News & Articles
The Art Of War
What images come to mind with the word “war?” For much of human history, artists working for pharaohs, emperors, kings, queens, sultans, and tsars portrayed war, especially victorious battles, as glorious moments in history.However, much of how war has been portrayed changed with the advent of photography. Even when viewed today, early wartime photography from…
Caretakers Of Stories
Writing non-fiction and fiction for nearly thirty years hadn’t prepared me for the eager response that I received when I began offering writing workshops. In my first workshop in a small town in northern Wisconsin, a wide-range of people attended, who wanted to write poetry, fiction, historical non-fiction, devotions, family histories, and memoirs. In a…
Finding Meaning In The Eclipse
In just a few days, we will experience one of the great differences between the ancient and modern worlds. I’m referring to the solar eclipse which will bring thousands of sun-gazers to our county. Driving through downtown Franklin last week, I saw signs of how we modern and scientifically-educated people are dealing with the coming…
Throwing Out the Playbook
All of us who are interested in presidential politics must admit that Donald Trump has thrown out the playbook on how to get elected. It is stunning how many of the time-honored taboos that all previous candidates had to avoid have been ignored by Trump. Not that long ago, even the hint of sexual impropriety…
Oscar Night
As my wife and I watched the Oscar awards last Sunday, she remembered that the last night we watched the entire ceremony was when we lived in LA back in the early seventies. That was when we were first married and our TV was a black and white box with a screen about ten inches…
Being Read To
Taos, New Mexico, is a town famous for many reasons. Taos Pueblo has been home to an Indigenous community of Tiwa ancestry for at least the past thousand years. Spanish conquistadors arrived in the late sixteenth century. Kit Carson lived in Taos in the nineteenth century, and then, beginning in the early twentieth century, Taos…