I begin with thanks to Mark Heybo for pointing me to some of Frederick Buechner’s words: The world floods in on all of us. The world can be kind and it can be cruel. It can be beatiful and it can be appalling. It can give us good reason to hope and good reason to…
I was almost a teenager when Planet of the Apes hit the theaters in 1968. The film was a futuristic cautionary tale of what we were in for if we kept living like we were living, ending with a shocking image of the Statue of Liberty buried up to her armpits in desert sand. My…
I discovered a new website today in a rather circuitous way. Quotidian Grace was kind enough to comment on my post about Zambia yesterday, so I clicked over to find out what she has been talking about. Scolling down over the past few days, I read about the theme for the PCUSA General Assembly and…
Today is the forty-second anniversary of Zambian Independence. I was living in Lusaka, the capital of the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, on the day it became the nation of Zambia. For months we had practiced our new national anthem in school so we would be able to sing out proudly when we became our…
Yesterday was a day outside; today was a day inside: I worked for twelve and a half hours. I came up to write tonight with few words anywhere in or on my person, so I decided to go back through last week’s poems at The Writer’s Almanac. Maybe reading how someone else puts words together,…
Today was a quintessential slice of New England autumn: crisp, cool air; brilliant sunshine; trees ablaze with color; and a hymn sing in our little white clapboard church next to the cemetery. Ginger left a message on my cell phone yesterday suggesting we spend time together after church driving around to see the leaves and…
I spent some time on my recipe blog today because I was cooking dinner for someone in our congregation who just had surgery and I realized I’ve not posted any new recipes recently or with any consistency. When I started blogging, recipes were part of the deal for me. In that spirit, I posted my…
Today was yet another busy day at the restaurant. October and November are our busiest months. Between tomorrow and Sunday we have seven weddings, four rehearsal dinners, a surprise party, and a couple of other small groups (20-25). And we have a total of seven cooks, one baker, and four dishwashers. Anybody looking for part-time…
I opened and closed the restaurant today. I swapped days with the head chef because today is his wedding anniversary. I usually work Mondays. I came in today to find I had a great deal of prep work to do. We were out of clam chowder (our signature soup), caramelized onions, and sliced tomatoes, just…
First things first: my dad’s report was good. The tumor was a stage two and had not broken through the bladder wall. They found no other cancer cells in the other samples they took from his bladder. He goes back for another checkup in three months, but that’s all he has to do. And there…