When Sven Johnson, his wife and two children, left their native Norway, they spent the next eight weeks crossing the choleric Atlantic in a sailboat.

My granddaughter was, back then, just a little girl, third grade maybe, but one Sunday morning, I remember, she was already starting to wax nostalgic.

Years ago, when I was revising a novel, Romey’s Place, I didn’t know how it should end. What I knew when I’d started the major revision

Someday, I’m going to put this one on canvas. I know–it’s no stunner, but I loved the image before I saw it through the screen

It’s still there. Maybe. I haven’t been out there for some time now, but as long as that abandoned place is circled by a substantial

Don’t know whether he actually carried the Good Book through the west in those early years. The story goes he took carried a copy of

In another day and another time, the buildings crowded on the block made all kinds of sense. The school’s own precious history makes clear that

He wasn’t exactly a kid. There were kids galore on both sides–18-year-olds just out of high school and scores of 17-year-olds who quit school years

The first one was twelve feet wide, still quite a production because Jesus, Mary, and the babe were mud-sculptured, then baked, then painstakingly painted. Back