Dinner in the Field and other stories
I find you can discover your strengths at any age. For example, I find I’m a better writer than I am an editor. I have a full-length draft of a memoir that I’ve devoted countless hours to, and it’s finally finished. I’m anxious to move on to new material. But finishing the book is not the same as completing the project. Doing it right, I’m told, entails a less than...
Believe it or Not II
Two volunteers at First UCC church in Ottawa pair up and count the offering, one on the computer the other on the deposit slip, each Sunday in a monthly rotation. Another guy and I do the last Sunday of the month. Soon after we started my partner, a young fellow, said “So how many of your blog readers unsubscribed after Wednesday’s post on religion?” “None that I know of. I’m...
Believe it or Not
I saw Sam Baker, folksinger from West Texas, in Princeton a couple weeks ago and have had his four CD’s on my changer ever since. God they’re good. But the words distract me, and I have something I need to write this morning. So I replaced Sam with Johann, Bach that is. Put on the Brandenburg concertos and some complicated Bach organ pieces. It’s not Sam Baker, but it’s really...
It's Spring. Wear a Hat.
I can’t imagine that I haven’t written this same post before. Every year spring wakes me up. Joy and warmth find their way into my old and worn heart, still beating after 64 cold winters. Spring is the same and yet it seems so new. I bet each April I celebrate and write about these same wondrous events. I don’t care if I repeat myself. Spring deserves an annual homage....
Machu Picchu
It wasn’t exactly a pilgrimage. I attached no real religious significance to my trip to Machu Picchu. It wasn’t exactly a lifelong goal. What was it then? What made this trip, this one day outing in the Andes mountains, so special to me? Why was I so filled with anticipation? It was an old regret erased. It was the chance within a short lifetime to do what I’d once set...
Hung Up in Ecuador in 1976
A blog reader posed this question: “What did you mean when you said you got hung up in Ecuador in 1976? I thought you did anything you wanted on those trips. What kept you from going to Peru and Machu Picchu?” The answers to some questions are so long I don’t even know where to start. Those trips he referred to, to Europe and Africa in 1974, and Central and...
Pachacamac, Peru
As travel days go, it was not by far the worst. We met up in Morris at 10:30 a.m., packed the equipment in a trailer, headed to the airport, and checked in with no problem. Avianca, the Central American airline we prefer to fly, was accommodating and welcoming. Our flight left at 4:00 p.m., landing first in San Salvador where we changed planes and took off for Lima. We went...
OK, So I was Wrong
I have left so many things unfinished; topics merely introduced, follow ups promised, to do lists not done, sequels languishing somewhere that can’t be found. It’s awful. So let me follow up on something. On the 27th of November, around Thanksgiving and just before my road trip to Florida, I wrote about an ICG-MI (intermediate care facility for the mentally ill) in which a friend of mine was placed. Winter...
You Hit me, I Hit you
I put my coffee cup, a little brown cup I bought at a second hand store in 1980, upside down on my wood stove. The cup says “Mitch” on the bottom, crude cursive scratched into wet clay and baked into a permanent signature. I think Mitch, whoever he is, probably made it, God knows when, in one of those beginning pottery classes at a community college. Chances are it was...
The Truth Will Set You Free
There are times you learn things you wish you had never known. But you cannot avoid the truth, at least you should not. How does that cliché’ go? “The truth will set you free?” It may, but before it does it may well sadden the hell out of you. My church, First Congregational United Church of Christ, is using for its Wednesday night Lenten services a worship series developed by...
We Kept Sheep
Overall you, my readers, seemed to like the Hot Toddy post last week. Comments were as follows: “I’ve been doing colds all wrong.” “I think I feel a cold coming on.” “I kind of wish I had a cold.” “This is the best advice I’ve had all week.” (That reader then shared it with his Face Book friends.) And from one of my AA friends (I do think of them...