Wonderfully, over the last week, many different people have cooked for me. Cooking does all the things: builds confidence, creates connections, the whole giving-and-recieving dynamic, plus it’s delicious and keeps us alive. …

Right before a rainstorm hits, leaves on the local trees turn over and show their underside (we used to say they ‘turned inside-out’) and you know it’s about to pour. Maybe that’s just a northeast-Ohio-thing, which I find is true about a lot of my longheld practices. If you grew…

That whole every-end-is-a-beginning thing is happening, particularly for those of us in higher education. Graduation-time is always packed with all the emotions, and for this class, our 23s, it’s just a little bit extra. Without question, we asked a metric ton of these 23s. The lifting and carrying they have…

We raised our kids on a dead-end street, blocks from the local high school and vibrant village, uphill from the park with free concerts at the ampitheater, running trails, playgrounds, baha trails in the woods, and in earshot of the football field that two different programs called their home-field and…

I went to Mississippi this month. I am never coming back. Oh, I’m back, but I’m not the same. Even when we were there, we sometimes could only process what we were learning by saying ‘that’s so Mississippi.’ Sometimes that is still the answer — incomplete, and completely true. The…

People write songs about trains. Majestic, mysterious, powerful, ominous, formidable, romantic — trains are all the things. But few people desire to live near traintracks or rail yards. Homes near tracks and yards are worth less than comparable homes elsewhere. Deisel fumes and toxic dust lead to increased risk of…

Well, it was a year, all right. Like most of us, there have been better, and there have been worse. This year, though, I promised to be IN IT. To not be leveled by the hits that seem to just keep coming, to rally, speak truth into action, show up…

My own faith journey is messy, complicated, a work-in-progress. But it does exist, it is unfolding. Not long ago, I heard that old stalwart hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” reframed to include thinking of God as a place of protection and shelter rather than an actual ‘fortress’. Not…

Most of us cook because we have to feed the people in our house, or just ourselves. There is a love/hate synergy with cooking, and if you are Team H, well, the advent of food delivery apps was probably a gamechanger for you. For those of us on the Love…