Edges and spaces

April 3, 2024–Edges and spaces are where the important things hide. I first noticed the significance of edges as a boy growing up on a farm. The Midwest topography is a quilt of corn fields and beans. When you stand in the middle of a sea of soybeans and turn a...

Foods we hate to love

March 27, 2024–For some reason, grits was the topic of a recent online discussion. The food brought up clearly delineated preferences, “delineated” as in above or below the Mason-Dixon line. Southerners love grits; northerners don’t. This started a long discussion of...

Guy lights

Mar 20, 2024–Man’s fascination with light arcs back to that time he first rubbed two sticks together and created fire. First, this had to be one amazing guy. Who was that caveman, hulking about in a tiger-skin toga, who looked at a fallen dead limb and thought, I...

What would Vicki do?

March 13, 2024–I sometimes think about Vicki. Vicki was a high school classmate I grew up with back in our small hometown. We both came from large Catholic families, started Kindergarten together, attended catechism and received first communion together, shared...

Potpourri for $100

Feb 28, 2024–As a kid I remember first seeing the Jeopardy category “Potpourri.” I was not familiar with the word, but after watching I soon learned it meant “place to use up leftover material that all together wasn’t enough to make up an entire category with one...

Transactions

Feb 21, 2024–When someone asks you out for coffee, the first question that should come to mind is, “What’s in it for me?” Sound cynical? Why? Whether you are aware of it or not, every interaction between two people is a transaction. To be productive, it has to be....