Say you are a child. A wide black paint brush in your eager hand set to paint a white, deep bed freezer in the backyard wash house. The paint color, a rust-proofing, log-cabin brown. Say you feel important. You have a Saturday afternoon task. A job to protect the freezer from the ravages of a humid balmy gulf coast—- air… Read More
We think we know what it means. That story. The one we know from the book of Genesis: A Garden, a serpent, a tree, a naked woman and man. The apple was never there, but added for a painter’s ruby poisoned globe, a scepter with which to Blame: Undocumented refugees Right wing evangelicals Liberal queers Welfare queens. East Coast elites…. Read More
Before the first light of dawn, I see her black silhouette along a neighbor’s back wire fence. Her back legs caught and twisted, she drapes across the top of the metal fence at an impossible angle. A graceful leap cut short, her nose now angles down, only inches above the snow banked ground. I suck in the chill air lingering in… Read More
The summer of my tenth year I learned to jump. It wasn’t Molly who taught me to jump. Her pet ram did. That was during a week spent with my friend Molly on her family’s home near the hill country of Texas. Charlie held court beneath the blue shade of a live oak, in the front yard of the Molesworth’s… Read More
I can hardly remember my father being at home during my youth- except for Christmas. And hurricanes. One image remains in my mind: the night one hurricane descended upon our south Texas city of Corpus Christi. Was it Beulah or Cecelia? I can’t remember the name of the hurricane nor which of my five siblings were present that night. I… Read More
We were heading into a tornado. Of course, we didn’t know that. Our daughter Susannah was returning for her last year at college in Grand Rapids. But a late summer thunderstorm hit us en route. Soon, it developed into a blinding deluge. White-knuckled, I pulled into the dorm parking lot. As we headed for the dorm’s entrance, sirens went off…. Read More