Home Country

When Steve and Dud got up to go get a paper, it left just Doc and Bert sitting at the philosophy counter of the Mule Barn truck stop. Bert turned his head and smirked a little, being careful not to let Doc see him.

Stray Thoughts: Spoiler Alert

On that day you’ll be the first to know, you’ll be the very first one there all stretched out on the kitchen floor or hunched over in your chair.It may not be a car wreck or some grand event gone wrong… it may just be that you didn’t do what you should have all along.Haven’t watched your sugar?

Little Pasture on the Prairie

My mom went through a phase that began in the early ‘90s of elaborately decorating our house for Christmas every year. It started with my dad deciding to have a big holiday party for people from work, which also coincided with my youngest brother entering kindergarten.

Supporting domestic violence survivors

When someone escapes domestic violence, their journey to healing has just begun. Physicians are often the first professionals to recognize signs of abuse and can play a pivotal role in connecting survivors to lifesaving resources.

Stray Thoughts: That Which Men Lack

As I was eating the meal my wife prepared tonight, she told me she had just prepared cards for our kids.“Cards” I asked? Why? No one was having a birthday.She said “Yes… I’m sending Halloween cards”.I asked her if I was like most husbands, in that I never had any idea such cards were ever sent.

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

“I want it and I want it NOW!” We live in an age of instant gratification. Though few of us are quite as demanding as the tantrumming toddler in the toy store, busy lives call for convenience. Consider how many things in our lives are geared for “faster and easier.

Stray Thoughts:

We love our holidays in this country, especially theme holidays where we act or do what the holiday is supposed to mean to us…like Christmas, the one day we are allowed to openly praise Jesus without looking like a religious zealot, or Halloween, when we celebrate witches and all manner of scary...

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Dear Editor, This holiday season, will you shop at one of the 33.2 million small businesses that make up 99% of all businesses in the U.S?Up and down rural main streets in rural America, shopkeepers are readying their stores for the season.

Little Pasture on the Prairie

Years ago, when the kids were tiny, we moved a shed into the tree belt behind the ranch house. We insulated it, added electricity and a baseboard heater, and it became my writing shack.

Home Country

As I lay there in my super-duper borrowed-from-the-Army mummy bag, I had time to think about things. Mostly, I pondered how stupid I’d been to take a dog team out across the North Slope of Alaska in November.