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  • Bill Rice 12:56 pm on August 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , education, , mi, schools   

    Bill Rice Running for Flat Rock, MI School Board 

    Bill Rice School Board IconI am running for School Board in my community of Flat Rock, Michigan. My wife and I have been heavily involved in the Flat Rock community ever since we moved to Michigan in early 2004. With three kids it doesn’t take long to find yourself volunteering in everything from little league to school classroom.

    Flat Rock Community FieldsFlat Rock, Michigan is a great little community of around 10,000 people. When I was recruited up from Ohio to serve on the Quicken Loans Leadership Team I had many options of where to live. We visited communities from Birmingham, to Ypsilanti, to Monroe, and of course the more obvious options close to work–Livonia and Novi. All of those cities were very nice and I am sure we would have been happy living in any of them, but when we visited Flat Rock it had a remarkable charm that we immediately fell in love with.

    Flat Rock Community CenterYou see the people who have lived in Flat Rock much longer than I have created a remarkable community. The folks are friendly and they care about their city. They are hard working and have strong family values. The City is active–there is always something going on; a baseball game, a soccer match, a football game, a parade, or a picnic. We have great walking/biking paths, beautiful parks, scenic waterfronts, and state-of-the-art community center. These are the outward things that drew us to Flat Rock.

    Flat Rock High SchoolHowever, as our kids started school we discovered even more hidden treasures–the teachers, the schools, the parents, and most importantly the children.

    Unfortunately, the economy is going to make maintaining the quality of our community and education system challenging. This is what made me proud when several people from the community of Flat Rock asked me to run for the School Board.

    I wait to represent these great people during these challenging times. And I know we will continue to improve on the strong foundation those before me have created.

    If you want to read more visit the Flat Rock School Board website or the Bill Rice for School Board Facebook Fan Page. Feel free to join!

     

    • angelinacook 8:12 am on September 14, 2009 Permalink

      Really nice information. Thanks for sharing…

  • Bill Rice 5:05 am on April 21, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: bethany hamilton, , lou holz, motivation, patrick henry hughes, randy wheeler, tony dungy   

    Enjoy the Game 

    This Sunday I was inspired by a sermon my pastor (Randy Wheeler, Twin Oaks ) gave–”Playing with Gratitude.” As he opened his sermon, he immediately changed the title to “Enjoy the Game,” which is the title I took for this post. Then he opened with a brief clip of Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech to his fans.

    How often do we get wrapped into the “score” of the game and forget the enjoyment of playing it. I bet this is what was going through the mind of Lou Gehrig in his farewell speech when he said:

    “Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”


    Lou Gehrig was reminding us it was not about the score and the championships. It was about the people and doing something you love. I wrote once before about putting love in the game, based on Lou Holtz’s comment, “It is not about the love of the game, but the love in the game.”

    Adversity will happen, it is what you do with the adversity that makes great things. As Randy said, “Focus your attention on what you have left, not on what you’ve lost.”

    So, in hopes of you enjoying the game more I am leaving you with a few inspiring words from those who play with gratitude:

    “Hard work and togetherness. They go hand in hand. You need the hard work because it’s such a tough atmosphere… to win week in and week out. You need togetherness because you don’t always win, and you gotta hang though together.” -Tony Dungy

    “Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.” -Lou Holtz

    “Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid. Courage means you don’t let fear stop you.” -Bethany Hamilton (13 year old surfer and Shark attack survivor)

    “I mean, God made me blind and didn’t give me the ability to walk. I mean, big deal. He gave me the talent to play piano and trumpet and all that good stuff.” -Patrick Henry Hughes (Blind, wheelchair bound musician)

    Enjoy the game, whatever bounce the ball may take, and let the score take care of itself.

     

  • Bill Rice 9:17 am on April 11, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , ,   

    Who Inspires You? 

    I have been running hard this week. Early wake-ups and late shut-downs. Running out of gas…

    So, I popped open my RSS feedreader looking for inspiration (I suppose).

    And, I found it in Chris Brogan’s “Inspiration and Origins“:

    My big point: none of us are originals. It’s okay. And I’ve DEFINITELY done it myself, where I’ve thought something WAS my thought, only to find out that I was synthesizing something I read a few days back, or a conversation I had (Did that famously badly once, to a friend I love, and had to rescind). But if you KNOW you’re going to riff off someone, give a little link love and be done with it. Fair?

    This is who inspires me:

    • Dave Winer: I hate his politics. I often hate the way he treats past or non-friends. But, he has an amazing genius to him. I read every word. I love his pictures on Flickr. He seeds thought and software. He gets user-first design. I wish I knew him better.
    • Stowe Boyd: I love his brevity. Master of 140 character poetry.
    • Seth Godin: A storyteller. Creates simple, short stories that if absorbed yield big results.
    • Joel Spolsky: Hero of the ISV (Independent Software Vendor). Master of effective software development methodology.
    • Twitter: I find more who inspire me everyday.

    Who inspires you?

     

  • Bill Rice 7:29 am on May 18, 2007 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    Opening Your Mouth in Haste or for Malice 

    I was strolling through one of my many old moleskins this morning and got to revisit two of my favorite quotes that I jotted down a few years ago:

    Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. -President Abraham Lincoln

    and

    We suffer the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. -President John F. Kennedy

    Good things to remember the next time it crosses your mind to speak out only in promotion of your own self interest(s).

     

  • Bill Rice 8:35 am on April 2, 2007 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Excuse the Silence 

    I apologize for the silence. Focus on Kaleidico, accelerating the visibility of two new Web properties (http://www.bettercloser.com & http://www.leadbuying.com), and starting up our new “start-up” Church’s marketing team has been consuming all of my personal time–including contribution to Rice’s Riffs.

    The good part is all of the stored up ideas and inspiration that is making it’s way to my draft folder and onto the publish button. 

     

  • Bill Rice 8:41 am on January 7, 2007 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: faith, , religion   

    The Calm of Faith 

    Desmond Tutu explains the great calm faith can put in your life, allowing you to tackle challenge far above your own abilities.

     

  • Bill Rice 10:28 pm on October 14, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , detroit tigers   

    Detroit Tigers Going to the World Series 

    Go Tigers, bring it all home!

     

  • Bill Rice 7:36 am on January 29, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , comments   

    Comments are Back 

    I decided to re-launch comments, since I think I have found a reasonably manageable way to control comment spam. Looking forward to hearing from everyone again!

     

  • Bill Rice 3:48 pm on October 10, 2005 Permalink
    Tags:   

    Marathon in my future? 

    Well the bug has bitten. In a quest to loose my pregnancy weight–come on guys it happen to all of us (Rebecca is now 13 weeks worth of shear joy) — I have recalled the euphoria of running. Almost 17 years ago I called myself a distance runner (nothing more than 10K). I am committing to starting my training for my first ever marathon. I think my debut will be at the Chicago Marathon (mild weather, flat course, and not to far away). Any good advice? I have comments off—frustration with comment spam got the best of me, but emails and trackbacks would be great!

     

  • Bill Rice 9:53 pm on December 18, 2004 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: children, michael jackson, parenting   

    What are Parent’s Thinking 

    What possesses 200 children’s parents to attend a party at the home of Michael Jackson, whom is under a ten count indictment of child molestation.

    Meanwhile, following in the same category of what are parents thinking, Deborah Rowe is trying to reclaim her parental rights. Rights which she gave up in her 1999 divorce of Jackson.

    Is anyone noticing a pattern here? Jackson seems to be a master of manipulating parents into releasing all of their rights and responsibilities to their children and their children’s safety. How does this happen? What is he doing? Have parents lost their sense of responsibility for these precious gifts of God?

    My disgust over this case, the apparent guilt (22,000 pages of discovery, wow!), and the complete irreverence of the accused is beyond comprehension.

     

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