Driving through Birmingham, I passed a Jewish Community Center whose billboard encouraged its members to take a “J-cation” by using their facilities. We are all now familiar with the concept of the stay-cation, now so over-used by our media. Here, in the closing moments of my week away from work,
I was in ninth grade when they came to town. The town was Nairobi, Kenya and they were Up With People. Members of the American community provided host homes for the group and so a couple of them stayed at our house, and in the homes of my friends from
There are days my offerings on this blog are fairly finished pieces: I had an idea of where I was going with the piece when I started and was able to make it all come together nicely. Then, there are other days when I trust this space to be a
When we finished the closing session of our mission trip last night with the folks from Beloved Community UCC in Birmingham, Alabama, one of our hosts suggested we move the gathering down the road to a local coffee shop/wine bar. We got there to find they were closing at
I found them walking from Winchester High School one afternoon to meet Ginger at her church. A small handbill on the door of the Griffin Museum of Photography announced the showing of color pictures of the universe by David Malin. What I learned that afternoon, and in my subsequent trips
I posted this earlier today and then spent some time reading Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook , which led me to do a little revising. Peace, Milton P. S. -- There's a new recipe.
Durham has a lot of good things about it, but a good independent radio station is not one of them. And so I spend my days in the kitchen listening to classic rock and hold the distinction of being the only one in the kitchen for whom the songs were
I only saw the words written, requiring me to infer tone; to assume either compassion or conceit; to decide if the poet mimed quotation marks when he said, “diminished capacity,” -- or saints, for that matter -- if he even said the words out loud. Either way, the phrase is
I know I've already mentioned Woody Guthrie this week, but he comes to mind for me every Independence Day because he wrote my favorite song about America, "This Land is Your Land." He actually wrote the song in response to "God Bless America." Here
“It’s what’s inside the words,” she said; “Inside heart there’s an ear and there’s art .” After reading, I couldn’t help but look for words among the bread and vegetables that made up our simple supper last night, both of us finally home after days that
The words are Woody Guthrie's; the voice is Ellis Paul's. I pass them both along to you with gratitude. Peace, Milton
These are days that call for me to reflect, to hold my words and thoughts close, to share with those I can see in person, to let things ruminate and mature before they become public. There is no major crisis, no depression (thank God), nothing more than days that call