they did not exactly know what is was they were searching for. They were still young enough to be gullible, young enough to be foolhardy, young enough to be optimistic, young enough to be carefree. They were young enough to see a mountain and climb it, though they had never climbed a mountain before; to see a glacier and cross it without a second thought; to build a boat and tempt a rapid, though they had never wielded an ax or paddle in their lives. The Klondike was their Everest; they sought to reach it because it was there.”

So many fascinating, incredible, one-of-a-kind tales of endurance, foolishness, perseverance, luck, agony, hardship, honor, and deceit you’ll never find anywhere else. I highly recommend it!

2022 Reading Roundup

I have a standing personal rule: Always Bring a Book!

Whenever I break it, I’m inevitably sorry.

Books are important to me: in them I find distilled wisdom, practical instruction, and engrossing entertainment. They customize my intellectual, psychological, and spiritual development; they build my technical and relational capabilities; they expand my leadership and service; they refresh my mind and spirit.

In 2022, my wife, son and I wrote a book about the challenges, lessons and adventures in raising our youngest son with Asperger’s Syndrome, which will be published this coming year.

I try to read widely. Not all my choices pertain directly to my job, or my personal interests. Invisible Women opened my eyes and mind to systemic male-based data bias. Even fiction, when it represents a divergent point of view, can add to my useful stores of knowledge. Case in point for this year: The Personal Librarian, based on the true story of a black woman passing as a white woman in the employ of J.P. Morgan in the early 1900s.

The complete list follows, but here are my personal citations for those I’ve found most captivating, memorable, or practical in the following categories:

Work-related: CEO Excellence; Critical Thinking; Extreme Ownership
Biography: Frederick Douglass; An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
History: The First Conspiracy: The Plot to Kill George Washington
Iconic/Classic: Travels with Charley in Search of America
Fiction: Where the Crawdads Sing; West With Giraffes; The Personal Librarian
Science: Humble Pi; Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds
Societal: Invisible Women; Untrustworthy
Thriller: Boar Island
Humor: The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach
Spiritual: The Hole in Our Gospel
by personal friends: Super Powers and Secrets; Crushed and Marred; Stand; People Connectors

  1. Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, Ed Catmull
  2. Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World, Matt Parker
  3. Super Powers and Secrets: A Year of Holidays, H. Kaeppel
  4. Crushed and Marred: A Year of Milestones, H. Kaepple
  5. Stand: A Year of Firsts, H. Kaeppel
  6. The Itty Bitty Book of Nonprofit Fundraising, Jayme Dingler
  7. The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected, Nik Ripken
  8. Golden Girl, Elin Hilderbrand
  9. Flashback, Nevada Barr
  10. Trees & Forests of America, Tim Palmer
  11. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, David W. Blight
  12. Sold on a Monday, Kristina McMorris
  13. The Hole in Our Gospel, Richard Stearns
  14. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character, Richard P. Feynman
  15. The Gift of Asperger’s: One Family’s Persevering Adventure of Hope, Humor, Insight and Inspiration, Tim Herd, Carol Herd, and Philip Herd
  16. A Time for Mercy, John Grisham
  17. Historic Acadia National Park: The Stories Behind One of America’s Great Treasures, Catherine Schmidt
  18. Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the World, Ian Wright
  19. Girl Behind the Red Rope, Ted Dekker and Rachelle Dekker
  20. Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age, W. Bernard Carlson
  21. The Escape Artist, Brad Melzner
  22. People Connectors: Elevating Communication for Educators, Terry Sumerlin
  23. The First Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, Brad Meltzner and Josh Mensch
  24. We Seven, by the Astronauts Themselves, Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard, Slayton
  25. What Happened to the Bennetts, Lisa Scottoline
  26. The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach, Professor Peter Schickele
  27. Wait, What? And Life’s Other Essential Questions, James Ryan
  28. High Country, Nevada Barr
  29. Hard Truth, Nevada Barr
  30. Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, Volker Ullrich
  31. Endangered Species, Nevada Barr
  32. An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Everything, Col. Chris Hadfield
  33. Blind Descent, Nevada Barr
  34. Immanuel’s Veins, Ted Dekker
  35. Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction – and Get it Published, Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato
  36. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez
  37. The Lost Key, Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison
  38. Burn, Ted Dekker and Erin Healy
  39. The Whole Town’s Talking, Fannie Flagg
  40. Acadia National Park, Bob Thayer
  41. Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
  42. CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders From the Rest, Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra
  43. Burn, Nevada Barr
  44. The Murder of King Tut, James Patterson and Martin Dugard
  45. Thinking in Pictures: My Life With Autism, Temple Grandin
  46. Calling All Minds: How to Think and Create Like and Inventor, Temple Grandin
  47. The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People, John Ortberg
  48. Boar Island, Nevada Barr
  49. Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life, Richard Paul and Linda Elder
  50. The Rope, Nevada Barr
  51. A Man Called Ova, Fredrik Backman
  52. The Personal Librarian, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
  53. Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
  54. Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community, Bonnie Kristian
  55. Send: Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus, Heather Holleman and Ashley Holleman
  56. West With Giraffes, Lynda Rutledge
  57. Dr. Rick Will See You Now: A Guide to Unbecoming Your Parents, Dr. Rick
  58. Travels With Charley in Search of America, John Steinbeck
  59. The Business of Heaven, C.S. Lewis
  60. My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers

A slater’s legacy

remembering the day the photographer came to town in 1903

It appears my great-grandpa Edwin Henry Herd (1869-1949) is still in the public eye!

In October this year, I was honored to speak for Anniversary Sunday at the church in which I grew up, and which was a Herd haven since Edwin served as its Lay Leader. In fact, several of my ancestors have their names memorialized in the stained glass windows! (Shown: William and Elizabeth Herd, Edwin’s parents, who had been born in the 1830s in Devon, England.)

I spoke on Our Spiritual Heritage, and was able to weave in some of the old family stories and photos associated with the history of Chapman Quarries United Methodist Church.

One of them is this portrait of the Chapman Slate Co. work crew, dated October 16, 1903, which includes Edwin, just above center, wearing a round hat with the number 22 written on his chest. Just to the above left is his 11-year-old son Hambly, one of my great uncles. (Young boys often worked the quarries in those days as “hollibobbers” to swab the slate with a stick wrapped in burlap to keep it wet so it could split easier, and to rework poorer quality slate into smaller pieces to gain experience.)

After church that day, we went out to eat at the Town & Country Restaurant in nearby Bath Borough, and found we were seated underneath a framed picture of that exact same image!

And now the other day, as I was catching up on some periodical reading at work, I discovered this page in the Pennsylvania Borough News magazine on little Chapman Borough, featuring yet again that same image from the day the photographer came to town!

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