Musings

By Sean Dietrich I am writing from a plane that is stuck on a runway. It’s raining. Hard. I have a screaming baby behind me. Angry passengers surround me. I have to be in Atlanta tonight to catch a plane home, but it’s not looking good. We have been on this god-forsaken...

By Myrna Conrad When I listen to what is going on in our world today, I feel like the things I am hearing make no sense. Logical thinking seems to have been replaced by exaggeration, pontification, fabrication and ideas contrived to cause fear, increase power through compliance and steer people...

By Myrna Conrad We are in the middle of celebrating two very patriotic holidays, Memorial Day and Independence Day. Memorial Day commemorates the men and women who have died in military service for the U.S. Independence Day (Fourth of July) celebrates the birth of American independence from Great Britain on...

By Rick Moore In the eleventh and twelfth grades, students were permitted to leave the school campus for lunch. I remember asking my friend Terry if he wanted to go to the pool hall to get a chilly cheeseburger. He responded by saying his dad would “skin him alive” if...

By Sean Dietrich On my kitchen counter is a pound cake, sitting on a pedestal, beneath a glass dome. Pound cake is the food of summer. It can make or break the entire season. A summer without pound cake is like church without singing. Or Monet without color. Or Andy without...

By Rick Moore (If you don’t like sad stories, you may not want to read this one.) We had traveled in the bus for over a hundred miles to the campsite located in the hills of Tennessee, as had several other Boy Scout troops from the state. Our Scoutmaster was...

By Myrna Conrad Covid 19 has changed so much of our world and how it functions. But, one of the most devastating changes has been how it has so drastically impacted human-to-human interaction. It seems that face-to-face interaction, close connection and contact had already started to diminish even before Covid. So,...

By Sean Dietrich My wife and I are going out to dinner tonight. I am waiting for her to get ready. She is in the bathroom, standing before a mirror, pinching her tummy. She asks if I think she is fat. “No,” I say. She frowns. “You sure?” “Yes.” “Well, I feel fat.” She...

By Myrna Conrad Since this is the month of Easter, I want to reflect on and talk about grace. I know there are various definitions of grace. Among them are: “simple elegance or refinement of movement;” “an attractively polite manner of behaving;” and “a period officially allowed for payment of...

By Rick Moore This is the story as it was told to me. In 1899, Malaky, her brothers David and Naif, along with their mom and dad, boarded a steamship heading from Byblos, Lebanon to New York City. Malaky was eleven, David was four, and Naif was one year old....