I’m pretty certain if you could get an answer out of our cat Marvis regarding for what he is grateful this Thanksgiving, he would answer in no uncertain terms, “That you finally realized that I was locked in the furnace room for about 14 hours on Tuesday.” Being the optimist he always is, however, he…
We have a collection of village churches. You know the ones, most produced by a company called Department 56, that can be integrated among other village pieces to create a holiday scene, particularly in December. The collection got started innocently enough. We had been to Europe and upon our return, we discovered one of the…
My mom died of colon cancer in 1992. It was just eight or nine months before she died when she called to tell me she had been diagnosed. The cancer, which I have since learned is usually one of the slower moving types of cancer, had probably been in her system for several years. She…
I wanted to be, I longed to be in Kansas City yesterday. Until I saw pictures and videos of the crowds, that is. Estimates ranged from 800,000 to one million people showed up for the parade and rally celebrating the Kansas City Royals 2015 World Series victory. People so longed to get into the city…
A number of years ago I had attended a week-long forum on Washington Island, Wisconsin, a northernmost tip of the state off the coast of Green Bay in Lake Michigan. I had gone alone and thoroughly enjoyed my time learning, questioning, reading, and biking. It was a good week. On the final morning of presentations…
I put off going into the living room this morning. I went about my business in the kitchen scrambling eggs, making coffee, and leisurely consuming both before doing the dishes. But I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to go look. So I made one more cup of java and headed to the…
I had managed my way through two years of higher education on a bicycle and in Vermillion, S.D., a bicycle could only get you so far. I had visions of visits to the big city – Sioux Falls or even Sioux City, Ia. I knew I had to start hunting for a permanent job to…
Mom had a mink. Now before the animal lovers jump down my throat, let me say that today I would agree that raising and killing mink or any other creature for purely cosmetic reasons, for reasons of vanity is wrong. I know there are still mink ranchers out there and I would not put…
The only cooking instructions I ever received were one-half of a year of home economics class in the eighth grade. My mom was a really good cook. I don’t know if her mom taught her how to cook or if she found herself married and learned to cook out of necessity. I loved my mom’s…
“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time…