I walked away from the nonprofit sector six months ago, after almost 20 years of pretty intense involvement/engagement. Working with charitable organizations was my non-working, non-family life. (I chaired four boards and the United Way Tocqueville Society, helped create Social Venture Partners Tucson, shut down one organization, tried to start a training institute, and served on many, many committees, task forces, etc. I also raised some money for good causes.)

Why did I walk away? I was tired and, at least in my own mind, had become ineffective. I left with plenty of anxieties about how I would fill my time—enter Mark Rubin Writes—and what would become of my relationships, but I knew for sure it was time

Business books? No thanks. Too many follow the “success in five easy steps” model, filling a few large type pages with bromides. Others are “written” by someone with a big business name—think Jack Welch, Al “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap, and Donald Trump—whose contributions to the book may be large or small. These books often focus on “let me tell you how great I was when” stories, which are usually trite and not especially informative. (Noteworthy, different, and definitely worth reading is Good to Great, along with its successors.)

I ran across The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz—the subtitle is Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers—recently. Mr. Horowitz is a partner in Andreessen Horowitz, a

I heard an amazing TED talk today on Disruptive Leadership. Actually, I heard the very end of a talk by Drew Dudley—I’d never heard of him before—which, I later learned, bears the title Have You Changed Someone’s Life without Realizing It? Then I heard the entirety of a talk by Seth Godin, a rock star in the TED talk and leadership worlds. (Note which talk gets the link.)

Mr. Dudley consults on leadership in Canada. He’s a heavy-set, unimpressive guy with no evident fancy credentials. So what, for his premise and his advice captivated me!

We have made leadership into something bigger than us. We’ve made it into something beyond us. We’ve made it about changing the world.

Leadership

I’m still working on my inequality series, but I take a brief sojourn today to share with you some thoughts from the other side … the Rich Side. Compared to the world population, I’m among the very, very richest people alive (ever); compared to my fellow Americans, not as much!

Nick Hanauer is one of the wealthiest people in America, and almost surely one of 5000 or fewer richest people among the roughly 100 billion people ever born, ever. Rich! Starting with a degree in philosophy—“College need not be a trade school,” says me, a proud liberal arts grad—he’s worth $1,000,000,000 or more. He’s also the author of The Pitchforks are Coming … For Us Plutocrats from the July/August issue

Ms. J and I have been New Yorker subscribers for more than 22 years. We’ve been through or still subscribe to Architectural Digest, The Atlantic, Gourmet, Harpers, New York Review of Books, O, Saveur, Vanity Fair, etc., but the longest running magazine subscription we have, and the seeming constant to which we are attached, is the New Yorker.

Within the last week or so the New Yorker announced changes in its web issue. Here’s A Note to Our Readers from the July 28 issue. And the really big deal? The paywall has been lifted for what appears to be an undefined period of time which will end before December 31, 2014. I believe the whole archive, from forever since 1923,

One stinker of a movie! Really, really, really awful!!!

I saw Dinesh D’Souza’s America:  Imagine the World without Her on Sunday afternoon. I went with very low expectations. They were not met.

Mr. D’Souza’s film starts off oddly, with a recreated Revolutionary War battle scene involving George Washington. General Washington gets shot and dies, allowing for the conceit that the world won’t have America. (No way to win without General Washington. Really?)

We see the erasure of Mt. Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, the Iwo Jima Memorial, and maybe one other monument. The narration, during the removal of the Iwo Jima Memorial, mentions what might have happened if Hitler had a nuclear weapon. Uh, sorry, and I

I’ll be a contestant at the 3^rd annual Stand Up for Education Celebrity Spelling Bee on Friday, August 8. The bee starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Temple of Music and Art. Ticket info is here. Proceeds help Tucson Unified School District students through the Education Enrichment Foundation, and is sponsored by The Sakin Foundation.

By the by, I am a 3x participant, and have the runner-up trophy from year one. (Never mind about last year!) We—contestants and the audience—all have a good time in a very relaxed setting, and no cause is better than public education!

Blogger success depends on picking the right battles. Write “What is a Will” or “Powers of Attorney.” Sure, although very few people read your posts. Food is always safe … so long as you’re not too assertive about whose pizza is best. Even inequality and Hobby Lobby seem to be mostly non-controversial. (We’ll see how my review of the Dinesh D’Souza movie goes; watching it today at 2:10; stay tuned.)

I’ve been cautious about commenting on Debra Harrell. She’s the South Carolina mom who works at McDonalds—yes, Ed Gillespie, former RNC Chair and candidate for the U.S. Senate from Virginia, grown-ups do have minimum wage jobs and try to support families, and they don’t just use the money for drinking