Growing up in rural Michigan in the 1940’s and 50’s, my family wasn’t exactly churchy. And very few men in the community were churchy at all. There was something slightly unmanly about it in those days…. (And today?) But my…
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Writing poems is a little like fishing. If you catch anything, the fish are often so small you throw them back. Or if you don’t, you should. But now and then you hook one worth bringing in. At this…
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I submitted my first newspaper column (to the Cumberland Times) thirty-three years ago. I had just turned 40 and, as I recall it, the column was full of imagined forthcoming changes. It was one of those “smell the flowers along…
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Aging is usually seen as a scourge of some kind — nothing good about it, except that the alternative is to die young. But then why does a wise poet like Shakespeare say that “ripeness is all”? And why does…
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Howard grew up a mile from where I live on Evitts Creek. A spiritual adventurer/pioneer, he left the area for many years, forging alliances with several well known personas in the American Southwest and Mexico, including Don Juan Matus, the…
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It’s hard to separate truth from fiction anytime, but 2000 years ago? It almost doesn’t matter. Now we are in legend territory, and legends are at best loosely connected to facts. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have a lot…
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