History On My Chin – I am fairly surprised that I have a beard. All through the 1970s, I mourned my scraggly facial fuzz. But thanks to the era of Covid, I just let the fuzz grow until I bore a resemblance to Steve Bannon. Rather than scrape the whole thing off, I left a…More
A Word from the Hopeland
The Sound Before the Music – When I was a boy, Captain Kangaroo came to a nearby city with an orchestra to present a children’s concert. He walked out on stage, smiled that familiar smile, and asked a simple question: What does the conductor do? Then he answered it—not with an explanation, but by letting…More
A Word from the Hopeland
What Goes Around – My dad used to tell a story about a five-dollar check. It was written by a fellow in town who did not, in any meaningful sense, have five dollars. Everyone knew it. The check was no good. It was, in the technical language of banking, going to bounce. Dad took it…More
A Different Outlook
Effecting the Cause – We are blessed—and perhaps burdened – with minds that can think in abstraction. Simple data arrives through our senses, and almost immediately, we begin to sort it. We recognize patterns. We analyze. We categorize. We build systems. Moments become memories, and memories line up in sequence – like cranberries and popcorn…More
A Word from the Hopeland
Confused and Confusing – Somewhere along the way, I developed a bad habit. During my earliest schooling, when I learned to print the letters of the alphabet and spell words, I accidentally confused the lowercase “b” with the lowercase “p.” It is obviously a simple mistake. But it stuck. To this day, when I am…More
From the Religious Quarter of the Hopeland
Of course, the Bible is Not Fact – This is going to be a screed. A fair number of people in this country know very little about Christianity or the Bible. Of those who do, many have never actually encountered it in any meaningful way. And among those who have, a good portion have rejected…More
A Life (Before and After)
Breaking It Up in Chunks – I notice that I think of history in “chunks.” I divided the history of the United States into three Republics, each approximately 80 years in length. And now I am considering my own life. It has divided itself into four parts – quarters. In 1975, my son was born,…More
A Word from the Hopeland
Me, Myself, and I – We can blame Sigmund Freud for waking us up to the possibility that there is more going on inside us than we know. He gave us the subconscious, the Id, the Ego, and the Superego, and set a great many people to rummaging around in the attic of the mind.…More
A Word from the Hopeland
The Handbasket – When I was around 31 years old, working for the government as a G5 IRS minion, I went to see the pastor at our church, not really able to articulate why. I said, “Considering the way things are going in the world, I figure that I should either go into the handbasket…More
