Gather 'round…
The wood splitter is headed down the road, back home to the West Hill. For the last time of 2018. This means, for the uninitiated, that the wood for the year is complete. Or so we hope. Every year, we think we have a better handle on what we will actually burn in the coming... Continue Reading →
That three-week jaunt out to the West Coast took a pretty hefty bite out of the old PTO bank this year. We managed to salvage a Boundary Waters out of the remaining shreds, but the annual pilgrimage to the North Shore was left with an empty purse. It is, however, completely unacceptable that a year... Continue Reading →
It's fall in Wisconsin. And once again the seasons take me by the hand and calm my soul. It happens every year. Summer comes, and I am filled with hope at the coming adventures. We saturate the months with more than the suspension can comfortably hold. There is down time, but it is barely enough... Continue Reading →
There are sunflowers out my window. Not because I am a sunflower farmer, but simply because I planted hostas beneath my birdfeeder. You see, the resident chickens really like to scratch there under that feeder in the spring, for no matter how many birds we have, even of the ground-feeding junco variety, the intended beneficiaries... Continue Reading →
Dare I even ask? The birds have already made their predictions, and have made the journeys that accompany them, and I hope for their sakes that it is indeed. For almost a month we've had strangers at the feeders. Dozens of redwing blackbirds blackening the trees outside my window, trying their hands at sunflower seeds. European... Continue Reading →
When I was 16, I helped my YoungLife leader finish a jigsaw puzzle on his living room table. It was gorgeous. The puzzle was a painting of an old man holding a golden package aloft, glowing with joy as his bundle glowed with something more ethereal. The expression on the man’s face was beyond description;... Continue Reading →
The Manifestation of God. This is what we’re celebrating today. Just a few little words, loaded well over the safety line. Theophany is here, and Christ is baptized in the Jordan, by none other than John the Baptizer himself, who--I dare say--has no interest in baptizing the Messiah himself. I imagine he was feeling a... Continue Reading →
“The snow looks light and the sky dark, but in fact the sky is lighter than the snow. Obviously the thing illumined cannot be lighter than its illuminator. The classical demonstration of this point involves simply laying a mirror flat on the snow so that it reflects in its surface the sky, and comparing by... Continue Reading →
Last summer we had this crazed cardinal. He appeared one day on the back deck, chipping like a wild man. Incessantly. For weeks. Every day he would return, and every day he would march up and down the railing boards, from one end of the deck to the other, pacing, chip, chip, chipping at us... Continue Reading →
Work the brain before working the mouth. I've taught my kids this from the beginning, with varying degrees of success on the familial foot-in-mouth-count chart. Because the things that can come out of a mouth that has not tethered itself firmly to the brain can be embarrassing at best, and often hurtful to those you... Continue Reading →
A heavy sheet of frost cloaked the ditch clover this morning. You could almost see those little alfalfa cells bursting at the strain, transforming from lusty stalks to creamed spinach beneath the blanket of white. Look past the beauty of the lace and arctic destruction, though, and one sees something more. The clover—the whole populace... Continue Reading →
As I've said, I'm scrapbooking again. As I've said. But what I set out to write a few weeks back was not a diatribe on the virtues of skimpy scrapbooking. It was not meant to be only a physical confession of a swept-away hobbyist. It was intended to reflect upon the growing need within to... Continue Reading →
![[Way Back Wednesday] I am misplaced](https://i0.wp.com/kjottinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/img_20200118_135903.jpg?resize=40%2C40&ssl=1){kind=small}
Tales From the Nexus 