MotorcyclingyogiG

09/23/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14rnrjnxfjw/?mibextid=wwXIfr

We're thrilled to share the cover for Speaking as Hospitality: It's Not About You by Gregory A. Ormson.

Most speaking advice focuses on technique. Greg argues the real challenge is emotional, and that shifting from performer to host changes everything for the speaker and the audience alike.

Publishing January 12 under The Forge, a Sūtra House imprint. Pre-order here: https://www.sutrahouse.com/books/cms0xeymw002kjz04ceavbcf1

09/17/2026

Speaking as Hospitality

My new book, Speaking as Hospitality, begins with a turning; it asks what happens when we stop trying to impress and focus on welcoming....

Who will benefit from this book? People who speak as part of the job and dread it: managers, clinicians, teachers, clergy, consultants, anyone facing a room they did not ask for. Ormson draws on decades of speaking in classrooms, sanctuaries, and public venues, as the book moves from principle to pr...

09/10/2026

See the lineup card as the hermit crab shell for "Team Flame in the Desert," here:
https://thetwinbill.com/team-flame/

08/30/2026

Northern notes, music, photos, and reflections of a summer tour to Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.

The people, places, books, literature, theatre, and memory that work together, like a wind-up Victrola, to create memories. Thanks to Kathleen Heideman who wound up her Victrola and put a big record on it. Ken Baker and I listened to it at Kathleen’s cabin on the Yellow Dog Plains in Marquette, Co...

08/22/2026

Visiting Estivant Pines Sanctuary in Copper Harbor, Michigan looking for old-growth trees . . . finding something larger: generations, inheritance, and the ground we're given to stand upon. For a while, we stand together

Think of that seed opening to the sun as history unfolded around it; before Wisconsin had its name, before my ancestors had imagined coming here. We touched that history in the bark, feeling its heft, its weight, its gravity. Much like the love between fathers and sons or mothers and daughters, immigrant journeys, and the battles between sanctuary and sawmill, survival is precarious....

I’m a grandfather now too, but my grandfatherhood will occupy a small portion of time. Some white pine grandfathers have been there a long time, beginning as seedlings nearly five centuries ago. One tree-ring display at the Estivant Sanctuary traces the life of a pine back about 470 years to a see...

08/16/2026

A song from The Old Style Place. It doesn't mean that a man's path must include marrying a "girl," neither does it mean a "girl" needs to marry a man for fulfillment. Remember, this Cat Stevens lyric is from a long time ago, what seems like a lifetime back.

08/09/2026

Have you ever been hooked by a fishing lure deep in your skin. I mean really hooked, with the sharp barbed points of a casting lure? There are other things that hook us too.

I am hooked by memories there, not the stuff because the stuff is unimpressive. But I go there to renew my memories of my late brother Tim, my parents, and others that have graced the cabin floor.

08/09/2026

Yes

08/05/2026

Halleluijah in a Northern Wisconsin Bar is the minor chord and the major lift; not from booze but the renditions we live with in song and story.

Halleluijah in a Northern Wisconsin Bar is the minor chord and the major lift; not from booze but the renditions we live with in song and story.

07/31/2026

Speaking as Hospitality

A central premise in my forthcoming book is that speaking is a covenant of hospitality. I maintain the connection between audience and speaker is the key to effective speech. That covenant is held together by readiness. An audience is ready and they show up to hear, but the effective speaker will be more ready and they will invite connection and will prepare the place and the atmosphere. I have come to think of emotional, intellectual, and hospitality quotients as the “quotients of readiness.” These quotients enable the speaker to open up meaningful communication....

If you want to know how the conditions of hospitality set up a memorable meeting and speech, look no further than my example of Grandma Grace. Hospitaity make syour speech an act of attention and service. You cannot do better. Grandma Grace taught me this.