Dear Cougster: I don’t know what to tell young adults about their 21st birthdays, other than “don’t expect too much.” Like New Year’s Eve or bachelor parties, it’s often an occasion more gleefully anticipated than fondly remembered. Basically, if you get through it without hurting yourself too badly, scrawl it loopily into the “win” column … [more]
Borrowed Valor
30-June-2022 by 11 Comments
It’s a joke and a cliché and the truest thing you’ll ever hear from us: “You weren’t there, man.”
Thinning
8-July-2020 by 19 Comments
Those old giant forests, masters of wind and makers of weather, base populations for ecosystems beyond our ken, are gone now. Their final stands are reserved for the wealthy few, but adaptable humans have persuaded ourselves of the beauty found in rotted remnants.
Grow up or shut up
2-May-2020 by 12 Comments
Blurted this out of my own key-actuated bullhorn sometime during the Obama administration, and never posted it AFAICR. Why would I have? It’s kind of mean-spirited. Now, as I find myself angrily clamoring my way through the Age of Trumpidity and a plague that much of my country would like to wish away, I realize … [more]
Dial 9/11: A Humble Christian Homily
28-April-2020 by 36 Comments
Please open your Bibles to Matthew 13 as we read together aloud, verses nine through 16: 9 “Whoever has ears, let them hear.” 10 The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” 11 He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, … [more]
Afterburner
30-March-2020 by 23 Comments
The age of social distancing is no country for dirty old men. He looked like someone had smacked him with a board.
A Case of Hatback
18-January-2020 by 15 Comments
He looked a certain way. Besides size and presence, Grandpa was a hat-wearing man.
Darkly Dawns the Solstice
1-December-2019 by 10 Comments
A couple of years later, I left the careful silence of our never-home apartment to spend my birthday alone, sleeping rough under a ’58 Willys in the company of my good dog Junior and a dented bourbon flask.
"Jack Lewis takes the overall literary crown with his new book...there’s a lot more to Lewis’s work than what it feels like to ride motorcycles.” — Ultimate Motorcycling
"Insightful and from the heart ... a driven and much recommended look into the mind and conflict of the next generation of war veterans. " — Midwest Book Review (Reviewer's Choice)