just enough light

I decided that Saturday was the day to put Dad’s bedroom furniture in the front yard with a price tag on it. He died 5 months ago. It seemed that every week during that 5 months involved closing out or finalizing some part of his life; terminating utilities and his phone plan, closing out his […]

I have always admired my dad’s hands. They seem a little large for his body, they have visible tendons running to each finger and a network of veins going in all directions. They are strong. When he and I participated in a zoom meeting to assess him for his long-term healthcare insurance, the representative asked […]

Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are the two most vocal Republican governors who have declared war on “woke education.” Kevin McCarthy says that the nation can save lots of money by getting rid of wokeness in the military. He promises congressional investigations into how a woke agenda is making our military weaker. I guess being […]

I learned to drive a stick shift with my best friend, Randy, on a Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1965. His dad’s ’53 Chevy had a push button starter, a three-speed manual transmission (“three on the tree”), and a weak battery. It was a spare car from Randy’s grandmother who no longer drove. The […]

In two recent opinion articles in the Reporter News, the authors complained about the general state of affairs in our country. One writer (March 3) suggested that immorality and the decline in religious belief were undermining our democracy. He included a list of things he considered immoralities.The other author (March 17) included a laundry list […]

I have been in Urbana, IL for the past week. I came on my own and Judy stayed in Abilene to hold down the fort. In my absence she has had to manage a developing crisis of our water heater that is showing all the signs of old age and need for replacement (leaking.) I […]

I went to visit a man who had visited our church. That was something we did in that Baptist church in the 70s, pay a visit to whomever comes to visit us, to see if they want to join or if we can be of service to them in some way. I was a young, […]

I attended church yesterday, something I do with decreased frequency these days. I am in Urbana, IL and I visited the church Judy and I attended for more than 20 years before moving to Texas. Because of the pandemic the attendance was small, but I saw familiar faces and got to chat with many of […]

For me, gratitude and grief often go together. This morning provided me with an example. As I engaged in my morning time of reading and writing, a sporadic activity I loosely call “a discipline,” the reading admonished me to “assume my creativity is of critical importance.” Only with that assumption will I take it seriously […]

Well, so much for a writing discipline. I have not added anything for a week. I could attribute this to any number of factors, but I have to go back to a quote I have near my desk. I’m not at my desk right now so I can’t quote it, but it reminds me that […]