Christmas is a time to celebrate the simple freshness of children — The days are clicking by now, like cogs on a seven-tooth sprocket. Everything’s systematic, from the morning alarm clock to the nightly news. Each day is new and different, yet they come and go with exact regularity. We spend Monday through Friday making a living. Saturday’s for chores around the…

Sometimes, the simplest things can bring our biggest joy — I’m not going to lie to you, I’ve had better weeks than this. Yes, we are supposed to count our blessings each day, dwelling on the good things in life, which in turn lifts our spirits out of the gloom. But for some reason nothing seemed to pick me up…

Memorial Day Reflections — Lowering our flag to half-staff early this morning awakened a swarm of thoughts that have lain dormant in my mind. It’s good that we have a couple holidays each year to remind us to be thankful for our bountiful lives here in the good old United States of America. …

The upside to a world-wide sabbatical — In my current idle hours, I often find myself going through old photos. Sometimes, I have to stop and look in retrospect to keep the big picture in focus. The photo above struck me as being quite symbolic of our present world dilemma. This viewpoint tells many stories. First, I…

Comparing two much different life styles. — Forty seven years of my life were lived out on the family farm where I arrived as a newborn. The farm shaped me throughout my very happy childhood. I learned creativity as I built pretend dirt farmsteads in the trees out back. I learned social life in the box elder…

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say — Ralph Waldo Emerson It seems, now more than ever, we find ourselves groping along through clouds of rhetoric, as we feel for the sure footing of underlying actions and attitudes. Words, oral or written, can be…

The story behind her peculiar title. — The year 2012 was not a good one for us. First, we suffered through a hot, windy summer, spawning a record book drought that shriveled our crops. By fall the relentless winds filled the atmosphere with scorched dust, coloring the sun a surreal shade of red. …

The weeks leading up to March 13th, 2019 were a recipe for disaster. First, the temperature didn’t top the freezing point for over a month, sending the frost level deep into the soil. Then the snows came — wet, heavy snows, six to eight inches a crack, piling up an…