DEAR FRIENDS: Three Things. First, last night I posted about a distressing and precipitous drop of maybe 90% in our engagement and viewership on this page, and I asked for a little help. Somehow that broke through the algorithm ‘blockade’ and responses and messages poured in! THANK YOU! And thanks also for the incredible kind and encouraging words. Second: My
Hello Everybody… I am writing this evening with a bit of distressing news, and, perhaps a request. About ten years ago a good friend, who is more modern and ‘connected’ than I, suggested that I get onto Facebook. Frankly, it was not something I was very interested in. But she persisted and, eventually, I relented. To my surprise, as I
AT THE CHURCH O THE PINES the rafters are ringing. Someone got the old furnace working again and the choir and full congregation lift their voices rapturously to the heavens. Chickadees call their names and sing their sweet, two-note song. Goldfinches and pine siskins twitter and gossip while bluejays broadcast the word through all the the neighborhood. Even the old
THERE HAS ARISEN some question, perhaps among newer followers of this page, about my posts from The Church O’ The Pines. As to the nature of the church, and whether it is even a proper church at all. And so on. I have been issuing Sunday bulletins and reports from our little woodland chapel for about 10 years now, and
SEVEN BELOW ZERO at the Church O’ The Pines this morning. The congregation of hearty woodland souls seems unfazed. All the normal goodies are set out in Fellowship Hall, and our church members rub elbows and gossip, as is the case in all the churches I have known. The Bald Eagle was here last evening in the fading light, but
MOURNING DOVES have always meant Summer to me. Their soft cooing on a warm June morning. The whistling of their wings in the neighborhood during a game of catch or wiffle ball. The nuanced beauty of their feathers in the sun. They were a part of my childhood, especially the two summers I spent in Alton, Illinois with my grandparents,
HERE AT THE CHURCH O THE PINES it is a gray, January day. Some might say gloomy. A layer of winter fog hangs over the frozen Church moat (Mississippi River) and the skies are leaden. But there is no hint of gloom among our congregation. The Blue Jay clan are in fine fettle (whatever a fettle actually is) and as
IT WAS 30 YEARS AGO that a first-time author (me) with a small, regional publisher that had never published a children’s book, and an artist who had never illustrated a book, began to make a mark. OLD TURTLE went on to sell over 1.5 million copies, to be translated and published into other languages, and to win many awards—including the
I ATTENDED a funeral yesterday. And in saying goodbye to David—a good, kind, and gentle man, who always elevated those around him—I thought again of how our lives are so much more than we know. Of how all things are more than we know—intertwined with one another, hinting at depths we seldom explore or understand. But sometimes, perhaps in the
AS WE WALK the path of life, we reach a point where some—perhaps many—of those who have walked with us are no longer there beside us. Anxiety, grief, and loss, we learn, are as much a part of this mortal journey as are joy and laughter. Death has touched me recently—again—and I will be saying goodbye to an old friend