"We sat in our pajamas on the couch under a blanket and did what you do on Sunday nights. We watched a rerun of Columbo." And something about it made me worship.
How Columbo Made Me Worship

Capturing the world at hand, the appealing and the appalling, in pictures and in words
"We sat in our pajamas on the couch under a blanket and did what you do on Sunday nights. We watched a rerun of Columbo." And something about it made me worship.
"As I type these words, a woman Laura and I only met a few weeks ago is cutting into my wife's abdomen in search of a mass that she will then snip off and remove from my wife's body." And that fact puts a new perspective on things.
"I feel I am about to get back to the starting line of the waiting game again." Tomorrow Laura has surgery.
Imani knew there was more than the darkness of her mother's womb. There come days, however, that swallow up even the surest hope. Can we reverse the grip of darkness?
You wake up early and lug your luggage downstairs to wait for your Uber driver. Mild anxiety hangs in the air like the smell of last night's burnt coffee. Will he arrive? Almost to the minute of his scheduled arrival at 6:20, he pulls up in his new white CRV and helps you load your … Continue reading The God of Gate H1
On the one hand, I write stories because a force as strong and as invisible as the wind compels me to. That's not the only reason though. For me, stories are not solid walls we stare at for the sake of admiring the wallpaper. They're windows through which we might glimpse the beauty on the … Continue reading Why I Write
I was going to get to drive Marvin again, and I was more than a little excited. Yes, Laura and I name our cars. Marvin is the gray Toyota Matrix we owned when we lived in Minneapolis that we bequeathed to Laura's mom after getting that wild hair over four years ago to move to … Continue reading On Wanting to Cry at the Eye Doctor’s
It was our final leg, and we were finally sitting on the plane. Chicago to Minneapolis. OK. We can do this. The last time we had gotten decent sleep—"decent" being defined as eight hours in a horizontal position with our heads on a pillow—was Monday night. In the time zone of our departure, it was Thursday morning.
Happy New Year's Eve from us to you! On this day of both remembering the past year and looking forward to the one to come, here are the seven most popular posts to The Untamed Places in 2018. Enjoy. Number 7 And Then They Killed Lucy April 25, 2018 She was poisoned. That was as clear as … Continue reading 7 Most Popular Posts of 2018
His eyes burned as he stared at his mother, who met his gaze with a fierceness he rarely saw, but when he did, he knew a storm was about to break if he so much as blinked the wrong way. It hadn't been his fault. His brother had pushed him. The rest had been mere … Continue reading The Ancient Word