There isn’t much in Bean Blossom, Indiana. There hasn’t even been a post office there since 1911. The town might have gone away completely except for a Bluegrass music festival that takes place there. There isn’t much in Bean Blossom, …

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings—“   The poem, recited by Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Lewis Carroll’s classic, Through the Looking Glass, has been the subject of …

When I was in graduate school we had a special program for juvenile offenders. They were kids that had been arrested on generally minor offences, usually related to some kind of drug use and instead of time in Juvenile Hall …

This weekend is the fifteenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the attempted attack on Washington was thwarted by civilian passengers and ended in a Pennsylvania field. September 11th became one of those …

When I was in fifth grade I was placed in a class that was doing some experimental learning. Among other things, I particularly remember that we studied set theory and binary number systems. Little did we know at the time, …

 I have a new grandson. He appears to be on what we around here affectionately call “Esperanza Time” because he arrived two weeks late. In a place that boasts 300 days of sunshine a year, he, and his big brother …

A few weeks ago a friend asked me one of those since-you’re-a-pastor kind of questions: “Do you pray every day?” My first answer was, prepare to be shocked here, “no.” Then I gave a second answer, “Actually yes, but it …

   Perhaps you have seen something in the news about the Noah’s Arc park, located in Kentucky, a handful of miles south of Cincinnati. At 510 feet long and 85 feet wide, it is a big boat, but of course, …

Way back in 1966, Stephen Stills – then part of Buffalo Springfield – wrote “For What it’s Worth.” “There’s something happenin’ here/what it is ain’t exactly clear/there’s a man with a gun over there/tellin’ me I got to beware.” It …

I probably do this too often and I am far from a Greek scholar, but this is one of those weeks that I really have to quibble with the translation. The location is the Sheep Gate, the point of entry …

On summer evenings at my grandparents’ lake cottage, there was terrible televisions reception and too many mosquitoes to go outside so card games were the usual fare. Sometimes it was Hearts with two decks of cards because there were so …

For most of us, the word provoke carries a negative connotation. It is what I used to do, often in very subtle ways, to irritate my brother until he would finally haul off and slug me. Then of course, I …