Connecting

Tonight… lighting Christmas Eve candles and singing “Silent Night” one day early, in these parts…  

Wisconsin Thanksgiving: Grateful to be with my mom, say thanks to my 7th-grade teacher, Mr. Armbrecht, and return to my teenaged haunts: a lighthouse, and Lake Michigan.

Not my typical Monday: Lunch with His Excellency Bakhtiyar Gulyamov, Uzbekistan’s new ambassador to the U.S.

These loved ones, our dead. Does healing ever begin? Is that deep hole always there? They say time heals, but I’m not so sure. In these strange moments, in everyday moments, he pops up. ‘Hello there.’

I’m returning to Ripon College.
I’m returning because some of the most fascinating and challenging professors, classmates, and friends are at my Wisconsin alma mater, a school known for breathing life, inquisitiveness, and bold thinking into young minds.

I don’t know why it started, really. But over the years it’s become my evening ritual, shooting sunsets in Seattle over those majestic Olympic Mountains. There’s a wildness to the skies: