Those Vagabonds Who Gather First the Light
13 Minute Read
(For Mark Magleby) I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland This post owes its title to a short story in Adventures in Contentment in which David Grayson, the pseudonymous author and principal hero of Ray Stannard Baker’s early 20th-century tales about pastoral life in western Massachusetts, meets and flips the fortunes of a door-to-door book agent to surprising effect. The agent, […]
9 Minute Read
Why do I write? I write to remember. I write to understand. I write to change. Scott Knell This morning, as I waited for my head to clear to the sight and sound of running water in my bathroom sink, I found myself staring at a familiar object posing as the favorite faucet of my youth. I had just run a finger across the top of a mirage reflected in its polished nickel–a water spot? […]
17 Minute Read
[This post was originally published in three parts: First Person Metacognitive; Then, Now, & Yet; and Nowland. All three parts have been re-consolidated into this post.] Part I. First Person Metacognitive I have a full-scale map of the United States. One mile equals one mile. Last summer I folded it. Steven Wright Before he retired to minister to people’s hearts in a more figurative way, world-renown cardiovascular surgeon and medical pioneer Dr. Russell M. Nelson […]
8 Minute Read
I saw the rain-dirty valley You saw Brigadoon I saw the crescent You saw the whole of the moon Mike Scott, The Whole of the Moon In 1963, when I was still learning to read, my Aunt Jennie (Campbell) gave me for Christmas Marcia Brown’s 1962 Caldecott recipient Once a Mouse… Because that same Christmas, Jennie gave my siblings way cooler 1940s picture book classics by Robert McCloskey–Make Way for Ducklings and One Morning in […]
6 Minute Read
(For Peter) The angels do not reside on a planet like this earth; But … in the presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for their glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before the Lord. Joseph Smith, The Doctrine and Covenants, Section 130, Verses 4 through 7 In my “novelist” days (1984 to 1992) I spent my spare writing time wrestling to […]
7 Minute Read
Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art. Oscar Wilde
10 Minute Read
The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Few analogies to the Law of the Harvest command our imagination more vividly than sports. From the proper and timely preparation to compete, the contest itself, and its completion within a fixed timebox, the organic microcosm of athletic competition condenses the lessons and patterns of […]
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I have given up all I loved so much: chivalry and pride; and since it pleases God, I accept it all, that He may keep me by Him. Guillaume IX d’Aquitaine, Pos de chantar m’es pres talenz A beauty queen now crowned an angel fairThe world your stage you chose serenityTo turn like Eve your face from fruited treeYou gave away your majesty to bear The racquet and the feather were your handsBroad strokes soft […]
8 Minute Read
All the light you see is from the past. Alicia Eggert Almost every engineer in my professional orbit in the early 80s sat somewhere beneath the three-acre hangar-turned-cube-farm that was Building Three of Rockwell International’s Space Systems in Seal Beach, California. Rockwell built spacecraft and satellites in those days, and the engineers in Building Three wrote the systems that tracked the more than one million parts that combined to form America’s first space shuttles. And […]