When we opened the restaurant at Duke last fall, we averaged about thirty customers a night; fifty was busy. Over the course of the semester, the number grew to where fifty was the average. This semester, we’ve seen our customer base expand to where sixty-five is a slow night. Tonight we served ninety and topped…

Last fall, when we were just getting the restaurant at Duke going, serving fifty people felt like a busy night. We wanted to be busier than that, but when we were averaging about thirty-five, fifty felt like a lot. Last Wednesday night, we served one hundred and eight people in a little over one hundred…

I was catching up on my Writer’s Almanac tonight and found yesterday was the shared birthday of Billy Collins and Edith Grossman. Billy Collins was the US Poet Laureate from 2001-2003 and holds the distinction of being a poet who actually sells books. Edith Grossman is a book translator, known best for her translations of…

We had been with Julia and Larry for a couple of hours Friday evening before the conversation turned to snakes, mostly because both Ginger and Larry were going to preach about them following the lectionary passage from John 3 where Jesus said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness . . .” “Everybody…

First, I have a favor to ask. Our church is participating in the Durham CROP Walk tomorrow, which raises money for Church World Services hunger relief both locally and around the world. If you are able, I invite you to support us in our walk. You can donate here. ___________________________ I getting close to the…

For many of the years we lived in New England, we shared our Charlestown neighborhood with the USS Constitution, which was docked in the Charlestown Navy Yard. I even got to ride on it one Bunker Hill Day (that’s June 17 to those not from Boston) on its turn around cruise in Boston harbor. It…

I know what it’s like to becaught up in your own world —I go to work in a windowlesskitchen and stay there all day(there’s a lot to do)my world quickly becomesabout my world unlesssomeone bursts in or I break out is that what happened to you? is that how you decided youdeserved the bonuses eventhough…

In my search for a writing prompt after a long, busy, and good day at the restaurant (we served more people than we ever have: 108 – in 180 minutes) I stopped by The Writer’s Almanac and learned today would have been John Updike’s seventy-seventh birthday had he lived only a few weeks longer. In…

I must begin with an update on James, our music director, who was in a car accident a week ago last Saturday in which he escaped from a burning car and sustained smoke inhalation injuries. The doctors kept him heavily sedated and intubated for much of the week while they, for lack of a better…

When I first started writing my blog a little over three years ago, one of the nicest surprises was the comment window. I am by nature a collaborator. I love the give and take of working with somebody, so the responses to my posts fed me and kept me writing. Over the past year or…