How to Die Before You’re Dead (6)  

How to Die Before You’re Dead (6)  

When I was a kid, we’d go visit my Grandma Norma down in Vincennes. She and Grandpa lived in a house built in 1832, which they’d bought in 1929 for $1600, and fixed up. My grandfather added on to it so perfectly you couldn’t tell where the old stopped and the new...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (6)  

How to Die Before You’re Dead (4) 

VIEW VIDEO  When I was 6 years-old, my great-uncle Fritz died and I wanted to go to his funeral, not because I was especially fond of him, I barely knew him, but because I’d never seen a dead person, except in the movies. My brother Glenn, the veteran of several...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (6)  

Finding Our Way (10)

VIEW VIDEO  Last month, Frank Gladden, bemoaning the scarcity of rain, questioned whether I had any pull with the Lord. I said, “I don’t know. Why do you ask?” He said, “My beans need rain. A real preacher would get me some rain.” So to save Frank’s beans and my...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (6)  

Finding Our Way (9)

VIEW VIDEO  I went with two of my siblings and my cousin to southern Illinois last weekend to revisit the haunts from our childhood. Most of the people we visited as children are now deceased, inhabiting various graveyards in Franklin County, Illinois, so much of our...
How to Die Before You’re Dead (6)  

Finding Our Way (8)

VIEW VIDEO  I attended a Quaker conference this past spring where one of the event’s sponsors, a non-Quaker wanting to sell us insurance, started listing all the good things Quakers had done over the years—the antislavery work, the work for women’s equality, our...