Have you ever searched for what your earliest memory was? Have you wondered what it was like before you were born? It is entirely possible that you had a life before you were conceived. In this articl...

A tragedy of Shakespearean proportions is underway at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  This once fine center of learning and policy was the envy of the world until it was caprici...

On Thursday morning, Trump signed one of his most scandalous pardons to date. On Thursday afternoon, he couldn’t explain his actions from hours earlier.

The bad news keeps rolling in after eight months of this hot mess in Washington. There is more daily drama going on in our real lives than in an afternoon soap opera on television. Either some decent ...

During my sixty years or so of following politics in America, I have seen several distressing trends.  One has to do with the increased viciousness between people of opposite political parties.  If someone did not agree with your policy choices in 1965, you were characterized as “wrong-headed” or “mistaken.”  Today, people with this same ideology would be called “traitors” or "scum."  During the George H.W.

This morning, my wife Deena and I were talking about cancer. If you've read earlier posts from me, such as there are here and here, you'll know that twenty-eight months ago, I was first diagnosed with high grade bladder cancer, and after two years of chemotherapy, it seems like the cancer may have returned. I had another small tumor surgically removed yesterday.

Tittelen på dette innlegget (engelsk: «There is a troll in the words») antyder at vi bør velge ordene våre med omhu, fordi det kan være en troll i det vi sier. Men hva betyr det egentlig? I dette innlegget håper jeg å forklare en populær norsk ordtak, og samtidig gi tips til hvordan vi kan forbedre kommunikasjonen vår med hverandre.

I thought it might be interesting to imagine life at a medieval monastery and surrounding town in Ireland. I have been thinking about Ireland once again because my wife will be leaving for Belfast in less than a month to spend a few weeks in the north. I’ve chosen a particularly prosperous town in the south called Clonmacnoise to focus on, partly because it is centrally located in Ireland and also because of the many pilgrims who visited to pay homage to the saints that founded the monastery.

I was first introduced to John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) when I was in high school. He was a Quaker, native to New England, an abolitionist and a poet. We read one of his many works, and it was called The Book Our Mothers Read. It has only eight lines, but those eight lines contain the wisdom of the ages. This is what Whittier writes:

Of all the marvelous biomes I’ve lived in and experienced in my life, from the polar ecosystem of the Arctic to the tropical, broadleaf jungles of Asia; from the vanishing wetlands of the Everglades, to the Blackland prairie, I find that the hardwood, deciduous forests of New England are my favorite. They watched over me as I grew as a child.

Irony (Gk: eironeia) is an interesting word, and it is not the easiest to define.  There are various subtleties present depending on the discipline that applies it.  A common denominator though involves some sort of juxtaposition between two starkly different people, principles or situations.  In I Corinthians 2:8 and Colossians 2:15, St. Paul speaks of Satan and Christ.  Satan had provoked and manipulated the religious and civil authorities to have Jesus arrested, condemned to the cross, and his lifeless body entombed.  

Almost all of us have driven by people fishing off of bridges, perhaps we’ve seen them in a small boat on a lake or pond, or on the end of a dock or pier.  People who fish more than casually have their favorite “fishing holes” where they believe fish gather.  They know the fish are there because they see the bubbles or tiny ripples on the surface of the water.  

Read the news or watch it on television or your device of choice and you can easily see the fear behind the stories that are driving the headlines this year. Like the stench of a backed up septic tank, the scent of fear is everywhere. The world seems to be writhing in this noxious environment like an animal in pain. This post is not so much an essay on the dynamics of fear as it is on the fear we all face today in this geopolitical climate.

Deena gifted me a 750-piece jigsaw puzzle for Christmas.  She knew I enjoyed puzzles as a child and she picked out a puzzle with four or five different portraits of dogs. Last month, I opened it right about the time our grandchildren came to visit.  They loved it, especially our eight-year-old grandson.  He seemed to have a special talent for this.