A longtime Gathering Place friend came to visit a couple of weeks ago and wanted me to know that he noticed some conversations on social media about some of our guests and how and why The Gathering Place (TGP) was helping. His worry was that there was confusion about what types of programs and services […]

Yes, but not the way a candidate hopes it will

“I’m back!” Some weeks ago, in the season of buds and flowers, I took some time to describe how I sussed out the upcoming blueberry crop. Writing that asked for considerable detail about finding little white flowers and mapping their presence and promise. All that was okay, because I had the time. Not so much […]

Back in the ’50s, people joked that cheering for the New York Yankees, a baseball dynasty, was like cheering for General Motors, an industrial behemoth. After all, what thrills do you get from backing the heavily favored horse? Times change; those two Goliaths have ceded their competitive dominance. Let me take a stab at defending […]

To some people the bridge is known simply as the green bridge while others call it the Frank Woods Bridge. If the only thing Mr. Woods did was to convince the builders to move the bridge out of the mill, then he definitely deserves the honor of having his name on the bridge. I have […]

First, let’s try a thought experiment: Imagine, for a moment, that Donald Trump had gotten what he so eagerly sought: emergency use authorization for coronavirus vaccines before the November election, rather than – as actually occurred – six weeks afterward. If the former president, a lifelong promoter, had the vaccines in hand, the election result […]

Could invoking the Golden Rule be enough to induce vaccine-skeptical people of faith to finally get their COVID-19 jab? According to some new polling data, that may well be the case. A recent poll of 5,123 adults by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core found that nearly four in 10 vaccine-hesitant […]

The other day, someone reminded me that I had a public Facebook page entitled “Christine Flowers, Columnist and Radio Host.” I rarely post there, which is why I’d almost forgotten about it. My old editor had suggested I create a public page after stalkers and people who didn’t like what I wrote (almost exclusively readers […]

We’ve often heard that time is money, but in these stressed-out days it’s more than that. Time is increasingly a key to well-being, creatively and emotionally. My sister, Juliet, has taken the time — a lot of it in recent years — to study the topic and has written a book with her insight and […]