Category: My Memoir
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Tea-Table
The Tea-Table is a giant rock on top of the hill which looms over my Great-Grandfather’s West Virginia farm. The Table is the size of a small barn, and the bottom is smaller than the top – like a table. It looks like a giant child has stacked flat rocks, large on small, in a…
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On The Summer Urge To Sit Outside
I can’t claim to understand my own urge to sit among the wildflowers. Beauty? Sure. But even before the candied blooms pop, as soon as green shoots break the spring soil, I’m sure I’m missing out on a secret. Before the beauty, nature draws. Why? The cliches are many: “the healing power of nature”. Again,…
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Coyote, January, Ohio.
As the mercury approaches zero all movement stops. Where starlings had squabbled over the leavings of the big corn threshers, now the very air squats on furrows. Maybe tomorrow the wind won’t fang the mouse, who just wants to glean the corners of the field. He peeps, then pulls back. White is the…
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Walnuts In The Road
My car’s tires tear soft green husks off the walnuts in the dirt road. Decades ago packs of farm boys would scavenge the brown nuts from where they roll to the bottoms of the ruts, and take them off to a flat rock to crack them. They thought of carts and trucks as walnut preparation…
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Back Mountain Road
Somewhere between Snowshoe Mountain and Cass Railroad in the West Virginia mountains is a two lane paved road you’ll miss unless you know what you’re looking for. “Back Mountain Road” winds for miles along the side of the ridge, looking down on red barns and gold hayricks. I drove it one August day looking…
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October 1961: The Wreck
October 1961: The Wreck I am five years old and looking down on my grandmother in her open and brightly-lit coffin. My father holds me up; I feel his strong hands in my armpits, and from behind me I hear him whisper “She died from a fractured skull.” He wants me to see her and to see…
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Gabriel’s Inhalation
Yoga class this evening. This makes my Christian people nervous. No, I don’t believe that some crazed Hindu god owns the lotus pose, any more than I believe Darwin owns the bones of the brachiosaur. In the end, most Christians in the pew are actually among those who, had they lived in Corinth, would have…
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Advent, Vermont, 1982. I find a dead man.
After long hours of night driving it took a second for my eyes to jolt my brain about something wrong. A faint light to the left, down in the ravine, but it was gone behind my moving car as soon as I saw it. Stop the car. I braked gently on the wet blacktop, slick…
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To Isaac, On Your Baptism Day, October 7, 2012.
To Isaac, on your baptism day, October 7, 2012. Isaac, Hear the words of your father. All these dear ones, your mother and I – we can never be prouder of you, since today you said, to all the world, that Jesus is your King. Baptism doesn’t forgive your sins. Jesus did that when you…
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Vanity, All is Vanity.
Isaac, I wrote this late one night when I was really tired in my heart. At the age of 55 I have to admit how little I understand about God or the world. I have no idea what He wants me to do. I’ve been lucky enough to have fallen in, at various times, with…