This is a project born of hope - and a love of great stories, and great storytelling.

Our story begins with Robbie Vorhaus, a leader in the field press relations, a field whose fanciful tales have helped Americans see beauty - and goodness - where they might have otherwise seen only industrial ruin and naked, destructive greed.

Our team - and that's the Flak Magazine team - was introduced to Mr. Vorhaus through a quest to find out who had been sitting on the flak.com domain for the past year and a half. Sure and enough, it was Robbie Vorhaus, well known for the industry-leading philosophizing that has made Vorhaus.com a source of first-rate inspirational essays. The excerpt below is a good example:

"Throughout time, from the first cavemen to Steven Spielberg, from the drafters of The Declaration of Independence to The Beatles, good stories provide a connected universal meaning to our lives," Vorhaus says. Vorhaus has spent much of his adult life applying that belief to the world of business, where, he believes, countless good stories are either untold or poorly told.

This is strong, heady stuff.

Soon afterward, we made a resolution to contact New York City's fabled dream-maker, to ask if we might be able to borrow the Flak.com domain, since it had been idling for quite a while. But when we did, the simple beauty - and respect - of his reply caught us all off guard.

Robbie Vorhaus replied:

thank you, but at the present time, flak.com is not for sale.

rv

But needless to say, our curiosity was piqued. What more could we learn from Robbie Vorhaus? We followed up, curious for more specifics for his vision of flak.com's future.

Robbie Vorhaus replied:

i am not prepared to discuss our use of flak.com although i welcome you to keep in touch.

for your information, i am the ceo of a public relations firm, if that helps any.

Suddenly understanding why the Vorhaus impoundment of the flak.com URL was probably for the best, we left him to his business. But something happened in the aftermath - we got excited about stories, too.

And that's why we helped make "robbievorhaus.com" a reality.

So this site is dedicated to Robbie Vorhaus - and his dream of stories.

Robbie Vorhaus: friend. Father. The CEO of a public relations firm. And a visionary, if that helps any.