August 5, 2018 A couple of weeks ago Rod and I went on vacation to Alaska. We did not go on a cruise but instead we went on a tour of the interior with a group of 15 people. We started in Fairbanks , in the center of the State, then went north by small plane to Wiseman, population of 18, above the Artic Circle. There we met Jack who showed us his home and talked to us about how he survived all year by working with a plan for how to survive the changes of season. Sometimes repairing his log cabin, sometimes hunting to fill his below ground freezer in the perma frost, sometimes tending his vegetable patch. He had solar panels which would only work during the summer and a generator for winter. He uses Amazon Prime for many of his deliveries but it takes 3 weeks for […]
Read more →February 18, 2018 TED is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks. TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics. I want to quote a short piece from a speech to a TED audience by Pope Francis in 2017. First and foremost, I would love it if this meeting could help to remind us that we all need each other, None of us is an island, an autonomous and independent “I,” separated from the other, and we can only build the future by standing together, including everyone. We don’t think about it often, but everything is connected, and we need to restore our connections to a healthy state. Even the harsh judgment I hold in my heart against my brother or my sister, the open wound that was never cured, the offense […]
Read more →February 11, 2018 Back when I was in college, I had the great privilege of serving on Camp Allen’s summer camp staff. I spent the entire summer living and working among twenty of my closest friends. For me, living at a summer camp was literally a dream come true. You see I did not grow up going to camp but once I started going to diocesan retreats at Camp Allen when I was in high school, I knew I wanted to be on the summer camp staff. The joys of working for summer camp seemed endless. I got paid to be silly, go to an outrageous dance every week, swim and kayak in the lake everyday, work on a high ropes course, and of course go blobbing. For those who don’t know what blobbing is: It is an outdoor water activity in which a participant sits on one end of […]
Read more →