It’s a sign of the times. A few nights ago, I was out on our deck looking at a bright crescent moon with my granddaughter, Brileigh, age 4. I said, “Look at the moon. Isn’t it beautiful?” She looked for a moment and answered, “Yeah, but where’s the little boy that sits in the moon […]
Geneva, Alabama, my hometown, sits at the junction of two rivers so the surrounding earth is one of the last stops for sediment deposits before the rivers flow into the Gulf of Mexico. The soil underneath the whole town is mostly hard, dense red clay. Our street wasn’t paved for most of my growing up […]
If our family is together in a public place and a child is misbehaving, chances are one of us will turn to the others and say, “Looks like somebody needs a ham sandwich.” If you’re within earshot and don’t know the story behind this statement, you would think us crazy. So here’s the story: When […]
Miss Mary Dell Ard was my fourth grade teacher. She was an old-fashioned schoolmarm. Never married, she dedicated her life to teaching children. She called every student “precious” even though she may be at the same time applying the rod to the child’s backside. Her oak desk was huge (at least it was to this […]
Who would dare drive directly into the path of a hurricane? WE WOULD! Last Wednesday with Isaac bearing down on the Florida Gulf Coast we packed up the babies (and their parents) into a rented van, and headed toward an active Category 1 hurricane. Hey, we had booked the house and the van months before […]
We all have rocks in our heads. Really. Deep inside our heads, in our inner ears, we have tubes (or canals) and in those tubes there are tiny calcium crystals (sometimes called “ear rocks”) that communicate with our brains – telling us that we are upright, lying down, falling down, upside down, or whatever. But […]
Imagine our surprise. After a few seconds driving our rental car through the gates of the walled Italian city San Gimignano, we realized that the ancient cobble stone streets were meant for pedestrians only. Yeah, there were probably signs somewhere that forbade vehicles from driving on these historic pathways but my Italian was marginal at […]
The closest I’ve ever gotten physically (or emotionally) to Bimini is when we took a weeklong trip to Nassau in the Bahamas. A few years ago both sons and their wives were living on opposite ends of the country from each other…and us. Los Angeles and New York City. We are in Nashville. Dennis and […]
I sleep soundly these days and mostly it’s because of a small device called a Sound Machine. It looks like a tiny alien spaceship that landed on my bedside table. When I turn it on, I can select from several sounds that are guaranteed to soothe me into serenity. There’s the sound of the ocean, […]
What’s the difference between faith and fear? Everything. They are direct opposites. Most experts agree that we all have some innate fears, things we’re born with. Fear of falling is one of them. And if the fear of falling is innate, is not the faith that gravity pulls us down inborn as well? Faith and fear […]