
Watch This
Our fall break adventure was so lovely, but it was ending. Time to go home. There were so many memories packed into just a couple of sunny days—a crackling campfire with sausages roasting, boat rides in a wind so vigorous that the lake’s…

In the Mind of a Kid
In the course of everyday family life involving school-aged children, schedule demands often dictate the shape and form of interaction. Conversation may feel less like an in-depth news interview and more like a quick declaration aimed at a…

The New Neighborly
There were many reasons, some of them deeply understood by those who honored the restrictions of the COVID era but squirmed with restless desire for change. Whatever those reasons were, the day arrived some months back when the face looking…

After the Longest Year
He raised his long, gangly arms instinctively, then dropped them again, uncertain. The study in his light blue eyes was tentative, watchful, hopeful, but unsure.
I looked right into them, longing to restore his comfort, trying to beam away…

We Are What We Are (and Ain’t What We Ain’t)
When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn.
And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg…

Losing it, at last?
It’s been such a long road. Right? For a year we’ve struggled to hold it together in a world we hardly recognize, some days. Then, Mother Nature cackles hysterically as she adds on her own cosmic cataclysm: The Polar Vortex. Who…

Old Spice (Not That Kind)
If you ever feel compelled to examine your lifestyle in one rapid, unmerciful snapshot---a picture that unveils your purchasing habits, your eating patterns, your organizational skills, your housecleaning talents, your virtues or vices as a…

The Last, Best Gift
In a recent interview about an upcoming movie he produced, Oscar winner Denzel Washington was asked about the support he provided early in the career of the brilliant young actor Chadwick Boseman, who died earlier this year. Boseman, a central…

Two Hops for Hope
A few days after United States voters elected a new president and America’s first female vice president, I sat on a stool at the counter in my daughter’s kitchen, chopping with my granddaughter.
Her mother was working up a beautiful breakfast…