As I completed my income taxes over the weekend – not convinced that I should have after recently re-reading Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau – I noted that one can claim acupuncture fees as a medical deduction. I reflected on the successful acupuncture sessions I completed with Dr. Liu at Sunshine Acupuncture in River […]
Category Archives: Spirit
Sunrise
“There is a rumor of total welcome among the frosts of the winter morning.” So writes American poet Mary Oliver in her “Wordsworth’s Mountain” essay that appears in Upstream, Ms. Oliver’s 2016 collection of essays that reflect her willingness to lose herself in the beauties and mysteries of the natural world. I chanced to read […]
Sun Symbol of the Zia
An original post from our first year in June 2011, we consider this message so valuable and so appropriate to life on earth today that we are posting it again with the hope that more and more people will apply its wisdom tVM
America Needs a Statesman
I cannot ignore the impending catastrophe our bipartisan political system has placed in our path. It is more crippling and unavoidable than any physical wall anyone could ever build…. Yesterday, I read a thought-provoking OpEd that appears in “The Atlantic” magazine, “The Suicide of a Great Democracy” by staff writer George Packer. I would have […]
Snowman
The major snow events of winter to date have passed north. While a thin layer of snow covers the ground it is far too shallow for us to break out the snowshoes. It has been cold and Afton Alps across the river in Minnesota and Trollhaugen 40 miles north of River Falls have been making […]
Earth Rise
On Christmas Eve 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 spacecraft took this picture – known as “Earth Rise” – while orbiting the moon. During the mission, the crew read the first 10 verses from the book of Genesis over a live television broadcast. When Commander Frank Borman signed off, he said: “We close with […]
Life Is Real… Life Is Grand
I think for many people the promise of heaven is so indescribably glorious that they tend to dismiss their time on earth as if it were the obligatory time one spends at a gate in an airline terminal waiting to board a flight to Jamaica. That’s too bad because this life we live on earth […]
It’s a Wonderful Life
We first wrote and posted this six years on December 21, 2012. Last night, December 14, 2018, Mrs. tVM and I watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” just as we’ve done every Christmas season for as long as I can remember. It always moves me in ways I can’t say much better than I did – with […]
The Christmas Story
I first shared this story from Ben-Hur in December 2011, the first Christmas season of our website. Most people — certainly those younger than 60 — may only know “Ben-Hur” as a chariot race that appeared in the 1959 Academy Award-winning film starring the late Charlton Heston. That film was telecast regularly during the holiday […]
Memories of the Spirit
Willie Morris was 61-years old in 1995 when he published My Dog Skip, a memoir of growing up in Yazoo, a small Mississippi town in 1943. He died four years later, six months before the release of the wonderful film his book inspired. I’ve watched the film many times, most recently last Friday evening when […]