Life
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I told everyone that I would not cry and I did not. But that was my brave face in front of friends and family. It was a long walk down the aisle, about 100 yards from the garden to the wedding tree. Lauren and I chatted as we strolled toward our family and friends, but…
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I married into a family of seven Toms. My father-in-law, two brothers-in-law, two nephews, one son of a nephew, and a husband of a cousin, all named Tom. It’s fitting then, that my daughter will soon marry Thomas Beck Martin. Toms are ubiquitous in our family so it seems strange to me that a $2…
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The man with the shepherd crook disguised as a dust mop has died. There is a melancholy in the closet where the mops lean against the wall and the Folger’s can is empty, no longer filled with Brach’s candy. Rusty gave it all away. General Douglass MacArthur said, “Old soldiers never die; they just fade…
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While playing golf yesterday, someone asked if I was playing my little homemade golf course. I said, “No, I just take care of it, mow it, water it, kind of like a garden, a hobby. Just like my wife Karen, who works in her garden beside the 8th tee box. We work together at different…
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Billy Graham and my Grandma Mildred, side by side, illustrate a conundrum of mine; why do some folks talk non-stop and others hardly at all? Billy Graham was one with the gift of gab, my Grandma Mildred Davis went the way of minimal expression. The soft-spoken and the vocal are both gifted. But I relate…
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This morning, I read several lies and truths about domestic violence. The internet has a way of making us all experts…and idiots. I did find this one interesting. “Prior to the mid-1800s, most legal systems accepted wife-beating (today’s term is domestic violence) as a valid exercise of a husband’s authority over his wife. One exception,…
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He said goodbye in the same graceful and light-hearted way that he lived, revelling in his answers to aggressive sales folks on the phone when asked why he was cancelling his phone service or subscriptions, “The reason I’m cancelling is I’m dying, I’m going home.”
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It’s 1969 and I’m in the woods looking for Germans along with my nine year old buddies helping our friend Tom celebrate a birthday before the advent of chuckie cheese. He wanted to play war games after cake and ice cream so we drifted through the timber firing our fingers like browning automatic rifles at…
Bespoke 