The Stones That Hold Our Stories I have lived in this magnificent country for my entire life. I have watched the seasons turn from the front porch of my childhood home and felt the hot summer sun on the busy streets of our grandest cities. Over the long decades, I have seen a lot of […]
The Timeless Call of the Sands I sit on my back porch every evening just as the sun begins to dip below the horizon. The sky out here does not just turn dark. It catches fire. It bleeds orange, purple, and a deep, dusty rose. I have spent my entire life walking this country, watching […]
The Changing American Landscape I remember a time when the edge of my hometown was just a dusty dirt road fading into a quiet line of ancient oak trees. Back in those days, you could walk for an hour and not see another soul, just the deer grazing in the twilight and the fireflies rising […]
The Kitchens of Our Past I remember the kitchen of my childhood with a clarity that sometimes physically aches. It was a modest room situated at the back of our house, overlooking a small garden where my father grew tomatoes and pole beans. The walls were painted a soft, buttery yellow that had faded near […]
The Giants We Walk Among When you walk down the busy avenues of our grand cities, what do you see? You see monuments of glass and steel piercing the clouds. You see endless miles of paved roads. This is our situation today. We live in vast, bustling metropolises that feel entirely permanent. It is as […]
I remember a time when Main Street was the center of our universe. You walked down the sidewalk and you knew the shopkeepers by their first names. We shared our days over the hum of the hardware store and the quiet corners of the neighborhood diner. That was our situation for decades. We lived deeply […]
The Late Summer Magic There is a deeply comforting kind of magic that settles over our towns when late summer finally arrives. The days begin to grow just a little bit shorter, and the evening air carries a crisp promise of autumn. Then, almost overnight, an empty field at the edge of town comes alive. […]
A Quiet Country Stretches Its Legs It is a beautiful thing to look back and trace the steps of those who walked before us. Think about our country as it was in the year eighteen hundred. The vast majority of our citizens lived within fifty miles of the Atlantic Ocean. Our young country was mostly […]
The Warmth of the Glowing Neon The rain taps a steady rhythm against the heavy glass window. You pull open the thick stainless steel door, and a tiny brass bell announces your arrival. Immediately, you are enveloped by the comforting smell of sizzling bacon grease and rich coffee brewing in a glass pot. You slide […]
The Enduring Magic of Our Home Let us sit together for a moment on this quiet afternoon. You can pull up that chair right there. I have spent my eighty odd years watching this country stretch its legs, grow, and change with the passing seasons. Every summer, I see families pack their bags. I see […]