The Theme of Grief in Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life – An Essay in Catapult Magazine – The Book of Job and the Tree of Life

The still above is from one of my favorite shots from a movie packed with hundreds of stunning shots. In the most recent issue of Catapult Magazine entitled “The Dying of the Light,” I present a piece touching on the theme of grief in Terrence Malick’s movie The Tree of Life. It is more of [...]

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Pulling Weeds, a Reflection

Bending down to my task, I see him. The legs bent and wide apart. The left elbow braced against the knee. The belly, covered by the grooved fabric of an a-shirt, centering the gravity of it all. And the right hand gathers, grasps, and pulls-gathers, grasp, and pulls. Bending down to work, I see as [...]

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An Article in Catapult, and Two Haiku

The article is “Do FarmVilleans Dream of Analog Sheep” and is, in a nutshell, about how our lives are increasingly interwoven with technology and how that affects us. I think both of the haiku have appeared on this blog already, but here in a fancier format are “On Facebook” and “On Twitter.” If you read [...]

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Impeccable Timing…

…on my part to write an article about my love of fruitcake to coincide with the Gateway Men’s Chorus’ holiday production for this year. By the way, I do not want to herein go into debate about the topic of homosexuality, which is an issue that deserves more measured and thoughtful discussion than that which [...]

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The Clarity of a Dumpster-Another Article in Catapult Makes a Turkey

For those of you keeping score at home, this is the third article in a row in Catapult, which in bowling terms makes a Turkey (i.e. three strikes in a row). As for whether this one or the last two are actually strikes or gutter balls, I’ll let you decide, if you can spare the [...]

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Another Article in Catapult and a Poem too!

Another article and, for the first time, also a poem, woo hoo! Thank you, Kirstin (Catapult’s editor). If you have ever wanted to watch someone put a “kick me” sign on their back to see what will happen, well then the article is for you. In reality, writing this article, potentially, could be more like [...]

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Catapult Article-On the Seriousness of Being a Child

This article is a bit lighter than the previous ones. It was actually written for Advanced Composition in the Summer of 1994 for Dr. Betty Richardson’s class, where I first began to believe that I might be able to do this writing gig. Thanks, Dr. Richardson. Read Himalayan Idyll. Many articles in the Wonder Years [...]

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Circa 1982-84

Since I have been writing a fair amount them recently. This one goes out to the ones I love…to Vincent Amrit in Edwardsville and Norma Lee who is safely Home. For how their lives wove together into the making of my own see the reprint below…

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A Post on Writing-Though, Perhaps on How Not To

My recent article on conflict was principally born through failure at it. And that, I am discovering, is generally also how I write. I do not know if it is nature or nurture (i.e. me failing to nurture my butt with a large kick to get disciplined), but I struggle with procrastination, with invariably getting [...]

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Blog Book Essay

This past winter writer and blogger extraordinaire, Jeremy Huggins, compiled a book of essays and some poetry concerning the Gospel. He invited fellow bloggers to contribute to this book, be they believers or atheists or somewhere in between. The simple instructions were to write a piece about something from the gospels. Fully twenty-six bloggers contributed [...]

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