I often use social media to encourage my friends to pray for the mountains, or to contact their legislators to protect the mountains. Those posts don't always get a lot of comments, but sometimes someone will ask me in person, "WHAT are you talking about?" So here's a bit of background information, and a great music video that helps explain. Living on a very flat piece of middle Tennessee, I'd never heard of a mining process called mountaintop removal (MTR) until I started attending writing … [Read more...]
What’s All This Praying and Politicking for the Mountains About, Anyway?
January 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Yay! A New Year, and My 2011 Favorites in Books, Music and Techy Stuff
December 30, 2011 By 7 Comments
On Christmas morning, each of us Wells found a different Yay! LiFE! magnet in our stocking. As they congregated on our fridge later in the day (undoubtedly holding out hope for a bite of yay! sausage balls! or yay! eggnog!), I realized that they are an astonishingly simple but enthusiastic expression for most of the passions in my life: Yay! Books! was in my stocking and of course represents my love for reading and writing both prose and poetry. Favorite fiction I read in 2011: The Night … [Read more...]
A Child’s Poem Inspires My Prayer for the Mountains
December 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Recently in a used book store, I came across a small volume entitled Chrysalis by Harry Behn. Although the book had a worn and yellowed jacket, its subject matter – children and poetry – and a quick thumb-through convinced me to purchase it to read for myself and share with a friend. It has a number of delightful stories and insights, but one particularly stuck with me. Behn tells of working with a group of children in which one little boy shares this poem: Did you think about the … [Read more...]
A Christmas Poem
December 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
My poem "And This Will Be a Sign" has been published by the Christian Science Monitor. You can read it here. I wrote the poem last Christmas season after spending some time in the picturesque town of Bell Buckle, Tennessee - a place where, for me at least, even the Christmas rush is at a more relaxed pace. (Although, if you visit Bell Buckle on one of their big festival weekends, such as the RC and Moon Pie Festival in June or the Webb School Art and Craft Fair in October, you'll find it … [Read more...]
Cameo: Art, History, War, Beauty (and a Poetry Book Giveaway)
December 7, 2011 By 9 Comments
I take it to be a shortcoming of my suburban sensibilities, but I frequently have trouble with the concept of beauty existing in war, violence, death and destruction, and other seemingly tragic events throughout history. Evidently I'm not alone, as this recent article by Yeuran Zhang in Duke University's The Chronicle suggests. In it, Lt. Col. Peter Kilmer, assistant professor at the United States Military Academy, says: ...because the public generally views war only as violent, soldiers can … [Read more...]
