by Stacey Denny | Aug 12, 2025 | Plain Speech Messages
I had a neighbor growing up whose name was Roger. We were the same age, maybe 7 or 8, and we shared a sandbox, a sort of communal sandbox, which we shared with several neighborhood cats. Every morning we’d clean it out, then play cars, building highways, tunnels, and...
by Stacey Denny | Apr 15, 2025 | Plain Speech Messages
Welcome, friends. It is, as always, a delight to be with you in this pleasant place. It was Winston Churchill who famously said, “We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.” I was having lunch with a friend this past week who asked me what I would have done if...
by Stacey Denny | Mar 6, 2025 | Plain Speech Messages
I was thinking this week of Mr. Hoban, an elderly neighbor of ours when I was growing up on Broadway Street, there in Danville. He was a veteran of two wars—World War I and World War II. He was so gentle and kind, his activity as a soldier seemed incongruent with the...
by Stacey Denny | Aug 6, 2024 | GraceTalk Messages
Earlier this summer, Joan had gone with Madeline to the store, so I was lying on the couch, praying, when I heard a knock at our back door. No one we know ever knocks, they just walk in, or call out. We’re not long on formalities. So when they knocked, I knew it...
by Stacey Denny | Jul 8, 2024 | GraceTalk Messages
Several years ago, a man I know was told he was dying, which of course we all are, but his death was sooner than he had anticipated. Though well-off, he’d always been miserly, to the frustration of his wife who wanted them to travel and see things and visit their...
