I spent a huge chunk of the day working on my book. The time was one of my birthday gifts from Ginger. As I sat writing about home, I realized once again how much I have come to love Durham and the people who make it a wonderful city. Over the past few months as…
Last weekend I said something to Ginger about Thursday Night Dinner and she said, “We aren’t having dinner this week.” Knowing it was my birthday eve and knowing her penchant for birthday surprises, I took her statement at face value. i spent the day writing and came home to find out we were going out….
Somewhere in the night I woke to remember I had not written. The day was full. Ginger and Rachel were driving back from the funerals in Birmingham, I cooked lunch for our UCC clergy group (as I do the first Thursday of every month), other food to deliver, and we had our regular Thursday Night…
Mark Strand died this week. He was a poet, even a former U. S. Poet Laureate. In the middle of the violence that makes up our world, it feels worthwhile to say thanks for the life and words of a poet who held a sense of appropriate insignificance with grace; therefore I offer two of…
Fifty years ago today, I stood with a stadium filled with excited people to observe the birth of a new nation: Northern Rhodesia, a British colony, became Zambia, a free country. We had practiced the new national anthem for months in school, learned about the new currency. We were ready. We actually gathered in City…
This has been an important week in North Carolina, and our church has been at the center of things here in Durham. Here is a story that ran on our local NPR station, WUNC. Peace, Milton
I wish you could have been with me this weekend. It was end-of-summer-trying-to-be-fall weather in our little City of Encouragement, and it was the thirtieth North Carolina Pride Festival, which Durham has hosted for all three decades. One of the roles our church plays in the festivities is to host the Ecumenical Communion Service that…
I am old enough to remember when it was fun to fly, which, of course, makes me old. The experience of getting in and out of an airport, much less the time spent on board the airplane have not been very enjoyable for a long, long time. The “legacy carriers,” as they are often called, are…
My friend John moved to Okinawa for a year. He’s on an academic sabbatical. He is also a master meat smoker. When he left he gave me a whole frozen packer brisket, ready for me to try my hand at smoking it. My friend Roberto, who owns Old Havana Sandwich Shop along with his wife…
For almost as many years as we have been married Thursday Night Dinner has been a significant ritual in our lives. We invite folks over for dinner, I cook, and then we sit around and talk until we get tired. Over the past couple of years, thanks to Facebook and Twitter and my iPhone camera,…