Category: Origins
Leon Uris and Love of Country
Fifty-one years ago – nearly to the day – I read Leon Uris’s novel of Berlin in the aftermath of WWII, Armageddon. I still retain that first edition though the dustcover no longer exists. I read the book over a weekend in the spring of my senior year at the United States Air Force Academy. I am a slow reader, but I devoured this 632-page novel in two days, a personal record. Continue reading Leon Uris and Love of Country
Chapter Six, The Last Jew in Vinnitsa
I read this morning – March 6, 2022 – that the Russians have completely destroyed the Vinnytsia [Vinnitsa] Regional Airport in Ukraine. Whenever I hear the name of the town – Vinnitsa – I think of this photo. It has been many years since I first discovered this photo. Five years ago, I wrote this post. I have quoted Holocaust survivor and the late Elie Wiesel many times. I am compelled to do it again… Continue reading Chapter Six, The Last Jew in Vinnitsa
Out of It
I’m in my own world these days. I walked through the portal at least a year ago with my last completed book. Continue reading Out of It
I Do Choose
A leper came to Jesus and said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Jesus smiled, stretched out his hand, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately, the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.
Included in The Vitruvian Man’s Book of Hours
Saturday, Sunrise, Opening Verse
The Christmas Story
Authentic Faith
“An authentic faith… always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values [and] to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.”
Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis from Evangelii Gaudium, 2013
included in The Vitruvian Man’s Book of Hours
Wednesday, Sunrise, Closing Verse
Requesting Help in Haiti
Twenty years ago, I penned the opening sentence to my first novel, The Olympian, A Tale of Ancient Hellas.
“I was 12-years-old when my father took me to my first Olympic Games.”
The Passion
A Light in the Heart of Darkness
I do not routinely engage in social media. Several weeks ago, my daughter Stef – who does – called to tell me a person in England reached out asking if she was related to the “E.S. Kraay” who wrote The Hamsa. Understanding my ineptitude with social media, Stef explained to me how I could respond to the inquiry on ‘messenger.’ An hour or so later, I was talking to my new friend in England, Pat Easton.
Pat is a proud member of the Great British Home Chorus Friends [GBHCF], a virtual choir that evolved from the COVID lockdown in the UK last year. Continue reading A Light in the Heart of Darkness