We wanted to take our adult children and their spouses to Coronado for the opening night of my husband’s theatrical adaptation of Jane Eyre.  We made our plans back in the spring when the dates were first announced.  We then made reservations at the Hotel del Coronado.  Arrangements all set.  Except...

In the mountains
where the nations come to observe magnitude
the shadows form crescents and curls
like wispy chalk drawings
as the moon moves across the sun

But don’t look! 
not without protection

How to spread joy for free?
Rule number one is be prepared

Have the eyes to see
and reach out your hand
to e...

A few years ago, when on another journey with our friends LB and David Norton, we talked about our bucket lists.  On David Norton’s was a trip to see the giant trees of California.  When we began to plan their visit here for my husband’s play, it occurred to me that this might be the golden opportun...

Please forgive another commercial message.

I just need to tell you that my daughter isn’t the only writer in the family with a project just “birthed”.  My husband David has written a play that is currently receiving its world premiere at Lamb’s Players Theatre in Coronado, California. 

Jane:  A Gh...

Finally!  Our daughter, Meredith Barnes’ second book launches this coming Tuesday! 

Meredith wrote and published her first devotional book, All the Time, during the pandemic.  That book sold well (thanks to many friends like you!), and it came to the attention of Paraclete Press.  They purchased th...

  on the banks of the Rio Grande in New Mexico and Texas, September 2023

shallow and so muddy
one could almost
walk across it on the silt
yet each molecule, each droplet
flows inexorably and imperceptibly on
merging with others
in a confluence of current
that pushes and pulls
faster and fiercer

eventually...

After leaving Little Rock, the next stop on our cross-country journey was Oklahoma City.  We arrived early enough to take the six-block walk from our hotel to the memorial to the victims and survivors of the bombing of the federal building in April, 1995.  I had been there before with my daughter, b...

We stopped in Little Rock to visit my cousin Susie and to see her new home.  Her daughter graciously offered her guest house, and Susie and her husband Tom dedicated a full day to squire us around their new city.

Little Rock has many wonderful things to explore.  We opted to take a trolley ride to ...

When we stopped by Evansville, Indiana to see our recently widowed friend Kathy, I asked if we could visit her husband John’s grave with her.  His ashes were buried about a month ago in his family plot in Boonville, Indiana.  In the car on the way to Boonville, Kathy observed that cemeteries are “ki...

I had one chore to do in Indianapolis as we passed through town on our way from Michigan to California.  I wanted to clean my grandparents’ headstones. 

All my grandparents are buried in Crown Hill Cemetery, one of the largest and loveliest cemeteries in the Midwest…555 wooded acres, with the talle...