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  •   I once loved corduroy. Corduroy was more than fabric. It was an early form of communication. You could draw pictures on it or write a note to the friend sitting beside you simply by running a finger across the floating yarn and pushing the fibers in one direction. Best of all, nothing you wrote…

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  • The Road to Damascus

    The Road to Damascus

    … a bomb nearly took me out. It happened on the road to Damascus. Not the Damascus where Saul was blinded by a light from heaven. Damascus, Arkansas.

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  • Karen and I were once DINKs… Double Income, No Kids. We were young and relatively unencumbered. Karen taught high school math in Maple Shade, New Jersey. I practiced as a CPA — which meant I spent my days talking about depreciation schedules while wondering why no one invited me to interesting conversations. The partners at…

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  • Beneath the Skin

    “Mr. Lem. Taylor, an old citizen of this county, last week, cut a minnie ball out of the upper part of his thigh he had been carrying in his body for twenty-five years.”   That was the first line of a newspaper clipping from the Baxter Springs Delta, dated June 16, 1887. Whoever wrote the article…

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  • I’m writing a book. My daughter is baking and selling bread. My brother runs a wood shop, making wooden blocks for children.

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  • What Progress Can’t Measure: A Ripe Life

    My brother visited over Thanksgiving. He drove, sorry, he sat in a self-driving Tesla and never touched the steering wheel from Utica, New York, to Bartlesville. He brought apples from a local orchard. They were perfectly ripe—crisp, sweet, juicy. It made me think that maybe our lives should be considered this way. Ripe means ready…

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  • Jair and the Drum

    A boy sat on a low stone wall on the edge of Bethlehem as the fading sunlight sifted through the narrow streets like a handful of warm grain. He stood up and walked into the market between the stalls and jutting rafters that leaned inward as if whispering secrets.  Bethlehem was crowded with travelers arriving…

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  • “Why are we here?” Karen asked this nonchalantly, as if she were wondering why roosters have combs on their heads. I was hoping she was talking to herself—or that the question was rhetorical. But since we were driving to Houston, I was a captive audience. She persisted. “Why are we here?” “Well,” I said, “maybe…

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  • “What are you doing, dear?” My wife asked me this while I sat watching the Ryder Cup yesterday. “Ahh, just sitting here crying with Cam, Justin, Scottie, and all the lads,” I told her. Then I rewound and made her watch Cameron Young hole a putt to win his match. I couldn’t believe he made…

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  • Downton Abbey: a reflection

    Karen and I went to the movie theater to see Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. The concession guy apparently decanted my Pepsi into a small cup with a straw—not unlike Carson the Butler filtering wine through cheesecloth—before telling me with a tinge of embarrassment, “That’ll be $7.” I was so shocked that I scanned my…

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