“Don’t get happy!” came the thundering voice from the sidelines. It was a classic saying of the late Norm Walker, my football coach, English teacher, poet, wisdom-giver, and wonderful man in high school at Holderness School. It sounded strange at first blush, but made sense the longer one played for Coach Walker: he hated cockiness, […]
Take meTo the magic of the moment on a glory night I wasn’t expecting to hear the Scorpions in the rural outskirts of Danilovgrad. And especially not belted out by a group of passionate, wine-buzzed, new Montenegrin friends roughly in tune with an accordion player. But, strange things happen when you open up on the […]
The flakes stung my cheeks, wind whipped, swirling through pines swaying in the gale. It was only 25 degrees or so, not cold for this valley this time of year, but cold enough to feel icy tendrils snaking up my extremities. I wanted to go, to move, to get warm. But not yet. I came […]
As a nation, we need to accept - and acknowledge - our faults so that we can grow into a better tomorrow. That, after all, is how we can be the best patriots.
croatia, perspective, politics, Yugoslavia
Read MoreAs I ran through the soggy mountains this Juneteenth morning, I thought about my clichés, about our clichés, about our collective desire to cling to them, and the courage it takes to see them as they are: trite and hackneyed expressions and concepts that often overlook the nuance of reality.
cliches, perspective, politics
Read MoreGenealogy fascinates me; it always has. Maybe it’s a nod to my childhood cemetery tours with my grandfather in Alton, Illinois, him pointing to carved blocks of granite and recounting stories of the bodies that lay beneath. For me, those “tours” were a roadmap of the past, a means of understanding and comprehending my history […]
perspective, politics, race in America
Read More“Let us… seek peace… near the inland murmur of streams, and the gracious waving of trees, the beauteous vesture of earth, and sublime pageantry of the skies. Let us leave ‘life,’ that we may live.”
- Mary Shelley
nature, perspective, Quotations
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