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Today I’m proud to introduce a friend of mine, Ira Wagler. When I moved home to Lancaster, PA, almost two years ago, I started bumping into various writers in the community – Ira was one of them. Let me tell you: Ira is an enigma. A respectful maverick. A jolly philosopher. An Anabaptist Libertarian (okay, that’s not entirely true, at least not the Anabaptist part). I have enjoyed our lunches at the DutchWay Value Mart immensely.

Please consider ordering Ira’s beautifully written new book, Growing Up Amish (link provided at the bottom of the page). You won’t regret it.

Continue reading “An Interview With Ira Wagler, Author of “Growing Up Amish””

As Maile and I walked into the motel, I heard a police officer in the lobby.

“You guys mind if I turn it to CNN?” he asked the lady cleaning the room. “They’re about to announce the Casey Anthony verdict.”

We walked up to our room and turned on the television. The timing was impeccable. We stood in front of the television as Ms. Anthony stood in front of the jury. They read off each count. The verdicts shocked the nation:
Continue reading “A Knee-Jerk Reaction to the Casey Anthony Verdict”

The 8-year-old boy sits quietly on the sofa watching the Major League Baseball All-Star game. He has his baseball glove on and throws the ball into the mitt over and over again. It smells like leather and fresh-cut grass. The boy makes a mental note that he will be Tony Gwynn the next time he plays baseball with his cousins.

Hot, humid night air comes in through the screens, as palpable as the flies sneaking in through the crack where the storm door doesn’t close properly. Night time on the farm is rarely quiet – either the cows are mooing in the barns, or cats are fighting, or dogs are barking at raccoons while possums try to plunder the trash cans. Many a night their glowing eyes reflected his flashlight beam, sent him scurrying back inside.
Continue reading “The Unwanted Sister”

As a human being, we fight many battles on many fronts. Children’s battles are mostly local skirmishes fought on a relational level – with parents, or with other kids. Then our intellect matures and the battle moves simultaneously inward and outward – inward battles with ourselves and our emotions and our intentions; outward battles with the “great ideas” surrounding politics and theology and philosophy. We wonder about how life should be lived.

Rarely during those early years did I glimpse the “war to end all wars”: in other words, death. Battles with death came as flashing sorties when a grandparent died or a friend tragically passed at an early age. Yet death, at least in my life, made so few inroads during those early years, and I could almost pretend that death did not exist.
Continue reading “What if Death is Independence Day?”

Last month the muse landed in your brain and you were astounded at what came out.

That one particular blog post seemed to flow effortlessly from your fingertips.

A host of people loved what you had to say.

Now share it with us.

In the comments section below, please let us know the link to your most-read OR your own personal favorite blog post from June – either one you wrote, or one you read, or one of each. Next week I’ll compile my own favorites from the list and announce the best of June.

This is an excerpt from a family history book I’m working on. Two of my great-great-grandparent’s (Amos King and Catherine Stoltzfus Lapp) first spouses died, which is how they ended up together. It’s strange to think about how the death of these two people, both in their twenties, led to the marriage of my great-great-grandparents, then the birth of my great-grandmother. Which eventually led to me.

Twists and turns of a storyline that determined my existence reached a hectic pace at the end of 1898. First, on November 17^th, my great-great grandfather Amos King married Katie Stoltzfus, daughter of Jonas Stoltzfus and Catherine Mast. Two months later my great-great-grandmother Catherine Stoltzfus’s first husband, Samuel Lapp, died while while undergoing an operation on a kitchen table, the victim of appendicitis.
Continue reading “Twists and Turns in a Storyline That Led to my Existence”