by Sunni Brown Wilkinson Mary Shelley penned Frankenstein after spending a chilly, wet summer near Lake Geneva. That terrain – the rugged Swiss Alps and that deep, blue water – coupled with the unusually stormy weather worked on her imagination. The wildness of it no doubt seemed unearthly. Every summer over the last several years … Continue reading Summer Reading: David Copperfield in the High Uintas
by Andy Zell Summer reading is the time to read books that aren’t on the list or on the table at the bookstore prominently displayed. It’s the time for picking up the unexpected and adventurous. All reading can transport me to another time and place. Summer reading is for transportation to a wholly different time … Continue reading Summer Reading: The Perfect Time To Get In Trouble
by Julie Riddle Once the carefree summer days of my youth (floating the stream that winked past our house, playing baseball on a freshly mown field, tanning at the lake, my skin shiny with baby oil) gave way to the horrors of adulthood (global warming, suspicious-looking moles, wrinkles), summer became my least favorite season. A … Continue reading How Beachcombing and Book-Combing Brought Summer Back
Summer's in full swing. Here at R&S headquarters, we're seeking out the shade and waiting for tomatoes. Summer's also prime time for camp. How To Pack for Church Camp, an online anthology of creative nonfiction about summer camp, is edited by R&S web editor Nicole Sheets and features work from several R&S folks. Check out: … Continue reading R&S Editors and Contributors Share Summer Camp Stories
by Polly Hollar Pauley I recently read that Japanese ceramic artists think that an item that has suffered damage becomes more beautiful, and that when an item is cracked they will fill in the cracks with gold. This evening we went to church for a hayride, one of the many advantages of an uber-rural congregation. … Continue reading Filling the Cracks with Gold
by Jackie Wallace When I was seventeen, I read a book called Paper Towns, by John Green. You may have heard of it due to the upcoming release of its movie adaptation. More on that later. The book tells the story of a teenage boy who idolizes the girl next door. The girl disappears, leading … Continue reading Writer’s Ink: The Light Can Get In
by Sunni Brown Wilkinson The care center smelled on par with all the others I’d ever been in: musty and antiseptic with a passing breeze of mothballs. I’d always found them depressing, but this one at least made very sincere efforts to keep things upbeat, even jazzy. One day, they hired a guy to come … Continue reading Remembered Sounds: “My Sweet Lord”
by Andy Zell Let’s talk about Doubting Thomas. First off, he’s got a branding problem: he’s forever known as a doubter. He can never simply be Thomas anymore. He can no longer hide in the back with Bartholomew or Jude when the Twelve get together. He’s recognizable. He can now be summarized in a single … Continue reading When in Doubt…
by T.J. Pancake “Any dog under fifty pounds is a cat, and cats are pointless.” – Ron Swanson It seems that in the world of domesticated animals and owners, there is a hierarchy of sorts. Dogs, clearly, are the—ahem—top dogs, as are their owners who love them and rub their faces, feed them leftovers, and … Continue reading On Cat Ownership
by Karissa Knox Sorrell In his poem “Ode to the Unbroken World, Which is Coming,” Thomas Lux wrote: It must be coming, mustn’t it? Churches and saloons are filled with decent humans. Once I would have thought of those two places as opposites. Churches were where the good people went, and saloons – or bars, … Continue reading On the Advent of an Unbroken World
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