“Please Do Not Touch the Fence. You’ll Get Zapped. And the Goats Will Laugh at You.”

That is the advice the banner gives. Standing behind that banner, and a little to the right, are a group of goats who are clearly encouraging you to touch the fence. You can see it in their eyes and in the smirk at the corners of their little goat mouths.

All of that was in the photo that arrived with a text from my friend, Dan, along with this note.

“We have a new side-venture that uses goats as a land clearing crew for hire, and recently have set up a mobile cam to keep an eye on them while on the job.”

Although I do make up things for a living, I promise I am not making this up.

Twenty-three minutes later, I received another text from another friend.

“I have a problem. Do you know in ‘Peter Pan’ where Peter loses his shadow. I’ve seem to have lost my shadow. I used to be a very creative person. Somewhere over the last 5 years due to life’s circumstances I seem to have misplaced my creativity. I feel almost certain that I began giving out far more than I was taking in. I lost my wonder and my awe for the world. I’m not learning and growing, and it has caught up with me. If you have any insight or direction, it would be truly helpful. Thanks friend.”

I responded, “Is this for real?”

My friend said, “Yes, for real.”

I said, “You need to have a place to escape. A good fiction book can take you into an alternate reality where you don’t have any obligations, or people who need something from you. Buy a copy of ‘Cryptonomicon’ by Neal Stephenson. You’ll meet a guy named Shaftoe. I’ve known him for more than 20 years.”

My friend said, “Thank you. I’ll tell him you said hello.”

Both of those texts arrived, “Ping… Ping,” shortly after I posted the second restaurant review I have ever written.

Heads Up, friends!

Real pizza ovens. Real flames. Real char on the bottom of the crazy-good crust. You’ll never be the same. This pizza is SO GOOD that it’s illegal in 7 states and under investigation in 12 more. So good you’ll walk outside and look up at the stars and howl at the moon like a werewolf.

I have reviewed very few things during my 67 years because, frankly, there just aren’t that many things out there that are really remarkable. DeSano Pizzeria Napoletana is remarkable. Not the atmosphere. It’s plain, plain, plain. Nothing special. But the food is MAGNIFICO! (On Slaughter just west of Mopac, in front of Alamo Drafthouse.) And the people who work there are definitely part of the magic. They are excited about what they are doing, and their excitement is contagious.

We ordered a spinach salad. Best spinach salad I’ve ever had! I mean that. And big enough for two people. I looked at my wife (We’re having our 50th anniversary next year) and I said, “These people are buying ONLY the very best ingredients. They’s spending their money on the food, not the decor.” (We were both smiling so hard for so long that my face aches.)

Order the Verdura pizza. Be aware that it does NOT have marinara sauce. You’ll be throwing rocks at marinara sauce after you’ve eaten the Verdura. It’s really simple: perfect crust, extraordinary cheese, fresh spinach, roasted tomatoes, roasted garlic. HEAVEN.

Or you can go old school and get a pizza...

I’ve been studying AI audio so that I can complete a couple of personal projects.

The first project is an audiobook containing 18 chapters that span 75 fascinating minutes. Your MondayMorningMemo on December 22nd will contain the following invitation:

The tribe encircling the campfire is about to listen to a group of old men tell “The Story of the Long Ago.” You can listen, too, if you like.

That invitation will be coming your way on December 22nd.

The other project that I will be launching in January or February is an ongoing weekly series called “The Great Writer Series.”

My goal is simple: I want to reawaken the world to the power of well-told stories. That’s it. I have no other agenda. I just want people to remember what great writing sounds like.

Today I’ve got 3 different samples for you. Each is about 2 minutes long. Click the hyperlinks if you want to hear my people read to you.

This first one is an obscure poem by Robert Frost called, “The Bearer of Evil Tidings.”

I have asked Amir Amani to read it.

The bearer of evil tidings,

When he was halfway there,

Remembered that evil tidings

Were a dangerous thing to bear.

So when he came to the parting

Where one road led to the throne

And one went off to the mountains

And into the wild unknown,

He took the one to the mountains.

He ran through the Vale of Cashmere,

He ran through the rhododendrons

Till he came to the land of Pamir.

And there in a precipice valley

A girl of his age he met

Took him home to her bower,

Or he might be running yet.

She taught him her tribe’s religion:

How ages and ages since

A princess en route to China

To marry a Persian prince

Had been found with child; and her army

Had come to a troubled halt.

And though a god was the father

And nobody else at fault,

It had seemed discreet to remain there

And neither go on nor back.

So they stayed and declared a village

There in the land of the Yak.

And the child that came of the princess

Established a royal line,

And his mandates were given heed to

Because he was born divine.

And that was why there were people

On one Himalayan shelf;

And the bearer of evil tidings

Decided to stay there himself.

At least he had this in common

With the race he chose to adopt:

They had both of them had their reasons

For stopping where they had stopped.

As for evil tidings,

Belshazzar’s overthrow,

Why hurry to tell Belshazzar

What soon enough he would know?

Amor Towles will be our second example. He has given us literary wonders like “A Gentleman in Moscow” and “The Lincoln Highway.” This excerpt is from page 302 of his novel, “Table for Two.”

Big Bob Bigelow will read it to us.

Eve could not pinpoint when her dislike for lists began, but it must have been around the time she was twelve. It was in the basement of St. Mary’s, where she and the rest of the sixth graders were charged with memorizing the Ten Commandments.

“Thou shalt not this.” 


“Thou shalt not that.” 


“And thou shalt not the other thing.”

Then there was the list painted on the sign at the country club pool to remind the children there would be…

“No Running.” 


“No Diving.” 


“No Splashing.”

But most important was her mother’s ever-expanding list of what a young lady should not do. Like put her elbows on the table, or speak with her mouth full, or slug her...

A society grows great when old people plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.

Trees that live long do not grow quickly.

It requires patience to grow a tree that will endure.

The root word of patience is the Latin verb “pati.” It means “to suffer” or “to endure.”

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.

The second-best time is today.

A person with a purpose is a person on a mission.

A person on a mission is a person with a passion.

Passion is another strange word. It does not mean what you think it does.

The English word “passion” comes directly from the Latin noun “passio” which means “suffering.” If you have “compassion” for someone, it means that you are “suffering with them.” Every Easter we hear about “The Passion of the Christ.”

Patience and passion share the same Latin root. Pati is the noun. Passio is the verb. And they both mean suffering.

A person with a passion has a vision of the future for which they are willing to suffer.

The builder of a brand is the planter of a tree: a visionary missionary.

And their principal tool is storytelling.

Stories build personalities.

Stories build people.

Storytelling is world-building.

Stories build cultures.

Stories build brands that endure.

Be careful what you say.

A word of affirmation is a spark that can become a flame that will illuminate a person’s path into the future. A word of discord, disdain, or disharmony can quench that vital spark.

We carry the power of light and darkness in our tongues.

Be careful what you say.

You can build a brand with your stories.

You can build people, too.

Say the right things and you can build a life.

You can speak happiness.

You can build happiness.

Say the right things and you can live happiness.

Speak it. Build it.

Say it. Live it.

Roy H. Williams

PS “It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.”

– John Steinbeck

Eveline Shen is an operating-systems programmer — not for computers, but for people.

Eveline helps leaders rewire the limiting patterns that hold them back — including perfectionism, people-pleasing, and self-sacrifice — and replace them with what she calls “courageous” actions. Her clients are primarily organizations advocating for social change, many of whom instinctively view business leaders and entrepreneurs not as partners, but as adversaries. But as Eveline explains to roving reporter Rotbart, everyone wins when they make a more deliberate effort to communicate with, understand, and learn from one another. It’s MondayMorningRadio.com

You can hear Roy read today’s MMMemo by clicking the “listen” link at the top of the page. Or you can hear it wailed by a tribal elder who is teaching the tribe around a campfire. Just click the play bar below. Crazy? Absolutely. – Indy Beagle