When my father suffered his first heart attack in October, 1979, other farmers from our township brought their combines to our fields. They harvested our soybeans, loaded them onto their grain trucks, and drove them to the elevator, all on behalf of my incapacitated father. They did what their fathers had done, and their father’s…

Why wouldn’t there be geese? After all, it’s nesting season here in Ohio. I’m sitting with my wife Cathy in the parking lot at the Franklin County Board of Elections, waiting for my appointed time to go inside and receive my second dose of the Moderna vaccine, when a pair of Canada geese waddle by.…

When I was a teenager, I had a poster of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on their Harleys from the movie, Easy Rider, taped to my bedroom wall. It was the early 1970s, and I lived in a town of one thousand people in rural southeastern Illinois where conservative values held sway. Those values left…

Cathy and I, the past few years, have been opening our home on Thanksgiving Day, providing a welcome table to anyone who might need a place to go. Of course, we’re disappointed that the pandemic has made that impossible this year, but our gathering’s loss is a small price to pay for the sake of…

My wife Cathy and I live in a subdivision called Margie’s Cove, where we have close friendships with a number of our neighbors. All through the spring and summer and now in a stretch of warm autumn temperatures, we’ve been able to gather on patios and in backyards, observing a social distance of course, just…

I learned at an early age how to be alone. I had no choice; I was an only child. I grew up on a farm in southeastern Illinois, so I spent countless hours entertaining myself. On occasion, children from a nearby farm would come to visit, but for the most part I was left to…