Wedding Under the Dinosaurs
I have just returned from a brief visit in downtown Atlanta for our grandson’s wedding. As we thundered down I-85 amid four lanes of 80 mph traffic, I began to …
Baratunde Thurston in Oregon
In the past year Sylvia and I have become fans of Baratunde Thurston’s ”America Outdoors,” which airs on your local PBS stations. Others may know him for his wit and …
Mediating the I Am—Some Summery Reflections
On August first the world here in the Smokies seems to pause, take a breath, and then sigh with a slight cool shudder of fall. Global warming might advance that …
Climate Conversion, Memory, and the Fire
As I was about to put together a posting with some of the liturgy from last Sunday’s Roundtable Worship, news and pictures reached me of the horrific fire on Table …
Religion and Our Constitutional Crisis
Last Sunday I made a Zoom presentation of a talk that had been scheduled BP (Before the Pandemic) with the Ethical Humanist Society of Asheville. In the talk, I returned …
Whose Apocalypse?
Australia is burning. It’s been burning even from the beginning of its springtime. The fires will not relent for some months to come. And then California and parts of other …
Dorian and Greta
From the Atlantic Ocean has recently come the devastating power of hurricane Dorian as well as the quiet voyage, by solar sailboat, of 16-year-old Greta Thunberg from England to New …
The Ashes Are Falling
Living in one of the world’s great temperate hardwood forests, I become familiar with the trees around me. Not all, by any means, because we have such an expanse of …
My Cyprus Memoir is Available
Regular readers will know, through my earlier reports on our travels to Cyprus in 2012 and 2015, that this has been five years in the making. By using an e-book …
Crystal Bridges
A stunning museum of American art in the Ozarks of northwestern Arkansas? Well, get used to it. We tried to visit the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in 2014 …
The Great River
Here the Rio Grande is dry a hollow bone without the marrow a sleeping body without blood waiting patient as the ceaseless wind blowing tumbleweeds …
The Heritage of Mata Ortiz
Las Cruces is in America’s Borderland with Mexico. We are staying, in fact, in Old Mesilla, where the Gadsden Purchase was signed that defined the geographical border between the two …
The Hidden Life of Trees
As I walk, sit, work, live, and sleep in one of the world’s greatest hardwood forests, I am constantly aware of the world of trees around me. Cherry, walnut, ash, …
Climate Change and the Work of Peace
The day after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, we gathered at Lake Junaluska for our seventh annual Interfaith Peace Conference. Our theme this year was “The …
Corn, Wind, and Sun
We just drove out to western Minnesota from our home here in the Smoky Mountains, taking in our old stomping grounds in Milwaukee on the way. We needed face time …