This past Monday, our family loaded the trappings of college dorm life into our two cars. It was time to move Nathan back to campus for his junior year. As we prepared to leave home,…
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FISHING FOR WORDS for creatives who write You stand on the edge of a shallow lake, casting your line, waiting for bites— some days, not a nibble.…
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It’s night-time in Baltimore, Maryland, a city with its fair share of troubles—high poverty rate, high unemployment rate, high crime rate . . . But if you scan the city skyline, what you see there…
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You ever gone through a long stretch where major responsibilities were pulling you in several directions at once? When all you could do was breathe and keep going, trusting that you’d get to the end…
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My habit in large waiting rooms is to walk. I’m always surprised by how far I can go while not going anywhere, just pacing or doing circuits, waiting my turn. I’m surprised, too, by how…
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Way back in January, I introduced to you the practice of writing centos. Here’s a refresher: A cento is a literary work, usually a poem, created exclusively from lines or phrases lifted from the work(s) of…
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It’s a cold morning here in South Dakota. We’re expecting snow this afternoon, just enough to cover the ground in white-Christmas fashion. Here in our living room, the Christmas tree is lit. The hearth has…
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A friend shows me a beautiful potted mum. Its rich orange-red buds have burst open with vibrant sprays of sun-yellow at their center. The plant—of a variety called “Autumn Sunset”—is simply gorgeous. “The garden center…
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This morning I delivered Jihong to the Sioux Falls airport, an hour south of us, for the first leg of an overseas business trip. As he’d prepared to leave home, a strange sequence of problems…
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On September 4, Jihong and I delivered Nathan to college for his sophomore year. An hour after we unloaded his stuff at the dorm, Nathan auditioned on his cello for a seat in the symphonic…
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Imagine yourself holding a hammer. Now, strike your hammer against a big pane of tempered glass. Watch the glass shatter into thousands of crystalline pieces, dropping all around your feet. Hear the initial crash of…
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Eden is nine years old. Her family lives across the street from Annette Langlois Grunseth, a dear friend of mine who, in her seventies, is a beautiful ball of energy. Eden and Annette have turned…
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