The bleached white rocks crunched under foot as I walked down the road. A layer of rock had recently been added to cover the clay earth that would turn into slick and undriveable muck with every rain. On either side were waist-high green wheat fields that moved musically with the wind. Nebraska has sky that [...]

An eleven year old boy stood in the wings behind three others of the same age. We all wore long white gowns over our swimsuits. I remember the heavy burgundy curtains as they brushed my arm and the detail of the pastoral mural that arched along the wall. The congregation sat in rows behind the [...]

December 8th, my birthday and I was spending the day hiking/snowshoeing in a typical Northwest day of light rain and very gray skies. Picked of Tim and drove to the trailhead and the start of our day long outing where we followed the old logging road for the six miles switch backing back and forth [...]

The temperature was hot – a Midwest summer.  I had spent the morning riding with my father in his pickup truck, checking irrigation ditches and the growing crops. We stopped at the pump house where clear water gushed from the great aquifer that lay beneath the panhandle of Nebraska. An old tin cup hung from [...]

I climbed into the back of the canopy covered pickup with the contracted workers, heading to town after payday. This was the weekly trip that my father made with the men who worked in our fields. I was eight years old and quickly jumped into the back with them.  They spoke no English. All of [...]