My granddaughter was, back then, just a little girl, third grade maybe, but one Sunday morning, I remember, she was already starting to wax nostalgic. Here's what she said. "You remember when we still lived in the old house, and…
Years ago, when I was revising a novel, Romey's Place, I didn't know how it should end. What I knew when I'd started the major revision was that I was off in a new direction, writing a different story really because…
Someday, I'm going to put this one on canvas. I know--it's no stunner, but I loved the image before I saw it through the screen on my phone. I wanted to get a shot of it from the minute I…
It's still there. Maybe. I haven't been out there for some time now, but as long as that abandoned place is circled by a substantial grove it remains pretty much hidden from passers-by. Apparently, whoever owns it isn't thinking about…
Harvey Dunn, Jedidiah Smith in the Badlands Don't know whether he actually carried the Good Book through the west in those early years. The story goes he took carried a copy of the Journals of Lewis and Clark, but whether or…
In another day and another time, the buildings crowded on the block made all kinds of sense. The school's own precious history makes clear that once upon a time the staff was entirely religious: "The Sisters of St. Francis of…
He wasn't exactly a kid. There were kids galore on both sides--18-year-olds just out of high school and scores of 17-year-olds who quit school years before. Not that World War II was a young man's war. There were boys out…
Eduard Kaib The first one was twelve feet wide, still quite a production because Jesus, Mary, and the babe were mud-sculptured, then baked, then painstakingly painted. Back in Germany, Eduard Kaib had been an architect. That's not to say his hand-made…
It was my idea to bring in an expert. For a couple of years in the 90s, I was chair of a board that ran a media ministry, and I thought it might be a good idea to bring in…
What do we know about her? She was just a kid really, no more than two years old, but she was cutting edge, a propeller-driven steamer built for the Great Lakes in Buffalo, NY, where thousands of European immigrants would…
