May 22, 2017
I’ve been thinking about the importance of place lately. Why, you may ask. Because I’m going home. Actually, I’m going home to two homes. Are there places you love? Places you consider home, even when you don’t live there and perhaps haven’t lived there for decades? I have many. I’ve lived in places that I’ll hold dear […]
Read More →March 6, 2017
My weekend with writing friends, wonderful as it was, quickly became overshadowed the very next weekend. This time, I flew to Orlando (a better place to visit in February than Chicago). This time, I was with friends from Romania. Eight American women, my former teammates who served in Romania right after Communism fell, reunited for four days. […]
Read More →December 22, 2014
A quarter of a century ago, the tide of the Romanian Revolution turned, miraculously, and the people won their freedom. I’ll never forget the thrill of that Christmas season as I prepared to move to Eastern Europe. Hopelessness turned to hope. The impossible happened. Years of invisible faith lived out in the dark, for that […]
Read More →December 18, 2014
Christmas will come next week and we are bombarded with hopelessness. Will our world ever be a safe place? We feel collective anguish for the people of Sydney, Pakistan, and Ferguson. Maybe you, too, are facing the loneliness and despair of Christmas without a loved one present. Hope feels impossible. Elusive. Unattainable. And yet I’m reminded of […]
Read More →February 11, 2014
Westerners who dared to travel to Sochi for the Olympics have been tweeting about the problems they’ve encountered in their hotel rooms. Things like rusty water; things which every Russian has to deal with every day. To Russians, it’s their life. And it’s not funny. My hackles rose when I read some of the tweets. […]
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