I’m sure you’ve got your problems. Maybe you’re insecure. Maybe you’re selfish. Maybe you’re irresponsible. Maybe you have poor hygiene. There are a thousand things that could be wrong with you. There are, without a doubt, lots of ways your unhappiness is a result of choices you make, habits you’ve cultivated. But. It’s not all you. That never-ending tension you feel. The lack of rest. The lack of peace. Much of it comes from living within the current cultural and... Read more
I’m working today. You probably are too. Years ago, when I was a kid, we wouldn’t have been. At least, not where I came from. See, I grew up in a small town at the end of the old America. I grew up just as America’s manufacturing base was beginning its slow decline. I grew up before the Internet. Before Wal-Mart was America’s largest employer. Back then, in that place, we took Labor Day off. I didn’t grow up in... Read more
There are a lot of unmowed lawns where I come from. Many of them sit before homes, once occupied by more or less happy families, now abandoned to neglect and decay. Not far from the empty houses, there’s plenty of formerly occupied commercial space. Anybody wanting to open a business in town wouldn’t have a tough time finding a place to do it. But, nobody there wants to open a business. I grew up in one of those little Midwestern... Read more
My parents’ neighbors have a rooster. I know this because, on recent visit there, I heard him doing what roosters do: getting up early to demand everyone else be up admiring his awesomeness. Hearing his crow in the early morning reminded me of waking up 35 years ago in a bedroom at my grandparents’ house to the bellow of their own irrepressible bird. Though I heard a different bird in a different place on an occasion more than three decades... Read more
The Road Home
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