If each of us just thinks of one way to reduce our personal plastic consumption, we can join the millions of companies making inroads into plastic waste reduction. Geophysicist Kevin P. Maher points out,“It’s time to shift our mindset from recycling to reuse. We don’t want to ban plastic, we want to convert single use plastic…
How many outfits do you need? How many dinner plates or pairs of shoes do you regularly use? How many intriguing book titles do you realistically have time to read? Many of us have an area where our abundance builds up. Books overflow available shelves. Reusable shopping bags could carry a platoon’s worth of shopping…
authors / publishing / writers
Flirtation Walk, the first book in the three book series Journey of Cornelia Rose finally completed the editing phase! For some time, I thought I would never be able to say that! It was a marathon, not a sprint. My editor, Kimberly Goebel and I have been cramming in work sessions, in every available opening in our schedules.…
Portrait of a marriage
Unlike Bill and Kris featured in Parts 1 and 2 of this Transitions series, Brenda chose another way, a “turn-key” sabbatical experience as a way of pausing to discern the next steps in life. Pondering retirement from the US Army, Brenda wasn’t sure how the post-military phase of her life would unfold. A friend recommended that…
Kris Casey chose a serendipitous approach for her post-work life. Upon retirement from a corporate accounting job, she was exhausted and burned out. It took 10 months before she felt restored enough to plan her next steps. She used this time primarily for fitness: working out at a gym, walking and bike riding, and catching…
What will you do when you grow up? Children often get asked this question, but it’s one we should continue probing throughout life, remembering as we get older, the answers will vary. We are not one and done. Life is change, and what happens is often not under our control. For certain transitions, the planning…
When I met Jack Norton he was eighty years old: energetic, outgoing and long-since retired after almost forty years in the US Army. I’d been waiting on a friend in the bar at West Point’s Thayer Hotel when he walked in and pulled up a chair. Norton was there for an alumni conference and wore…
I’m trying to muddle through. But there are days when the pieces look like they won’t ever go together. Honestly, some days the pieces don’t even look like they belong together. I have learned the hard way I am an overachiever, excessively compelled to volunteer. When someone I know says, “Can you help me __________?”…
As the on-call chaplain, I had answered a page to the neurological ICU to be with family as doctors reported unequivocal results of testing. The patient was brain dead and not going to survive the stroke that caused her hospitalization. Her distraught daughter cried, “It’s too soon!” The patient was 85 years old. Is there…
I can’t even count the number of times I have said, “Just a minute, I’ll be right there,” to my kids. Embroiled in the minutia required to keep a family fed, clothed and running, I often missed some of the fun, or at least, joined it already in progress. Eventually, it became a habit —…
When I told my book group that I had finished and uploaded my thesis, one of the members asked about my topic. After sharing that I had researched and written about end-of-life, Joanne asked if I was including near-death experiences (NDE). NDEs are mentioned by some people who have survived traumas, where in the midst of…
