Our area’s long-shuttered Sears store will reopen soon as the county’s new high school vocational-technical center. So the news I noticed recently about Amazon producing a holiday gift guide—when the once-ubiquitous Sears catalogue is history—had a distinctly counter-cultural feel. I wonder how you get one of those catalogues? I thought. The next day, the answer…
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Food (or the lack of it) has been on a lot of people’s minds this month, ever since Uncle Sam announced the suspension of SNAP benefits for low-income citizens on Nov. 1. Before Congress finally voted last week to (temporarily) end the government shutdown, states had to stand in the gap. West Virginia’s governor announced…
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After fielding another “Are you still working?” type question in late October, I cheered when I saw this Time magazine article about Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn. It chronicled her plan to return to next year’s games in Italy, seven years after she departed from competition. The story noted that not too long ago it…
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Earlier this year, fresh from another irritating encounter with what I call “AI Customer Disservice,” I would have written off anyone suggesting artificial intelligence (now so common you don’t need to capitalize the term) could be of value to writers or editors. “Sure,” I would have scoffed. “We’re supposed to be friends with a tool…
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Although I recently lost a steady writing-and-editing gig for a nonprofit organization, an official there indicated that I may still get occasional projects in the future. With other book and article projects to keep me fairly busy, not all was lost. Not so for three other friends or acquaintances who were recently downsized; at last…
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Other than a five-day journey in June to Long Island for our great-niece’s high school graduation, we didn’t get a long break until late September, when we flew to Florida. What a vacation! We had dinner with an author whose book I edited three years ago. Spent time with our oldest granddaughter and her husband.…
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Nearly three years ago, I flew to Portland, Oregon as part of my work on a memoir editing project. That Sunday, I went to church in a small town a couple of hours south of the city. The surprise that greeted me that day were the stacks of red and green shoeboxes piled high atop…
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The message that many are returning to church after decades of declining attendance is slowly penetrating the public’s consciousness. Coincidentally, I saw another column about this phenomenon the day after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. At a time when many have turned violent and Kirk’s murder only seems to have inflamed irrational voices,…
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While it’s been years since I heard him speak, one of the keynote speakers at a Christian editor’s conference made an indelible impression. He not only changed how I do business, he helped me warn other freelancer writers to develop a stiffer spine when it comes to getting paid. Now, this speaker had once worked…
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Second of two parts (Read the 1st Part) Forgiveness. It is needed in oft-fractured parent-child relationships. A 2022 study led by a sociology professor found that 26% of adult children were estranged from their father and 6% from their mother. In Rob Mitchell’s case, it was both. As he details in Castaway Kid, a painful…
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