Snail Farts, Silver Cups, and Openus Wallettus
Somewhere between my coffee and my better judgment, my phone coughed up another miracle cure. This one was dressed real nice. It had ancient Egypt in one pocket, medieval Europe in the other, and enough confidence to make a used-car salesman blush. The…
I Took a Pandemic DNA Test. It Exposed a 57-Year-Old Family Lie
The pandemic was a political time bomb, an emotional nightmare, and a body count all at once. Those of us in healthcare were standing on the front line of something we did not fully understand yet. It was loud. It was severe. It came with arguments,…
Trying to Find Their Way Home
Pull up a chair. This one is being written by your old uncle, the one you rarely speak to, and that may be too bad because you might have missed something. He is a little strange, sure. Around here, we call him Disco Grandpa. He has been known to chair…
Balaam’s Donkey and the Road We Wanted
Sometimes the problem is not that the traditional lesson is wrong. The problem is that we have become too familiar with it. We hear “Balaam’s donkey,” and our minds go straight to the usual picture: stubborn animal, angry prophet, angel with a sword, and…
The Package Is Not Always The Problem
Somewhere along the way, food got loud. One crowd says everything in a package is poison. Another crowd says it does not matter as long as the label has the right numbers. Then somebody else walks in wearing a lab coat made out of opinions and starts…
Finding Your Way Home
Give me a partially washed-out dirt road with gravel on the side. Not a perfect road. Not a smooth road, or one of those polished streets with painted lines and lights telling everybody exactly when to stop and go. Give me the old dirt road. The one with…
The Tool Is Not The Boss
I have talked to a hammer before, and usually after I smashed a thumb. I have said a few unkind words to a socket wrench too, especially after dropping a starter on my face. That wrench did not warn me. It did not apologize. It did not offer comfort,…
When The Pond Woke Up
When I was a boy, there were places that looked empty most of the year. Dry ponds. Cracked dirt. Low spots in the field that held nothing but dust, weeds, and the memory of water. You could walk past them and think there was nothing there worth noticing.…
A Letter to My Siblings: The Old Coat in the Trunk
Dear brothers and sisters, I have been thinking about an old song “O Death.” It has that ancient Holler sound similar to that I grew up with. It is thought to have been written in and around 1902-1910 attributed to Baptist Minister Lloyd Chandler. But…
Pick Up More Than the Fork
There are days when I look at what passes for news and wonder if the whole world needs to pull over, shut the engine off, and let the smoke clear. Not real news. I can handle real news, but this? No. I shut whatever this is off. Tell me where war is…