I have always loved old family photographs. Sometimes they capture more than the people standing in them. They capture a story. The man in this photograph is my great-great-grandfather, William Perry Martin. He was already an old man when this picture was taken, well into his seventies. Behind him is an enormous tree stump, and […]
Sometimes It Is Time to Dig Out the Stump Read More »
Last week, Dawn and I celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary. Forty-one years. It hardly seems possible. Like most couples, we’ve experienced seasons of abundance and seasons of scarcity, moments of certainty and moments when we wondered how everything would work out. We’ve made wise decisions and foolish ones. We’ve had victories worth celebrating and mistakes
We Didn’t Drive Away in a Corvette Read More »
I keep thinking about this idea that we are all writing a story. None of us fully controls the opening chapters. Some people begin life surrounded by stability, encouragement, safety, and opportunity. Others begin with chaos, neglect, poverty, addiction, abuse, loss, discrimination, instability, or trauma. Life is not fair in how it distributes suffering. Some
You Still Hold the Pen Read More »
The rain started sometime after midnight. Not the violent kind of storm that rattles windows or sends people scrambling for weather alerts, just a steady Appalachian rain falling softly through the darkness. Before going to bed, I had accidentally left the door cracked open, and during the night the opening widened and the house slowly
Open Windows, Rainstorms, and Resilience Read More »
My great-grandfather, William Washington Elmore, was a handsome man, except for his left eye, which had been blinded when he was young. (See the photo attached. He is the young man in the front row.) In 1908, at age twenty-six, he married my great-grandmother, Diana Vincent. She was only sixteen. They were country folk, living
William Elmore and Brownie Read More »