A pen and a notebook still work. Years and years ago, when I first began writing, that was the way I started – with a wirebound notebook and an ink pen. Not a ballpoint like this, but a real fountain pen that I filled up out of a little glass jar of ink. The jar had a little well at …
Do you like frogs? This little fellow has some explaining to do. I was sweeping the bathroom this morning when I noticed what I thought was a gray rock on the floor under the step stool. Rocks in my house are not unusual. The grandkids are always collecting rock treasures. And I sometimes carry in rocks I find interesting. Carried …
I was a long way from home last week. Out in Monterey Bay, California for a writers’ retreat. There the ocean trumps it all as the waves come in and the sea animals play out in the water. We left the doors open out to the balcony to hear the waves crashing and the seals barking through the night. During …
I’ve been in Monterey Bay all week enjoying a writer’s retreat hosted by my literary agency. I’m a long way from home in a lot of ways. Distance for sure, but not as long as some of the other attendees. One writer, Marion Stroud, and her husband are here England. They have been gifting us all week with their lovely …
“Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.” Goshen had a great 200th birthday celebration today. Our church was overflowing, something that hasn’t happened our way for a long time. A lot of people who grew up in the church came back to celebrate and remember …
This is the little country church I attend – Goshen Baptist. On Sunday we are going to celebrate our 200th year. To give a little perspective on how long that is, when Goshen first began meeting, the members couldn’t sing the national anthem because the “Star-Spangled Banner” had not yet been written. They couldn’t claim to live in Anderson County …
This is my beautiful mother at the age she thinks she is now. Or sometimes she thinks she’s younger than this, still a child going to school or one who lives in her parents’ house. She constantly wants to go home because they will be worried about her. Oh, to be able to go home to where confusion didn’t muddle …
The butterfly’s attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes …
My aunt, grandfather, mother, father, and sisters. I was taking the picture. Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family. ~Anthony Brandt Today is my grandfather’s birth date. If I’ve done the math right, John Lewis Houchin was born in 1871 on September 23. Around that year anyway. He was one of four sons. I …
Darrell, Eugene, Ronnie Hinson, and David singing “The Lighthouse” One of the most beloved songs in Southern Gospel music is “The Lighthouse.” Ronnie Hinson wrote it when he was just a teenager. He and his brothers and sisters were singing in church out of hymnals when he had the chance to hear the Speer family, a well known gospel singing …