Joab, the War-Crazed Traditionalist
Joab is David’s nephew. As I’ve written him, he’s a couple of years older than his uncle, David, which is an example of me stealing from life: in my mother’s family, the oldest nephew is older than his...
View ArticleDeep and Silly
It was at one of those sunny Fuller Park play dates. We were gathered at the upper part of the park, since our normal meeting time often coincided with the mowing schedule. Tash came striding up the...
View ArticleWe Are A Mixed Bag, All of Us
I recently returned from a family reunion that left me with a lot to think about. Yes, we caught up with the present of our lives, we watched the kids form their own little societies, we cooed over the...
View ArticleThe story is the heirloom
I have a folder called Family Stories. It started with my Oma’s funeral. I’d gone around that day, asking people to remember the sayings she had, “You haff to laff,” “It comes handy-in,” “It’s an...
View ArticleBig City Sidewalk
I’ve got a fun guest post up today at the always interesting You Are Here Stories — a site for stories centered around Place, around those places that have been important to us, to our communities....
View ArticleBut I’ve never been there
Please pronounce the been in the title with verve and so it rhymes with seen. This is so it will take part in an event that I didn’t witness, but have heard about enough times that I might as well...
View ArticleWe’ve gone without toilet paper before.
I spent all of Friday writing informational, factual, calming, encouraging, and supportive communications about COVID-19. Emails, an article (Changing Our Habits and Getting Creative: Church in the...
View ArticleThe Lord Is My COVID-19 Nurse
Tomorrow is Good Shepherd Sunday, which got me thinking about the 23rd Psalm. There’s nothing particularly holy about the job of shepherding–it’s just that a gifted poet had been a shepherd and so...
View ArticleWhat We Save
When my mother was six, in the summer of 1947, her home burned down. The four-year-old noticed fire licking out of the wood-stove pipe in the kitchen, asking his older sisters what it meant while he...
View ArticleWhat is your first vivid childhood memory?
My earliest memory is of injuring my little brother and being consumed with guilt and worry. I was 4, my brother 2. We lived in a construction zone. My parents bought a hippie squatter house in...
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