A couple of weeks ago, I was in Chicago for a professional meeting of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, where one of the scheduled speakers was Mike Eruzione. Please tell me you know who Mike Eruzione is. Please… Okay, I realize that not everyone is a sports fan, but Eruzione played a huge role in what is certainly one of the greatest moments in sports history. Ever. In 1980, in the midst of the Cold War …
Category: History
Out on the beach today, I saw an old guy sitting in a wheelchair, staring out at the surging ocean. The waves off Daytona Beach were crashing loudly just 50 feet out, but by the time they reached the wheels of his chair they were just harmless bubbles and foam. He sat there for some time, and I wondered what was going through his mind. Likely, he was wondering how it has all come to this – sitting in a …
The point is this: We don’t really own the land. We are given the blessing of calling bits and pieces of it “home” for a while, but it belongs to the creator and to the lives of all who have touched it and worked it and walked it over the years. …
As a writer, I am reminded of something I once heard the late Frank McCourt say at a lecture about writing “Angela’s Ashes”: “Nothing is significant until you make it significant.” …
Here’s what I learned today standing on a beach in Fort Bragg, California: Even if time can’t heal all wounds, it at least can make even the seeming dregs of our lives beautiful. Just add water and an overwhelming force. …
I visited the churchyard in Stoke Poges occasionally to experience the peace, beauty and quiet of both the churchyard and St. Giles Church, part of which dates to the Saxon era. On one visit, this poem emerged, a reflection on the death of my father just a few years before. …
(for the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death, April 21, 1910) This poem recently won first place in the Big River Writing Contest sponsored by Chesterfield Arts and Stages St. Louis. The contest celebrates Mark Twain & the Missouri River Valley region. It is you, the spinner and weaver, we see big and brash and full of life a painter with the finest and sharpest of tools a splendid fool squatting like a tired but ever-watchful sentry on the corner …
Have you experienced moments where that sense of a “ghost” has haunted your mind, your experiences, your feelings of “I am not alone here?” Have you ever tied those moments to real or imagined ancestors? Or to those who lived in your house, worshipped in your church, walked down your street? …
We’re all here because we have been called to be. What we do with that one life is our vocation, our response to the call of God and the echo of generations of those on the road before us. …
Enjoy the Olympics. Cheer on your favorite athletes and rejoice in the competition and the victories. But here’s a more important challenge: Emerge from the Olympics with a better sense of your own call, your own race. Then go run it. …