We have many birds in our neighborhood and one of the most popular is the Great-tailed Grackle. Like all birds, they rise exactly 30 minutes prior to sunrise, and I hear them throughout the day and see them on the adobe walls in my backyard. Last week, Mrs. tVM saw a nest in our neighbor’s …
Category Archives: Awe and Wonder
Making Lincoln Smile
I find it less easy to be critical of young people since my return to the desert. The kids in my neighborhood – a healthy mix from varied cultural backgrounds – are energetic, openly friendly and polite, and seem to spend less time fixed to video screens than I have become accustomed to. Early in …
About Dogs, God and Politics
In my quirky novella with its even quirkier title The Sixth Day, a 17,175-Page Novella About Creation and Prizefighting, I suggested that God should have quit creating after he made his perfect creation, the dog. I feel more strongly about it today in an America where partisan politics strangle the common man and attempt to …
Amazing Stories from the Desert: Project Corona
I have recently been hawking the authentic picture of Bigfoot my wife captured on film during a recent hike in the Casa Grande Mountains. No takers. Go figure. Yesterday, I hiked the North Picacho Mountains searching for petroglyphs with my friends Chuck and Kurt. While we found a treasure trove of petroglyphs, the highlight had …
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If You Have a Father
If you have a father, if you have had a father, if you are a father… the list could go on. Without a doubt, you are on the list. If you are – which you are – you are obligated to watch “The Sparrow.” It is a mere 5 1/2 minutes. Nearly a two decades …
Fortuitously Serendipitous
Fortuitous and serendipitous. Two of my favorite words. The one, happening by chance; the other, occurring by chance in a happy or beneficial way. Regardless of word choice, I am fortuitously and serendipitously lucky to be living in the home that found me and Mrs. tVM across the street from the Highland Manor Park when …
Orangemen
There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Jim Boeheim and the Syracuse Men’s Basketball Team. Growing up in basketball-crazed Massachusetts during the Red Auerbach, Bill Russell and John Havlicek days of the Boston Celtics, I followed Jim Boeheim and Dave Bing during their playing years at Syracuse, and I returned to …
The Continuing Case for Exercise
The ‘Well-Being’ post from last week was foremost in my mind as Mrs. tVM and I hiked up the Casa Grande Mountain Radio Tower Trail his morning. A mere 2-mile out-and-back hike, we stopped to catch our breath more than once. You see, over the 1-mile hike to the summit, one climbs 994 feet. That …
Saints
“The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God.” Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
Another Light in the Heart of Darkness
My new novel, The Faith of Job is now available. I invite you to click the cover and experience the story that has been an intimate part of my life since the first seed was planted over two years ago in the winter of 2018. Set in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands in WWII, The Faith of …