Travels Across America

Being Tamed by Your Parents or Your Peers or Your Pastor

by Shawn June 13, 2012

Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed. – GK Chesterton, Manalive There is something about seeing animals in a zoo that saddens me. I know they are, for the most part, treated well. I know that many [...]

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Coming Back Early to See My Grandma and Finding a Map

by Shawn June 12, 2012

We sat out on a covered balcony on Sunday evening. It was around 5pm, one of those summer evenings that was hot but could have been hotter. In the shade it felt nice: a sit-outside-and-drink-iced-tea kind of evening fading into night. Fading into night. I sat as close as I could to my grandmother, all [...]

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Arriving Home to Find a Message to Myself From 2009

by Shawn June 11, 2012

I walked out of the bus after backing it into my parents’ driveway. Everyone else had already gone inside. Earlier that week, my dad had painted a message on a huge blue tarp and stretched it over the garage door: “Welcome Home Willie and Kids. Love Ya.” Across the street from my parents’ house, an [...]

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My Last Post From the Road

by Shawn June 8, 2012

Do not trouble your hearts overmuch with thought of the road tonight. Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them. (From Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings) It’s Thursday afternoon as I write this, and it’s quiet and it’s hot. A few flies buzz [...]

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Cutting Our Trip Short: Sometimes There Are Reasons to Go Home

by Shawn June 7, 2012

I remember climbing up on to the roof of Grandma’s house back in the mid-80s. I was eight or nine years old (the age of my oldest son now), and my teenage cousins reached down over the edge of the sandpaper-like asphalt shingles and pulled me up, scraping the skin off my stomach. I remember [...]

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HERE Isn’t Good Enough – I Want to be THERE

by Shawn June 6, 2012

I am not very good at waiting. When I was a kid, I ran everywhere. I ran out to get the mail and ran to answer the door and tried to run while pushing the lawn mower around the yard so I could finish and move on to the next thing. I ran to our [...]

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The Beauty of Spending the Night in a Walmart Parking Lot

by Shawn June 5, 2012

“Well, here we are,” I say as we pull the big blue bus into yet another Walmart parking lot, this one just outside of Urbana, Illinois. “Home sweet home.” Maile smiles. “I’m going to miss spending the night in Walmart parking lots,” she says. As silly as that may sound, I know exactly what she [...]

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