From Brewing to Bottle Tree
Last fall I sold my faithful pickup, which is now memorialized in a little sconce on a shelf in our dining room. At the same time, I learned that my …
Guns to Gardens
Last weekend I was at our Peace Conference at Lake Junaluska pounding with a hammer on a red-hot rifle barrel held on an anvil by Scotty Utz, of RAWTools South. …
On Aging and Olding
When I reached my 85th birthday last Fall Sylvia notified me that I was now officially “Old Old.” It was a little like feeling the difference between “aged” and “ag-ed.” More …
The Dark Sky of Shelton Laurel
The events of two consecutive Friday nights have convened a conversation in my mind that needs to find its way to my keyboard. A week ago we went to the …
The American Revolution
We just finished watching the PBS 12-hour documentary on The American Revolution, by Ken Burns and his colleagues. I urge everyone to view it and talk about it with others, regardless …
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 …
Glenda Beall Interviews Me
Let me take a moment here to link you to an extensive interview that fellow writer Glenda Council Beall conducted with me and has now published on the North Carolina …
Letting go…of the Truck
We bipeds have intense and peculiar relationships with quadrupeds and their successors—our four-wheeled vehicles. This is especially true of the male of our species. I can still remember my first …
Courthouse Protest
Like millions of other Americans I have been spending an hour each week lifting a sign of protest against the tyrannical actions of the Trump administration. Locally, this takes the …
Brookgreen Gardens
We have just returned from five days in the Low Country on the coast of South Carolina between Myrtle Beach and Georgetown. We spent much of three days at the …
Meeting Roger Williams (again)
I have long known that one of my distant ancestors is Roger Williams, the seventeenth century founder of Rhode Island. (For you genealogists: Roger, Daniel, Peleg, Daniel, Thomas, Mary (Hoag), …
Rededication of the Andover Newton Table
I recently got news that the communion table I built for Andover Newton Theological School in 2000 was rededicated for its new use in Marquand Chapel at Yale Divinity School. …
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 …