Which is more important— things that take up space, or the spaces in between? Does our eye prefer patches of bright color, or the surrounding blankness that allows us to see the color? When we arrive at a long-anticipated event, are…
If you’re expecting something all nice and dripping with gratitude on the cusp of Thanksgiving Day, I’m sorry to disappoint you. That namby-pamby stuff doesn’t interest me much today. While I do of course hope that you’ll have a splendid…
It’s not every day your husband brings home a raspberry crumble. Mine did, a couple of Sundays ago, when he returned from a visitation at a church where there’s apparently a woman who remembered how much he liked the…
The Abundant Life truck was here yesterday to make a delivery; I’m not sure yet whether that’ll see us through All Saints’ Day and beyond. From the name, would you know that the place sells wood, gas and pellet stoves? Yes,…
“Malawi….isn’t’ that in Africa?” “Yes, in southeastern Africa.” “Well, it’s still Africa, and with this Ebola, I don’t think I’d want to send my kid there.” Over Family Weekend at our son’s new school, I was at a presentation about…
Here we are again, in the middle of October, a time of year that always seems like a kind of precipice between the living and the dying, when we are at once basking in the sun-filled richness that Nature is…
Even if we put politics aside, I have a whole other reason to oppose Scott Brown. It has to do with marriage–that venerable institution many of us know well. Recently, I heard Mr. Brown—running for U.S. Senate here in New…
Some weeks —well, in my case, maybe even most weeks—things get all jumbled up. In the past patch of recent days, a steady dose of daily news about the sorry state of the NFL has been accompanied by the mesmerizing…
Flying home from the Midwest last night, I had a slight delay in Detroit, not of the usual kind. The problem wasn’t with the flights themselves; the one from Duluth arrived in Motown on time, and the second leg to…
Following his first cross-country practice at his new school, my son had to report for an “imPACT” evaluation. The name comes from “Immediate Post Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing” and it’s now used widely in schools, apparently to see how…