Short stories and photos shared with humor and love
My Ukrainian grandma baked paska every year. She included a loaf in the Easter basket she hauled to the church for its annual blessing, and she sent us one too, along with apricot cookies and walnut rolls. Baba packed her care packages with surgical precision and matriarchal devotion. When those brown paper packages tied up [...]
Father Bill opened his Easter homily with a 2011 video of Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion singing "the Prayer" at Central Park. It was an unusual move for a priest who loves words so much he regularly writes his own poetry and prayers. On this holiest of Sundays, though, Father Bill let that beautiful song [...]
The lights flickered a bit yesterday as a frozen rain pelted the windows and a steady stream of fire trucks raced by. Spring storms in Wisconsin can be particularly challenging. An icy sarcophagus traps budding branches and sends them crashing to the ground. Broken limbs lay across streets all over town and leave jagged edges [...]
Like Jane Austen, I dearly love to laugh. So, April Fools might seem like my kind of holiday. In some ways it is. But, again like Jane, “I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good.” I love a good pratfall. I don't love a mean prank. I've watched a particular video, in which [...]
I attended two protests this weekend in Appleton and, though the weather varied greatly between them, the spirit did not. They were both alike in dignity, and in the reaffirming way they showed that the worst of times often bring out the best in people. I witnessed a lot of goodness both at Saturday’s march [...]
