Rained here Saturday night. My father-in-law’s little gauge–the old farmer in him couldn’t really live without one–registered three-quarters of an inch, a healthy rain. In

Just a week or so ago, Frederick Manfred would have celebrated his 100th birthday, had he lived. He didn’t.  He died in 1994, from the complications

Of its origins, I’m not quite sure–some freak shop in Old Town, Chicago, circa 1968.  I remember being with my then-girlfriend on what was some

I was born in 1948, but it took me a while to understand the world into which I was, that year, so healthily delivered, or

I envy monastics–sometimes. I envy their intent to zero in on the Christian faith, to delete every iota of worldly pain and pleasure from hearts

  Our lindens are just about the tallest trees in town, I swear.  And there he was, high up top, singing his heart out, that

“. . .to the great God, nothing is little. . .” You know?–I really ought to imprint that line on a t-shirt: “to the great

  Last summer, we’d just passed the bridge at Nijmegen where, 600 yards to the west, hundreds of GIs paddled flimsy Brit boats with their