It may not be a Heaven-made marriage but Ellen DeGeneres made tongues wag at the barn.  Her plans to wed actress Portia de Rossi drew applause from her talk-show audience.  The California Supreme Court had just ruled that same sex couples could legally marry.

On May 17, I was very happy to attend the Marquee Cinemas promotional event for the fantasy epic film The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian with my friends Daniel and Jesse. 

“He’s got the whole world in his hands…” Laurie London first recorded this popular spiritual in 1958; it eventually went all the way to # 1. Simple lyrics coupled with a melodious tune have sustained the music’s popularity through the years. Most of us find it comforting to think that the world and our very lives do not simply spin unfettered in space, but rest firmly in the grasp of the almighty. However, I wonder what the song sounds like in Cantonese. I wonder if they have ever sung it in China. If so, do they still?

I was born in Bristol, Tenn., and spent most of my youth in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia and Western North Carolina. I also lived in several places in the Deep South growing up and, after college, spent five years with my Wytheville-born wife in New York City.

It is a strange country we live in. We have a government that is both the best and worst in the world.

Piney and She Who Must Be Obeyed had first come to Florida to look after She’s parents. Among the first jobs they had was Piney as director of education for the thousands of boat-people, mostly Vietnamese, streaming in from that horror-war aftermath. She was a volunteer teacher of English.

First, the excuses:
I didn’t want to vomit.

Buy that man a Gatorade.

Looking down on the nation’s breadbasket from 35,000 feet, one wouldn’t know that our food policy is as out of whack as our energy policy. 

How do we simplify in a high-speed, complicated age? Though the generations before us didn’t seem to have this challenge, I sometimes think they could coach us through it—if only we could stop long enough to listen.