Next Sunday I am going to be a part of a bluegrass group that will be the service musicians for our morning worship. Most of the group is one family – parents and three boys, all of whom play instruments. The youngest one, who is six or seven, plays the mandolin
when I walked outside this morning there was enough moisture in the air from last night’s thunderstorm to make me feel close to the ocean and aware of my place in the world the lettuces that lived through what passes for winter around here have gone to flowering, a
there are days I lay awake at night and wonder even worry about what’s to come because the future feels like a past due account and I have already spent my time thinking about tomorrow putting the tense in present there are nights like this when I fall asleep
If I still lived in Boston I would see spring blooms inside -- at the Flower Show – here in Carolina the daffodils are well into their parade the peach tree has budded . . . I like the feel of the sun on my neck and, yes, I miss the prospect of snow on
On February 5, 1989, I took Ginger to see Lyle Lovett at the Caravan of Dreams in downtown Fort Worth. The club was small and we sat on the front row. Tonight, I took Ginger to see Lyle Lovett for the twenty-third time in our twenty-three years together
“Study the faces of the new tyrants,” Berger says has he begins the last section of his book, Bento's Sketchbook: How Does the Impulse to Draw Something Begin? What follows is a series of incisive descriptions: They are impeccably dressed and their tailoring is reassuring, like the silhouette
One of the writers who has befriended me through her words is Naomi Shihab Nye. We have never met, though I imagine being in San Antonio sometime and knocking on her door as though we are both used to my doing that and having her answer and inviting me in
Not long after we moved into our school building last year, Borders went broke and sold everything in their stores including the fixtures. The tables in my room are the very ones that held stacks of books for customers’ perusal and my walls are lined with the book shelves that
Durham is the most encouraging place I have ever lived. This is a city full of people who pull for each other, which is good because it’s also a city full of people with dreams and things they want to see happen. In our town of about a quarter
sometime in the night I will be robbed of an hour of sleep in order that we might save daylight the thieves will leave nothing but the promise the hour will be saved kept safely and returned in the fall still -- what if this was the night I was to
A couple of nights ago, I posted what has come to be known as the Kony 2012 Video as my blog post. I learned of it through my eleventh graders. One of them was in a documentary studies class I taught last year in which we watched “Ghosts of Rwanda,
“The difference between joy and despair,” she said, “has little to do with circumstances and everything to do with what you choose to see.” “You’re making that up,” he replied. She took his face between her hands and stared into his eyes as if they held galaxies. “I love