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For months, I’ve carried the call of the Sandhill Cranes in my heart. They were passing over my home on an early Saturday morning as I was leaving to proctor the SATs at my high school. It was a divine interruption – a hard stop on the feverish…
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Sometimes I feel like I’ve forgotten how to be a poet or how to compose songs. In the silence that seems like writer’s block, those critical internal voices grow deafening. For example, since early October, I’ve been trying to wrestle my thoughts into a sonnet. That otherworldly rattling…
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Over the summer, we experienced a substantial lack of rain. Now this isn’t England, but Grove City usually has its share of rainy days. We savor the sunny ones as they seem to be as rare as European White Truffles. And yet, I was far too busy to…
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Missing in action. That’s how I’ve felt, creatively (and emotionally), for the past two months. Little time to pay attention. Little time to be astonished. Little time to tell about it. I’ve failed to live by Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life. Fall has always been a…
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As summer’s curtain drops and the stage resets for another academic year, I return to my only camping excursion in late June with my second youngest son. We gathered with a group of friends and fathers to camp and kayak. The food and fellowship were wonderful and our…
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I’ve come back to Mary Oliver after she popped up in the book I’m reading for enjoyment between preparing for school and repairing our fleet of cars! The book is Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (I know: enjoyment?), and Mary Oliver shows up…
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For the first time in nearly ten years, I’ll be back in local coffeehouses playing music with my sons — except now it’s the next generation! Shortly after I released At the In Between in 2012, I began “touring” with my two eldest sons. We played wineries, coffee…
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Having not posted anything by Mary Oliver in awhile, I wondered if she had any poetry related to Independence Day. A quick online search led me to a post on “Improvised Life: A Treasury of Inspiring Ideas.” Allegedly, a poem my wife has loved for years, first read…
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Last week we returned to St. Paul, Minnesota for the national speech and debate competition hosted at the University of Northwestern. While there, I got to spend some quiet time on the dual bench glider swings on the university’s small island, known for its Island Chapel (follow the…
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The end approaches. We’ve moved past counting the days; now we’re counting the hours. Another school year, my twenty-fifth to be exact, comes to a close. In the heat of wrapping up the year and managing life outside of the classroom, my wife (at my son, Theo’s leading)…
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the deepening ground 