Be happy now

Yep, today is my 82nd birthday, and this morning I was thinking about what I had written on my birthday a few years ago. It described a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: A group of [...]

May peace be with you . . . now and in the year to come! The Lavender-Mulkey Clan And now a Christmas message from Parker Palmer: By accident of birth, the Christmas story has been a staple of my [...]

Happy 25th anniversary, my darling Shonnie. We’ve created a wonderful life together filled with love, intentionality and adventure, and I look forward to the next 25  (when I’ll only [...]

An Octogenarian Looks Back on His Path to Good Health If you’d known me when I was in my 20s and 30s, a hyper-masculine, self-indulgent, beer-swilling rebel (without much of a cause), you might [...]

Was I cranky? No doubt.? Judgmental? Absolutely. Disheartened? Unquestionably. And I’d been unconsciously operating out of this frame of mind for months. Yeah, yeah, I know, given the pandemic, [...]

Saturday morning, alone in the mist and drizzle. Stillness envelops me. No sound but my footsteps, the drip of the moisture from the trees, the occasional songs of the birds.

You can be happy if you want to be. While you may have little control over the events around you, you have total control of the happiness in your own life.

2020 has undoubtedly been a year of tremendous challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic resulting in more than 340,000 deaths so far, a severe economic downturn, and disruption of our daily lives. The [...]

“Don’t trust anybody over thirty!” My rallying cry during the Sixties, when I was twenty-something, seemingly bulletproof and forever young, living as though those days would never end.

Realizing that Shonnie’s graduate studies at Western Carolina University were about to resume and Gracelyn would soon begin online classes at Evergreen Community Charter School, we began planning [...]

You may have seen that meme that was going around social media a week or two ago: “Dear 2020, none of this sh*t was on my vision board.” Well, life so far in 2020 has presented a number of [...]

YES! We made it! Shonnie’s breast cancer diagnosis in November and Gracelyn’s intuitive sense that it was essential to remain near her mom at all times, led to weeks of unsettledness and [...]

O persistent God, Deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle. Pressure me that I may grow more human not through the lessening of my struggles but through an expansion of them that will [...]

In Knoxville in 1983, I screwed up my courage and began therapy with a local psychologist, John Hoover, a tall, brawny man with an engaging and amiable manner. I immediately had the sense that I [...]

You can be happy if you want to be. While you may have little control over the events around you, you have total control of the happiness in your own life.

January 1, a new year, some might say a clean slate. During my wild impetuous youth, the first day of the year typically meant horrendous hangovers and, at some point, the hair of the dog. In [...]

Seventy-fucking-five. Three-quarters of a century. Thirty percent of the time the U.S. has existed. In my twenties, seemingly bulletproof and brimming with bravado and condescension, I’d [...]

Shonnie and I were recently interviewed for the BedLoveBeyond podcast, this episode about couples with significant age differences (Ours, by the way, is 28 years.).

When the Avett Brothers began to sing “No Hard Feelings,” Shonnie walked over, embraced me, and without exchanging a word, we began to slow dance to the music.

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts

Nothing to live up to, Nothing to live down. No one to castigate, No one to crown . . .

Well, another year has passed, and what a year it’s been. It will be intriguing to see what 2017 will bring. In the meantime, Shonnie, Gracelyn and I want to share what we’ve been up to in 2016. [...]

For your viewing pleasure on International Day of Peace.

Well, we’re back from Costa Rica doing our best to keep alive the Tico lifestyle of pura vida: Go with the flow! And in that tradition, we wish all of y’all a meaningful holiday [...]

A few years ago, the late state Sen. Jim Forrester described Asheville as a “cesspool of sin,” and the folks who live here began creating bumper stickers, shirts, and jokes lampooning those [...]

On June 7th, 1969, The Johnny Cash Show made its debut on ABC at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Featuring Cash ensemble regulars June Carter, the Carter family, Carl Perkins, the Statler [...]

Just as I sit down at my computer this morning To tackle my ever-expanding list of things to do My cat Attabi silently slips into my office with an entirely different agenda As he hops on my desk [...]

Each day at our evening meal, Shonnie, Gracelyn and I participate in a ritual that provides an opportunity for each of us to say at least one thing that happened that day for which we are [...]

Last night I walked downstairs to find Kaali, Desmond and Bandit relaxing together on the coffee table. After taking this photo, I sat on the couch, and, one by one, each of them came over to [...]

Tonight while listening to music at the Lavender-Mulkey homestead. Gracelyn: Let’s dance! Me & Shonnie: OK! (The two of us adults slow dance facing each other with Gracelyn lying on her [...]