Friday Tidings

Her long black hair and strikingly luminous dark eyes were a contrast to her delicate Indian accent. Standing before a couple hundred teens at the leadership camp, she introduced herself,  “Hello, my name is America.”  None of us would ever forget her name, or how her sweet accent slightly altered its pronunciation. She was a first-generation American citizen, and her parents had named her for the freedom and opportunity America offered. I was in that crowd of teens—where we’d come to learn how to help our schools be places of learning, compassion, and purpose.  We were divided up and America wasn’t in my group, but I observed her animated energy as she bounded between activities. I had one occasion to stand next to her—as we waited in the dinner line. We talked about camp, our schools, and the anxious sense that being a high school junior brought. For America, I could tell it meant high expectations. Her parents owne...

No one knows who created National Spouses Day on January 26 th ,   but I need more than a single day to honor mine. It was easy to fall in love with the bearded, songwriting, guitar playing guy.  He’d leave sweet love notes for me in my college books (this was waaaay before texting) and play songs for me while I did homework. He was therapy for my Type A uptightness.   He loved writing songs, but sound engineering was his real forte. He could blend 24 tracks of vocals and instrumentation into incredible musical productions.  Yet, when the music scene meant working apart, he gave it all up and moved to a farm where we could work together. Then he poured his life into the farm every hour it required and worked extra jobs to pay the bills. When we were spending too much time apart, he wanted to find another way. Who knew that a songwriter-farmer could be such a terrific apple sal...