Our First Date 32 Years Ago

October 27, 1977. Abilene, Texas.  Mid-afternoon, I get a call from my sister who is working for a local radio station.  She's got two extra tickets for the Doobie Brothers concert at Taylor County Coliseum that night.   Would I like them?  Sure, I say, sounds fun.  The girl I was semi-dating at the time was …

Enchanted April’s Closing Weekend

Friday morning, as I stood with Scott and Pam Nolte in the Gordito's parking lot watching water cascading into the lobby of Taproot Theatre, one thing was very clear: there would be no performance of Enchanted April that night.  There would be a mountain of work, sorting everything out, getting the theatre back on its …

The Near-Taproot Fire

So I'm sitting at the coffee shop at 6:10, when a prayer request from one of the women at church comes across my desktop.  Something about a 3-alarm fire near 85th and Greenwood, and that my good friend Scott Nolte is being interviewed.   It takes a minute to register.  I go to KING 5 News' …

Seeing a Master – Andrew Wyeth’s Helga

So we're taking one day a month for spiritual retreat and renewal, and I hadn't gotten to mine yet, so yesterday, I took half a day.  I spent the early morning reading from the prophet Isaiah and from Matthew's gospel, then went on to Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, and then to poetry by …