Meeting people can be tough. This great landscape of unknown, a gap of nothingness between us to fill with “small talk.” This is a glass is half empty approach to understanding people. It’s the “I don’t know you at all so this is gonna take work” mentality. But every person is the same. It’s easy…
(and make it an action word) 2018 was pretty rough right? I’m not down for resolutions… and even though a Burning Bowl ceremony sounds pretty cool, that’s not my bag either. For 2019, I feel like there’s only one answer and it’s this: commit to every day, wild, active, radical LOVE. What is Radical Love?…
If it so happens that Tom Stroik is in Kansas City (which he may not be), then I have on my list to hunt him down and — at the very least– have lunch with him, if not whiskey and ribs. Yeah, teachers change our lives. We all remember that one “Dead Poets’ Society” prof…
If I had chosen a word for the year in 2018, it would have been the word “move”. As in, after 11 years, I finally made a MOVE again– BIG TIME, half way across the country, packing up a four bedroom house and a family and a life — and this time back to a…
If I left somewhat suddenly (after 11 years) or you were surprised, then I think maybe you weren’t paying attention. Every time I think I’m home, something changes my mind. Maybe it’s the porch or its the lack of the porch. Maybe it’s the wide open spaces, or the bats and the trees. There were…
The extremely useful writing website Writer’s HQ recently called for pitches related to the theme of “Resistance” and writing. For me, the idea of resistance and protest is highly emotional. I’ve been known to get “worked up” on a topic or two in my day! Any person who stands ready to challenge the status quo…
In reading the pile of reports the school sent over regarding my youngest child, I thought: that’s not me. On every occasion in parenting, I am reminding how very few people I encounter — whether as friends or acquaintances — who really understand me. They do exist, and they are ridiculously loyal. But the by…
There’s a reason why we every year we do that “resolution” thing at the new year. It has to do with hope. The turn of the new year is a false sense of new beginning. But it’s one we love to embrace. It’s proof of the enduring human spirit and our attachment to hope. Every…
In the course of driving to Ontario for Christmas, we encountered a lake effect snow squall. Neither Colin nor I are strangers to snowstorms of any size or might. We are both veteran snow drivers. However, this was our first encounter with a true, pop-up blizzard. Along Interstate 81, we were warned “Lake Effect Snow…
All weekend I keep thinking about the Rohingya baby in the fire. (And so this is Christmas. And what have you done?) The New York Times correspondant Jeffrey Gettleman reported on the violence and likely genocide of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. In one account he reported a Rohingya mother, Rajuma, whose baby was ripped…
I take the dog out at night, on the nights Colin doesn’t. If you own an animal, that’s it. You have to take care of them. Forever. Same with kids. They don’t go away. They are always going to need to eat, walk, pee, be stroked. Every night. All the nights. Until they or you…
Who is Sally thinking about today? Her daughters. Her friends. Faith. Her mom. Dan, of course. On any given Friday, Sally jumps to the beat of love. Sally moves to move you, drives to inspire you. A Monday morning dawns and she Breaks out of the blocks, running down The day’s, the week’s, the season’s…
Adoptive kids have a special layer of wonder in their lives. Why am I in this family? How did this happen to me? Who am I really? What might have been? This special layer of wonder undoubtedly will shape them and their life direction, as all mental efforts do. But as I worry this thread a…
Can I change the world? That is the question I want to put to myself and to other writers in my re-boot of THE BIG QUESTION series at Letters from a Small State this month. Why this question? Because it leads to so many questions! Is the American experience rapidly becoming a series of knee-jerk…
In the face of the senseless Las Vegas shooting, how do we get through a day like today? I felt frozen most of the day, the horror buttressed by the president’s hypocritical and milquetoast response. How do I get through a day in which the acid undercurrent of anger and instability that has been pouring…
