American culture

We’ve been listening to Austin City Limits Music Festival all weekend.  Not that we’ve been on the festival grounds, but we easily hear all the bass notes and percussion through our walls, providing an underlying rhythm to our days and nights.  This mosaic is a

Yesterday was Mom’s birthday and the two of us happily spent it looking through old family pictures, letters, and other mementos the forbears had saved.  Mom was born in 1916 and the sister in this picture was born in 1914, so early 1920 is my best guess for a date on this

“Be still and know that I am God…”  This quote from the Hebrew book of Psalms (the 46th psalm, in fact) must not be well-regarded.  We scroll our Blackberries, text, drive, work out, work, network, over-work, study, chill with a bottle, cruise, organize,

Am I “trying to do too much?”  Am I “being lazy?”  Am I “slow?”  Am I “too rushed and careless?”  Am I “smart?”  Am I “stupid?”  These are questions that our teenaged selves asked and tried to answer.  Most

Emergency! Alone, Together Starting when it was just a newly-hatched community free-food-pantry, I have been volunteering for an organization of university-area churches called Micah 6, named after the passage from the book of Micah regarding what it is God requires of us.  The

A couple of winters ago my husband and I had the opportunity to visit three cities in China, one being Shanghai.  It was in rainy, cold, snowy January, certainly not tourist season, and most faces on the streets were Asian.  After a few days of exploring the city on foot, I had

This is the first panel of a triptych entitled “The Story of Nola Watters”.  Each panel measures 12″ x 12″.  Carnivale (Mardi Gras) is the season of wild abandon that precedes the introspective season of Lent.  It has a long history in Europe, and like a