A Quiet Morning Reflection I sit on my front porch in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on a quiet Tuesday morning. The autumn air carries a familiar crispness. I hear the familiar hum of the yellow school bus picking up the neighborhood children. They are carrying heavy backpacks full of math books and history assignments. It is the […]
A Walk Through Time in Our Neighborhoods I walk down the streets of Pilsen in Chicago these days, and I cannot help but smile. I remember a time when the signs painted on the windows were mostly written in Czech. The sweet, buttery smell of fresh kolaches would drift out onto the sidewalk early every […]
The morning air always holds a special kind of stillness before the sun fully clears the horizon. I remember standing on the edge of town decades ago, watching the farm trucks roll in under the pale light. They were heavy with the weight of the season. Bushels of sweet corn stacked high in the humid […]
I sit by the window these days, watching the neighborhood kids ride bicycles down the slope of our street. They do not know why the road dips past the oak tree, or why it curves around the creek bed at the bottom. They only know it makes for a fast ride. I smile as they […]
The Weight of Time on Cobblestone Streets There is a certain quality to the light in the late afternoon. It catches the dust motes spinning in the air. It warms the rough edges of the old brick buildings. When you walk down Chestnut Street near Independence Hall in Philadelphia, you feel the physical weight of […]
The Magic of an Autumn Saturday The crispness of the autumn air always brings back a rush of fond memories for me. You feel the distinct change when late August rolls around and the leaves just begin to hint at turning yellow and gold. The heavy summer humidity finally drops, leaving a fresh, welcomed chill […]
The Sounds of Summer The late afternoon sun dips below the grandstand. A cool breeze finally cuts through the thick summer heat. I can still close my eyes and hear the precise, sharp crack of a wooden bat meeting a leather ball. That sound echoed across the radio on warm July evenings when our windows […]
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 […]