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.

Baby’s Smile Out-Guns The Wire‘s Baltimore Stereotypes
Two toddler weeks in Charm City ended better than my binge-watching of The Wire foreboded.

A little poetry now and then
I make poems—funny,
‘cuz it don’t make no money.
Still, I verse some noise,
if only rhymes for my boys.

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

When I need some cash
Working in a marketing communications position for the University of California, Davis student affairs and undergraduate admissions offices, I wrote flagship admission pieces as well as copy for websites, emails, event invitations, newsletters, postcards, pamphlets and more.

The United Nations International School of Hanoi needed a storyteller, so I stepped in to write the Summer 2018 edition of the school’s UNiquely UNIS magazine. I contributed 27 out of 28 titled stories plus some photos and additional text, helping to shepherd visuals and words from editorial ideas through to print.

At Lincoln Community School in Ghana, my writing and design skills helped fill a new website with practical and promotional text, provided community profiles and viewbook copy, and transitioned the school newsletter from print to email. I also published an article in The International Educator highlighting Lincoln students’ community service with worldreader.org, as well as a guest post on the Worldreader blog.

Consulting with Catholic Relief Services, an American humanitarian development agency, I researched and wrote web articles, provided text and design for promotional materials, shot and edited photographs, and produced a short video.

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.

And some occasional weblog musings
Read my current blog, hosted on the home page of my website.

Here’s a blog I hope to update periodically:
Whiteboy in the (small) city

And two former blogs from life in Africa:
Biking Bujumbura
Going Ghana