On this, the last day of National Poetry Month, the least I can do is offer a verse of my own. vocabulary treppenwitz is a word that means“a clever remark that comes to mindwhen it is too late to utter it”(of course, you have to be speakingGerman for it to make sense) In New Guinea…

I made English muffins today for the first time since last summer. Since classes are over at Duke, my work schedule and location has changed, putting me back on the lunch shift at the Durham restaurant, and making the muffins, which are our hamburger buns. The recipe has several steps that require some attention. First,…

I’m excited because this coming weekend I’m headed to Jackson, Mississippi to help lead “A Writer’s Conference” at Calvary Baptist Church, along with Tim Sean Youmans and Justin McRoberts. If you are anywhere in the area, the conference is free and runs all day Saturday and Sunday morning. I even get to preach while I’m…

It’s one of my favorite English words. I like the way it sounds, the way my mouth has to shape itself to say it, and what it means once it’s let loose from my lips. Harbinger: an indicator of what’s coming. When I was living in Texas, I remember some of the old ranchers telling…

“Sometimes a light surprises the Christian when he sings,” wrote William Cowper. And sometimes the surprise is in the listening. I sat down in church this morning, feeling renewed after a wonderful weekend (Friday and Saturday are my weekend), one day in Chicago with our nephew and the other wandering through downtown Durham for the…

Ginger and I spent the day in Chicago on Friday. We’ve been planning it for some time. April 21st will mark our nineteenth wedding anniversary and the 23rd the twenty-first birthday of Scott, our nephew who is in school just outside of Chicago, so a joint celebration seemed appropriate. Add to the mix that we…

After walking through Lent to Easter, a journey in which time stretches out like a path leading us somewhere, I came across an interesting list yesterday of things that all happened on April 14, making time feel more like a totem or a sculpture where the different blocks are stacked one on top of the…

Yesterday, Ginger, Cherry, and I took part in an “urban hike” through our neighborhood of Old West Durham to learn our way around a bit more and to learn some of the history of our neighborhood. John Schelp, the president of our neighborhood association, led the hike and dispersed the information. He did an amazing…

I was one of the first to the farmer’s marketthis morning, determined to buy tomatoplants before my day caught up with me. I was looking for heirlooms – seeds passeddown from grower to grower, generationto generation, like stories worth repeating. Most have names like Mortgage Lifter or Dad’sOrange, but between the Black Cherry andthe Cherokee…

We have a fair number of pieces of furniture in our house that have come from those stores that provide the experience of allowing me to assemble the furniture once we get the box home. The furniture is usually made in Indonesia or Thailand, comes with instructions that are illustration than illumination, and involve the…