Life is a crazy thing to pen
I write about life, or else it slips away, unrecoverable…

Working With Your Hands?
As a writer I work with my hands, but not quite in the same way as my farming forefathers.

Stalking the Bamboo Bike
In Ghana, instead of lions I safari to find an American bike pioneer literally growing bicycles.

Marketing Happiness
Exploring a local market brightens my day in a column published by Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper.

A gentle, open life cut short
My cousin Glen Lapp was killed in Afghanistan in August 2010 while on a humanitarian medical mission to one of the country’s remotest valleys. The cornerstone of our friendship was a three month, pedal-powered wander across the United States in 2002, though I had looked up to his gentle nature and adventurous spirit pretty much all my life. Below find a few short essays I have written about Glen.

Living the lessons of a life still cherished, Lancaster Sunday News, August 26, 2012
The Taliban killed my best friend, November 8, 2010
Pedal Harder: A eulogy for Glen Lapp, August 15, 2010

Amish-Mennonites in the ‘hood
In 1965, my parents moved to the low-income, black, housing ‘projects’ community of Kenilworth in Washington, DC and started a conservative Mennonite church there. I grew up between Kenilworth and rural Amish country Pennsylvania, learning to talk like the ghetto but walk like the Amish. Learn more about my creative and historical writing inspired by Kenilworth and my family.

A little poetry now and then

Love. Love Quartets
Faith. The Arc of the Fall
Nature. Buddha At the Lily Ponds
Politics. The American High
Rhymes. Schoolyard Verses
Pakistan. Quetta Compendium
Burundi. A poem (sort of) from Burundi