Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
And so it was, on an average weeknight, somewhere in California, a team of 15 random people volunteered to lift the helicopter. A gaggle of bystanders, both male and female, gathered beneath the belly of the great wreckage. Feet planted. Hands ready.
When you walk the sidewalks of Fairhope, Alabama, it’s the trees that impress you most. It’s not the upscale homes, nor the Mayberry-like storefronts, which all give you the impression that you have fallen into a Rockwellian planned urban development. No. It’s the live oaks.
Wake up. Get dressed. Remove phone from nightstand charger, put phone in pocket. Your phone dings. The phone is already notifying you about your highly sophisticated security cameras, which have just picked up movement by the neighborhood cats.
The 71-year-old man cradled a small, juvenile robin in his hand. He fed the bird soggy dog-food pellets with tweezers. The bird was injured badly. But not dead. “Sssshhh,” he said as he fed the bird.
It was January, 1906. The S.S. Valencia was being tossed upon the ice-cold Pacific like a rubber ducky. Two days earlier, the ship had set out from San Francisco to Seattle. It was a bad trip.
Dan Lovette became an usher at the Baptist church on Easter Sunday, March 26th, 1961. He stood at the door shaking hands, passing out bulletins. Nobody knew Dan.
When you drink your coffee this morning, DRINK your coffee. Pay attention to EVERY SIP. Really taste it. The Norman Rockwell book that’s been on your coffee table since the Punic Wars so that it’s almost invisible to you. LOOK at it.
There was, suddenly, the beginning of all things. It started with light. And the light was good. And the stars and the planets and the galaxies and the solar systems fell into place and started spinning. And they were good, too.
Sports films, and particularly those about football, have a strong inspirational bend. You can add the upcoming “The Senior” to that list.
This story was told to me. And now I am telling it to you. The young man was boarding a plane. He was pierced with all manner of shiny rings, covered in a quiltwork of tattoos. His hair was long. He wore black leather. Lots of zippers. He looked like an outsider. And he went to a lot of trouble to look that way.
“The Lord is my shepherd…” It’s hard for Americans to imagine shepherds. We don’t HAVE shepherds in our culture. We have Walmarts and Chipotles.
You died by suicide 30 years ago. You hated yourself. You hated this life. You hated where the world was heading. So you left. You’d probably hate it even more today. For one thing, they sell water in bottles now.
She was a cleaning woman. Two kids. One cat. She was going under, fast. She could not afford this month’s rent. The landlord was already preparing to kick her out. She was working from can to can’t…
My mother always told me to smile. Especially when I didn’t want to. She often told me to smile when I was sad, when trying on school clothes, or whenever I was forced to eat beef liver at gunpoint.
I had a dream. I was walking on the beach with God. We were the only two on the shore. God was very tall.
The first thing that struck me was that God was nothing like I thought he’d be.
The school cafeteria. The boys were all sitting together, doing what teenage boys do. Horsing around, talking about girls, probably trying to make milk spew from each other’s nostrils.
I have a story about bad things. The story is about an old man. He lived during in the Great Depression. He was a very poor farmer. His home was a ramshackle shotgun house. He drove a rusted truck that predated the Punic Wars.
Two railway track maintainers stood at a distance watching her. Their neon vests, reflecting in the early morning light. Their hard hats pushed upward on their heads. They weren’t sure what to do with the bird.
“Dear Sean, your column yesterday about embracing my inner child and childhood was inaccurate. I’m 67 with more life experience than you… And my childhood wasn’t idyllic like yours obviously was…
I want to tell you a story. In February of 1979, a 7-year-old named Chris Grecius, of Scottsdale, Arizona, found out he had leukemia. It was the end of the world. No, it was worse than that. It felt like the end of a family.