Pope Francis doesn’t look afraid. He smiles, looks calm and always appears to be genuinely enjoying himself. His benevolent expression is the same when he talks to American legislators in crisp dark suits, or homeless people eating lunch under a tent a few blocks away from the U.S. Capitol. At church on Sunday, the Father […]
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I miss hippies. Well, maybe not the flag-burning, psychedelic mushroom-consuming protesters of the Sixties era. I miss the peace, love, “live and let live” ideals of the Hippie Movement. “Everyone is beautiful in their own way,” sang Ray Stevens. So what if it’s a cliché? I don’t care if the Hippie Movement was a social, […]
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“Have you ever had stitches before?” Pat asked me this morning as I sat in the ER waiting for Mike, the friendly Physician’s Assistant, to come back with needles, sutures, gauze, scissors and whatever else he was going to need to address the large, gaping laceration on my left thigh. I had to think about […]
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While backpacking on the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail a few weeks ago, Sparky, our faithful companion who joins us on all our hiking, backpacking and running adventures, met a German Shepherd on the trail. This dog was huge, probably outweighing Sparky by 50 pounds, and I only hesitantly say the dog was leashed because, technically, […]
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There’s a pine tree in Levering that isn’t like any other in the world. Tall and strong, with broad branches reaching out like arms ready to embrace the earth, this tree grows on consecrated ground, blessed by the ashes of love. Love is sprinkled beneath this tree in the memory of those who left before […]
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The most significant thing that has changed since we hiked the first 31 miles on the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail in May is that for the first time in 25 years, a man in Pennsylvania died after being bitten by a rattlesnake. Okay, he wasn’t hiking the LHHT, but this news still disturbed me because […]
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My husband recently bought some items at a store and realized when he got home and looked at the receipt that the cashier didn’t scan one of his items. So a few weeks later, when he was shopping in that store again, he picked up the same item and explained to the cashier that since […]
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Tough chicks scare and intrigue me. I wouldn’t have recognized Ronda Rousey if you put me in a cage with her and told me to run for my life. I didn’t know anything about UFC fighting, other than I get impatient when my husband channel-surfs and lingers more than one second on a screen displaying […]
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That’s right. Stephen Hawking, the world’s most admired physicist (and also the world’s only physicist who is regularly and affectionately mocked on the hit TV sitcom, the Big Bang Theory) is afraid that if we ever find extraterrestrial life, we might regret it. Hawking fears that we might come across aliens who are so super […]
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I made the mistake of mocking danger. But geez, I couldn’t help it. I mean, the signs were everywhere. Literally signs. From the time I arrived in San Francisco to the time I flew out of Las Vegas a week or so later, I saw signs, placards and brochures everywhere warning me of the potential life-threatening […]
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