Recent Entries

• How much is too much?

  July 19, 2025

  The secret of contentment is knowing how to enjoy what you have, and to be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach. Lin Yutang, Chinese writer,
1895-1976 … The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers… William Wordsworth Years ago when I...

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• Why I hold onto “stuff” for so long: more poignant memories from a short-lived teaching career

  July 11, 2025

    What I think we should nurture in students is greater awareness of the fact that writing can be not only a shaper of the inner reality of their thoughts, but a shaper of their knowledge of the world around them. Janet Emig has said that writing is “more readily a form and source of…

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• My philosophy of photography based on a lifetime of taking pictures

  June 19, 2025

  The question is not what you look at, but what you see. From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau Here is something I wrote recently, and I think it perfectly applies to my Nature and landscape photography: The exceptional beauty I see all around me comes from my soul seeing through my camera and d...

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• Where loneliness can lead

  June 10, 2025

  At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.” — Brendan Francis The human condition is defined by the tension between our need to belong and our equally strong need to be alone. — Rollo May “The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk al...

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• Watching home movies from the 1950s and 60s has provided a Time Machine experience back to the more innocent era of my early youth

  May 31, 2025

    I often write about the past because all my past experiences have resulted in the person I am today, considerably wiser than when I was young because of that very past some say I dwell in too much. But something always comes up to turn this idea on its head and reveal once again…

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• To be young again, or not to be, that is the question

  May 22, 2025

  People often say there’s no way they’d want to be 25, or 30 or 35. Youth seems to end about 35 and middle age takes over. But are they being honest? My 20s were the best years of my life. Why wouldn’t I want to be young again, not knowing what the future held with…

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• Baby Judge Judy rocks the world of YouTube and social media much as her adult self was wildly popular on daytime TV decades ago

  May 19, 2025

  Although I have long heard of her and she’s a pop culture icon, I never watched Judge Judy on TV because of both unknowing indifference and the fact that it came on during the day.  But truth be told, I have never watched much TV since I was in grade school.  For many years when…

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• A Grandmother in a nursing home has a devoted grandson; I tried my best to be a devoted son taking care of my mother in her home

  May 10, 2025

    A grandson is someone I will never know, in this life anyway. But when I saw this video clip, I was overcome with as much emotion as I am capable of these days. https://youtube.com/shorts/jeXQdsPDoaw?si=4qeVemP8lPvDcz0G It’s been over five years since Mom passed away on January 28, 2020. N...

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• A shining college town on a hill: My Mayberry existence once upon a time

  May 6, 2025

  Years ago in 1977, I lived in a small college town near a large city, but not too close. It felt like it was out a ways from everything. If it hadn’t been a college town, I would have thought I really was deep in the country. Now this little town was like some place…

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