“No!” answered Frodo, coming back to himself out of the darkness, and finding to his surprise that it was not dark, and that out of the window he could see the sunlit garden.” — Tolkin’s Fellowship Gandalf has just revealed that Frodo has the “one ring to rule them all … and in the darkness […]

Read more "samWISE"

“This is impossible!” — Ezekiel, as he tries to put on my socks. Over Christmas I hurt my back. A bulging disc. Lots of pain management. Rest. Prescribed PT. The healing has been so slow. And at four weeks I slipped back when I tried to put on a sock. So there was Ezekiel each […]

Read more "Confession"

As we drove through the snow, Ezekiel asked me the difference between snow and ice. “They are both frozen water.” I tried to explain the formation of snow and ice. With snow, the individual water drops freeze high in the air. There they crystalize into flakes that fall and pile up into a blanket (staying […]

Read more "wrapped in a blanket"

Nestled in the mountains was a little village. Every house the same. Two stories making a perfect cube. A pyramid roof on top. With such uniformity, every family strived to be different. The painted houses were every imaginable color. Some added shutters and lattice work with flowering vine. Everyone spent hours landscaping. So as we […]

Read more "Settler"

The First World War was originally called the Great War. “The war to end all wars.” Of course the Second World War, larger and more deadly, followed quickly. And in the aftermath Harry S Truman renamed the War Department the Department of Defense. I suppose the late 1940s must have been a woke era. At […]

Read more "Awake"