giving back

“When my book connects with a reader in this way, it’s a joy I can’t explain.” -Stacy McAnulty, author of The Miscalculations of a Lightning Girl I haven’t yet finished Carolyn See’s book How to Live a Literary Life. But she has at least one solid piece of advice I’m paraphrasing here: Write to the authors… Read more

The first photo shows my sad and crooked foot BEFORE. Below is my corrected foot with a screw through the top that may or may not set off the security alarms when I get to those metal detectors. We will see. Getting through this has involved many weeks of not using this screwed together foot… Read more

Dear Readers, I cannot yet touch the full subject of losing my mother at the end of May. Most likely, I never will. But I do want to tell you about the beautiful people who have done so much to hold me up. People have mowed my lawn, pulled weeds, packed boxes, bought all the… Read more

Ursula K. Le Guin died this week. I had another plan for this post but now she has died and it’s all I want to write about. When I first heard the news on the radio, my heart dropped. I was almost home and my big red van was cresting one of those small hills… Read more

My heart is breaking over a t-shirt. I know. A t-shirt is a silly thing to mourn, especially when others are losing so much more in the world. Houston is flooded right now and people there are genuinely suffering. Not fussing over a t-shirt. Yet, there is a connection. When I see Houston in the… Read more

The former Arizona Diamondback minor league pitcher sat before us, tense with the muscles he now uses to work construction instead of throwing baseballs. In a small side-sanctuary of the mega-methodist church with 4500 members, Alex Byo told us the tale of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You may remember some of the key points from the… Read more

I have a beautiful distant relative–my mother’s cousin’s wife. Irene is originally from Germany, tall, and with a presence I love to be around. She has the barest of accents and I only remember English is her other language because her words are so crisp and clean. She is the kind of relative who brings an air of… Read more

I’ve learned priceless lessons from the transformation of a worship space into a gigantic place for trash that becomes treasures. Resist the ridiculous.We all have mountains of things like odd plastic mittens and pots that might be warmers but are not. The next time I see full price boot mitts for my Halloween costume, I will picture the teetering pile… Read more

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