Recent Entries

• Memory Lane”: The road back to the more innocent days of our childhoods

  November 18, 2023

  East Main Street in the small Washington County [N.C] town of Plymouth was a cool and hospitable place on a summer afternoon. Trees spread their dark, green branches across the sidewalk, forming a huge tunnel, while their expanding roots pushed up sections of sidewalk, forming volcanic-like mount...

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• “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

  November 11, 2023

      Many years ago, in what now seems like a past life, I was an English teacher. I loved teaching poetry to students right at the cusp of their high school years, who for the first time had cognitively developed an appreciation for, and understanding of m, abstract thought, such as what you...

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• Autumn light is magical, and transformative

  November 7, 2023

    One day the sun shall shine…into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as a bankside in autumn. Henry David Thoreau She stepped down from the bus into the hard brilliance of a late afternoon in autumn… Jan Cox Speas&h...

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• Dear Hershey Company

  November 2, 2023

  I want to take this opportunity to thank you for something splendid and delicious you and your founder, Milton S. Hershey, gave us anlmost 125 years ago — the Hershey bar. Now I know some people might say this is a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but to me it is not.…

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• A single movie from 1979, “Breaking Away” represented rebirth and hope after a dark period of my life

  October 26, 2023

  Following a miraculous recovery from incapacitating depression in the spring of 1979, there came along a deeply moving, humorous, and all-too-human movie about friendship, family and growing up that more deeply and passionately lifted my spirits than anything else, before or since, as I emerged i...

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• Lara’s Theme

  October 12, 2023

  Somewhere my love there will be songs to sing Although the snow covers the hope of spring. Somewhere a hill blossoms in green and gold And there are dreams, all that your heart can hold. Someday we’ll meet again, my love Someday whenever the Spring breaks through… Lara’s Theme, from the movie “Do...

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• Some recurring themes over 25 years of writing online

  October 6, 2023

  I was thinking back over my last essay  here  and got to pondering the deeper significance of keeping a journal, especially one that others can read, and which is written as much for those other readers as for myself.  The aims are not mutually exclusive. It occurs to me that there are certain th...

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• Cherry picking

  October 1, 2023

      I had a friend once, a former co-worker, who lived with his family in a tiny little valley tucked away in the north Georgia mountains. Whether he still lives there I have no idea. It’s been years since I’ve seen him. But I had two very pleasant visits with him and his family.…

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• My favorite house of dreams and longing that was meant to be only that

  September 25, 2023

  I think most of us have ideas about what our “dream” house would be if we could perfectly imagine it, find it, or or even build it . That’s because embedded deep within us is a rather ancient yearning for stability, for a resting place on this old earth that we can call “home.” And…

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