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To be honest, I never imagined I would ever write about this subject, but this month I want to explore. . .here goes. . .the fate of soap operas! Sudser fans (and some media mavens) shuddered this spring when ABC announced it was canceling One Life to Live and All My Children. This leaves General […]

Spring is renewal time. We reconnect with so much that has left us over the winter months: our gardens, the leaves on the trees lining our street, the open waters that we canoe or kayak, warm breezes, robins and cardinals singing in the morning, the first chirps of crickets in the gray dusk

I pinpoint my first flash of place-consciousness to a day when I was in elementary school while growing up in Rockford, Illinois. I don’t remember precisely how old I was, but it was somewhere between eight and twelve. I also don’t remember what I was doing, but I vividly recall the epiphany–that my entire world […]

Congratulations to Little Village on its 100th issue! February is a wonderful month to celebrate this milestone. Here in the middle lands, most people moan and groan about February. Shoveling more snow, chipping more ice, wrapping up for another foray into a sub-zero morning–“Enough!” is the cry heard round the Heartland from Columbus to Wichita, […]

“Home for the Holidays.” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” It’s that time of year when the return home defines the season for many people. Songs, movies and TV specials during the holiday season relentlessly emphasize homecoming, for both comedic and dramatic effect. And our highways and airports testify to the culture’s real-life enactment of this […]

One of the problems we have in modern, globalized, industrialized society is that we often fail to understand, acknowledge or care about the consequences of what we do. If we really, truly cared about the environment, we would calculate the damage we inflict upon the Earth every time we start up a car or airplane, turn on a computer, throw away Styrofoam, etc.

In early August, my family and I returned from our annual sojourn to the Minnesota North Woods. Our experience this year dramatically illustrated to me that the two major ingredients of a sense of place are food and sex.

It’s a beautiful early spring Saturday, the day before Easter, in fact. The temperature will probably see 70 today, an early gift of the summer to come. The sunshine on my neck is warm, a feeling I’ve missed for many months. As Christians prepare to celebrate the breath of a resurrected spirit promising new life, and as Jews celebrate their people’s new breath of freedom, I work at my personal offices of spring, trying to breathe new air–and re-borning life–into the ground of my home.