A couple of weeks ago, my brother left a message on my cell phone: “I just finished a book you have to read. You’ll love it. It’s called Blue Like Jazz.” Since recommending reading is not one of his usual things, I went and bought the book. He’s right. It’s good. I’m reading it slowly…
It’s hard to write when you feel stupid. I’ve run up against something I didn’t know about that should have been on my radar. I’m deeply disturbed, convicted, and dumb. It’s also hard to write when you have too strong an agenda. I’m pissed. I want to preach, to rant, to tell everyone what they…
I heard this story on All Things Considered last night. You gotta hear the symphony of truck horns. Peace,Milton
In the early nineties, Robert Olen Butler wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning short story collection called A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain. I read it for a Fiction Writing course I took while working on my MA in English. My favorite story was “Fairy Tale,” mostly because of the first paragraph: I like the…
Any time we have a discussion about a meal at church and the discussion turns to how we are going to pay for it before we talk about why we are having the meal or what we are going to have, I’m afraid the folks in the room know what I’m going to say because,…
Today I’m cooking for a Teacher Appreciation Dinner at church and I’m making fresh pasta (report and recipes tomorrow), which brings me to pass on another poem shared with me by another friend. She found it through the Writer’s Almanac. The poet is Kate Scott, from her book Stitches. Pasta In the yellow kitchen her…
This poem was passed along by a friend from long ago: Sarah McManus Bickle. Her first email did not say who wrote it. When I inquired, i found out she did! Sarah is an ESL teacher at Jasper High School in Dallas, Texas. Great work, Sarah! How Black Bean Tacos Saved My Life In the…
Last week I had a small catering gig for a gathering of the In-Care students for the Southeast Area of the Mass. Conference of the UCC. In-care students are our seminarians. Various congregations take them “in-care,” which means we provide support and encouragement. If you are going to support and encourage people, you gotta feed…
My friend, Mia, responded to my post, “re-member, then” with this comment and quote: Your post made me think of a James Hillman quote – “our lives my be determined less by our childhood than by the way we have learned to imagine our childhoods”. James Hillman is a new name to me, but he’s…
One of my memories of teenage trips to Six Flags Over Texas was bridge made of barrels across some fabricated pond. The barrels meant each step had its own tilt: the walk was not straight or easy, but at least you had ropes along the sides to hang on to. The last couple of weeks…