The Expansion Chamber

When our kids were little, we lived in Washington DC. For twelve years, we'd pack all five of us and our two weeks worth of Christmas luggage in anticipation of our trip to Colorado to celebrate Christmas. The first year, we booked travel on Northwest Airlines from DC Regan through Detroit or Minneapolis. It was a staggering $589 for all of us to travel, round trip. For the next 5 years without fail, we'd have a 2-4 hour delay, miss the connection and get vouchers for 5 more round-trip tickets from sympathetic gate agents. No really, they actually existed back in the 1900's. The reoccurring punishment wasn't worth it at the time, but by the very next trip, we'd forgotten all about the screaming, snot and vomit and happily began the terrifying journey all over again.  Except for 1991. That was the one year we stayed in Washington DC. We were living on Benton Street, right off Massachusetts Ave in Georgetown. It was a magical time in our faith journey. We'd found ...

These cobalt blue skies of September, so typical of Colorado, are much rarer an occurrence in the Northeast of Pennsylvania between Scranton and Carbondale. Still, they transport me back to the days of dirt bikes and the iron-boys with whom I rode motocross bikes. We, that piloted them, were the grandsons of Ellis Island immigrants who scraped their way to America aboard steaming, lurching ships to mine coal, build skyscrapers and grow gardens and grapes for wine. We had the luxury of navigating those same mining roads, not on our way to work as our fathers had done but in leisure, pure ecstasy in fact, on two wheels and even more often, one.  These were also the days that followed the burning of three of the ancient high schools built in those days order to speed the budgetary approval process required to build a new one. The result was a time/space conundrum that allowed us to live in Nirvana. Namely, three years of half day school session for our 7th, 8th and 9th grade years. Th...

And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said;     "For hate is strong,     And mocks the song  Of peace on earth, good-will to men!" Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;     The Wrong shall fail,     The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men."

  I met a girl in church back in Washington DC. Her name was Tammy and she was from Maine. She told me this story of when she was a bad-girl teen, sowing her wild oats. She snuck out of state and went down to Boston with her equally bad, beautiful, girlfriends and the y  got hustled the first day there by a street - c arny .   The guy had a little table set up on the sidewalk. He had three walnut shells and a dried up pea. He did the ‘shuffle-and-find-the-pea’ thing enough times to take all the money she had. Then he offered her one last chance to win it back. All she had left was her grandmother’s ring. She lost that too.   The underhand is quicker than the eye.   Just so you know, this story doesn’t end as crushing and heartbreaking as that one, but the hoodwink principle is the same. It goes like this: One unnamed vintage BMW rider in our group, the one with the view of Mt Hood from his home, takes the back roads home from a trip to the Bonneville Salt Flat...

Say it ain't so. Tell me I didn't wake up today to a life without a dog. Fifteen years is not 'like a part of the family', fifteen years IS a part of the family. The night we brought him home, he got carsick on the drive. We got him from a sweet lady named Nora who had a boxer and a toddler. Nox (the Latin personification of night, she said) apparently bullied them both as a five month old puppy. He was already trained to poop only in the gravel part of the yard. He checked out his new home by first peeing on our kitchen floor. That was his parting shot at the vet last night when we took him in to send him off; peacefully and not painfully. One of the harder decisions one has to make in life but the right one. We'd have  preferred if he just went quietly in his sleep but someone recently told me that 'experience' only means not getting what you want in life. Tell me I'm not sitting here eating his last two hot dogs. The 2 boys from across the street came...

  Although the twelve days of Christmas officially ends on January 6th, for most of the Christian world, the dim tail light of Santa's sleigh disappeared off into the night sky ten days earlier. By January 6th, some sweating in the gym at 530am are beginning to doubt that they'll actually learn to play the banjo or be able to do a technical presentation in French or Portuguese by years end.  The real twelve days of Christmas is actually about thirty, ignoring the traditional count which begins on Christmas Day. Modern celebration and Christmas cheer hits full stride the week of Thanksgiving with bells ringing and chestnuts roasting. Well, except for those retailers who began hawking their yuletide goods in early October alongside the Halloween stuff. Even the Charlie Brown trees were eighty bucks this year, if you could find one. If you waited more than a week into December to buy a tree, you had slim-pickens or were shelling out some large. Serious fat stacks. In the small to...