Last month, I finished my blog with lyrics designed to encourage parents to teach their children to grow up to be entrepreneurs. Frankly, I was surprised by the response. Within minutes after publishing it on social media, I was inundated with hundreds of messages from readers (O.K., so I may have rounded up a bit). Some offered to buy me a one-way ticket to Nashville; others suggested I keep my day job and that my momma should have read more Dr. Seuss to me as a child. Taking the life coach suggestions out of the mix, what I found interesting was that most people who took the time to write wanted me to mention that the arts are an essential component of any economic development strategy and that it also plays an important role in entrepreneurship.

The first known New Year’s resolutions for bettering oneself started in the 1780’s and usually were of the pious nature. But in 1943, the great American folksinger, Woody Guthrie wrote a 33 item list of resolutions called “New Year’s Rulin’s”. They included practical, personal humorous and hopeful things for him to do that would make him a better father, husband, and human being. To this day, seventy years later, his resolutions have weathered the test of time as “rulin’s” that everyone can live by.
I am no Woody Guthrie, but I thought I would look at last year’s resolutions to see if they still made sense for practitioners to continue them for 2016.

As a young boy, I never liked libraries. It wasn’t because of the musty smell of a thrift store or the scowling librarian who insisted on total silence or because I could never figure out the Dewey Decimal System or the bad jokes like  How do librarians file melted...