Writing-Tip Wednesday: A Special Post on Narrative and Creativity
This is a somewhat longer post than usual, but I hope you’ll read through it. It is the text of an address I gave a few years ago at our local high school to mark the Day of the Book (April 23) in...
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Photo Friday: One Foot Out The Door…
Another week gone by. I swear, I don’t where the time is going right now. I can keep track of the days, but the weeks… Anyway, for today’s Photo Friday post, I offer you a set of images captured...
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Monday Musings: 29 Years Ago This Weekend
It’s Memorial Day – and, it seems to me, a particularly somber one at that – and so I won’t write too much for today’s Musings. But this is also a very significant weekend in my life. Twenty-nine...
View ArticleMonday Musings: On Race, Privilege, and Uncomfortable Conversations
As I white progressive, I have struggled with how to write this post. I know that the white progressives in my audience will struggle to read and process it. All of this, I believe, is to the good....
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Photo Friday: Climbing Color
Another week coming to a close and another photo to send you off into your weekend. We have grown accustomed to the annual rhythms of Nancy’s gorgeous flower garden, and this time of June is when her...
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Monday Musings: Challenging Ourselves
I will admit that my first impulse for this Monday Musings post was to write about something other than race and politics. Not because those things aren’t still on my mind. They consume me. But rather...
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Photo Friday: From the Archives — Beach Photos
Every now and then, a week comes along when I haven’t had a chance to take my camera out for photos. This week has been rather plain weather-wise. Some flowers are blooming in Nancy’s garden, but...
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Monday Musings: Thinking of My Dad on Father’s Day
I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about my Dad for today’s post, and I find myself struggling. I’m surprised, because it’s not for a lack of affection or great stories. I loved my father and...
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Photo Friday: Nancy’s Garden
Once again, the weekend is upon us. Here on the Cumberland Plateau, we have moved decisively into the hot, humid days of summer. Warm nights, steamy days, afternoon thunderstorms, the rise and fall of...
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Monday Musings: The Day I Fell In Love With Baseball
I was seven years old, the youngest child by far in a household that revered baseball. I didn’t remember the exact date, but today we live in an age of marvels, and all I had to do was Google a few key...
View ArticleWriting-Tip Wednesday: Befriend Your Characters…And Be-Character Your Friends
This will be a relatively brief Writing-Tip Wednesday post. It’s a lazy, hot, stormy day and I’m feeling, well, lazy and hot… So far this year, I have used my Wednesday posts to offer advice about any...
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Photo Friday: Silvery Checkerspot
Another crazy week gone by, another month in the books for 2020: the year that lasted forever and yet somehow flew by. I honestly don’t understand what has happened to my sense of time. This butterfly...
View ArticleMonday Musings: Booze. Yes, That’s Right… Booze
I’m not going to lie to you. Nancy and I enjoy a nice bottle of wine. We like Scotch, too. And Bourbon. And tequila, rum, rye, Irish whiskey, beer, and cider. Nancy enjoys a nice Port. I like gin. But...
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Photo Friday: Fifteen Years Ago Today
Today’s Photo Friday images were captured exactly fifteen years ago — August 7, 2005. We had moved to Australia for the year only days before, leaving the States on August 1 and arriving at Sydney...
View ArticleMonday Musings: How Are You Doing? How Am I Doing?
How are you holding up? No, really. I’m asking. I’m asking you, and I’ve been asking myself over the past week or so. This is a remarkable time we’re living through. Obviously, I don’t mean remarkable...
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Photo Friday: Another Butterfly — Appalachian Brown
Welcome to this week’s Photo Friday post. Early in the summer, Nancy and I lamented the lack of butterflies in her garden, at least relative to recent years. Well, no more. The past few weeks have been...
View ArticleMonday Musings: Lightning Round
Sometimes my Monday Musings posts are pretty easy to write – a topic comes to me and I riff on it or rant about it. Other times, nothing comes to me at all, and just getting started is next to...
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Photo Friday: Three Years Ago This Weekend
Three years ago this weekend, we were in Massachusetts at Wachusett Meadow, a Massachusetts Audubon Society wildlife sanctuary, for a memorial service honoring my brother, Bill. This glorious site was...
View ArticleMonday Musings: Covid, Grief, and Lies
And yet, his first act upon returning to the White House was to make a Mussolini-esque appearance on his veranda and ostentatiously remove his face mask. Last week’s Photo Friday post was about my...
View ArticleMonday Musings: How I’m Coping
I’ve written about politics and social issues a lot in recent weeks, and I want desperately to avoid doing so again this week. It’s not that I don’t have more to say. I do. But I feel as though I’d be...
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