Posts by D C

A conversation with my son lined up with what I recently read about home insurance. Home insurance is not a subject that I have given much thought to. I have home insurance, I trust my local insurance agent, and then I tend to forget about it. Our son and his family live along the Atlantic…

A trait that seems to be steeped in the human brain is “either-or” thinking. I was reminded of this when numerous university campuses ended this spring semester not with calm graduation celebrations but with protests about the war in Gaza. The majority of student protesters is decrying the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza at the…

Although I’d been invited, once I retired as a professor, to march with my colleagues at Franklin College’s commencement, I hadn’t done so for the past few years because of COVID-19. But this year, I robed up and joined the faculty, staff, and students for this yearly celebration. The experience was surreal because I knew…

“It’s all connected.” That’s a sentence we hear frequently, but what is the “it” that the sentence refers to? The connection a friend of mine made recently is one linking undocumented workers at our borders, failed countries to our south, and climate change. That might sound like a stretch, but my friend made a good…

I consider myself fortunate to have lived part of my youth in Springfield, Illinois. Out of my grade-school window, I could see the old courthouse where Abraham Lincoln practiced law before going into politics. When family and friends came to visit, we often took them to see Lincoln’s home or his grave. One of my…

Being in my mid-seventies, I am facing what everyone my age faces—the increasing number of my close friends dying. The past few years have been particularly marked by grief. Some of my friends died after long illnesses; others died suddenly. It is common to describe all these deaths as “losses,” and, of course, there is…

Perhaps we all have thought at one time or another, “If I have to make another decision, my head is going to explode.” It is true that we can become overwhelmed and worn down when we are faced with one decision after another. Taking a nap can be a good response when the “decider” part…

Once students wrestle with these thinkers, they realize that the secret of living a moral life will never be found on a poster or bumper sticker. Investigating the moral life takes time and effort, and then committing to live morally is the work of a lifetime. Focusing on the moral life—what is it and one…

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…

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…