We’ve had so much talk about the weather because it’s been weird and difficult.Too cold for too long(in my nineteen years living in Durham, I can’t remember a March like this one)and gray In the twenty-first century, weather might be the one thing we are universally subject toalong with things less obvious–the pull of gravity, […]

I wrote this two years ago today, but I’ve decided to re-post it because it’s still true today. Happy 2014!1.2.12 I’ve loved January for a while now. It’s not that I don’t love December and all that those 31 days mean– I do. I love the Christmas tree and the decorations and the lights. And […]

Sometimes I’m pretty lonely. I mean, being a writer is lonesome. It just is. It’s a lonely business.One reason for this is obvious: I have to be alone when I write. Or silent, anyway. It’s an uncommunicative business, communicating via the page. I sit (or stand) alone for hours at a time, unspooling thought in […]

Here is a beginning rooted in geography. One of my favorites– not (this time) because of the author– but because here and throughout her book she so beautifully evokes Pittsburgh, where we both grew up. When everything else has gone from my brain– the President’s name, the state capitals, the neighborhoods where I lived, and […]

Bill’s parents, Bill and Carolyn, made our trip to the Caribbean possible, you know. I mean, I did have to get permission (and a substitute) to leave school for a week. And Bill did have (happily) a week’s worth of personal days left at his old job so that he could get away. But even […]

Please pray today for my friends Sam and Daniele, and for their little ones Luke and Eliza. You can read Eliza’s story here. It would seem she may be going home soon– home to That Home, the True Rest, her Father’s arms. Please pray for all of them today. Thanks.