On this day in 1906, O. Henry published the short story, “The Gift of the Magi,” which is a favorite at our house. In honor of the day and the story, here is the story. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and…
The company that owns the Chicago Tribune (and the Chicago Cubs) declared bankruptcy yesterday. Much like the domino effect on Wall Street not long ago, I expect some other newspapers will fold before long. (Sorry – I couldn’t resist.) Much of the demise of the dailies has been attributed to our quickly changing technology. With…
A number of years ago, Ginger and I had the chance to go to Israel with a group from our church in Winchester. We rode our bus all through Israel and Palestine seeing the places we had only read about, watching much of the Bible come alive in ways we could not have imagined and…
It’s late and I’ve been staring at the page for a long time. Nothing has appeared. My mind has wandered from John the Baptist to the Magi (they wander in and out of my thoughts all through Advent) to conversations over cooking at work tonight to who knows what, but none of those thoughts has…
Ginger, Ella, and I went downtown for the annual Durham Christmas Parade and Tree Lighting. Here is Ella, up close and personal. If you needed proof that I live in the South, here it is: a Chik-fil-a float. We now live in the Bull City, so here are Ginger and Ella next to the Bull…
I spent the day running errands, mailing a few A Faraway Christmas CDs, and picking up what we needed to do a couple of things on the house before my in-laws come in a little over a week, which means I drove a lot and had incidental conversations with people I don’t know. My favorite…
Look at the photographand you will see a littleboy standing in the frontyard; he is small anddid not dress himself inthe baggy shorts, the tinystriped t-shirt or the smallsailor hat, but he’s dressedand he looks a bit puzzled.The colors of the stripesare long ago forgotten;the image is black andwhite. Who knows whyhe is standing there,…
Many summers ago, Ginger and I were leading a youth camp for a group of churches we did not know well. One of the morning classes offered to the young people was massage (not a class I would have chosen to offer to teenagers, but that’s another post). I happened to be walking through the…
I was a little over halfway through my first semester of seminary when a college friend called to say he was passing through town and wanted to take me to lunch. About halfway through the meal, I found out he was selling insurance and was hoping I would become a customer. I wasn’t really in…
Mondays are busy at the restaurant anyway, but today had its own pace. Because of the holiday and the fact that the Duke students were gone, we had been closed since Tuesday night; everything had to be made new today. Still, when I left the house this morning, I put my two Advent books in…