The Rogue Trader

  The Lads of Christmas A story of a child's "friends"    Alright, friend. Pull up a chair, warm your hands by this imaginary fire, and let an old road dog tell you a tale. This one… this one stuck with me, same way that fine dust of the open road clings to your boots. It’s a story told to me by a friend of mine, by the name of Kenny, though he was just a boy when it happened. And the key to it all, the little trinket that brought us together, were these. A pair of miniature wooden clogs, intricately carved and painted, resting on a worn velvet cloth. “Northern Michigan, he said, picked up by his old man, driving truck along I-80. Ornamental, pure and simple. But to young Kenny, back in '74, up in the foothills of Willard, Utah, nestled against those jagged peaks of the Rockies… well, to him, they became a doorway.” "Kenny, all of nine years old, maybe ten, wasn't much for sitting still. Not with a whole world of snow-covered pines and brit...

  slowing down and savoring Christmas: reclaiming the magic in a hurried world A retrospect in pros It seems this year, somehow more than most, we feel it don't we? It's an invasive, persistent, low-humming vibration that suggests the world is moving just a little too fast, just a little to intense. Its a feeling, like a sensation of standing on a platform as a high-speed train roars past, except, in this case that train is our daily lives, and the platform is getting smaller, and smaller every year. In this hyper-connected, hyper-efficient era, the perceived speed of life is a phenomenon that touches every corner of our experience, making us feel perpetually behind, like we've already missed the train. And when the calendar flips to December, this feeling doesn't just intensify; it seems to become a full-blown, raging torrent of life, sweeping us uncontrollably toward Christmas at a dizzying pace. The Holiday Rush: A Tyranny of "Must-Dos" Stanza...

'Twer the Eve Before Christmas A Christmas out west  'Twer the eve before Christmas and all about the ranch,                                                                                 not a tree undecorated not even a branch. The wind howled a tune, a lonesome old song,                                                                                            As the snow drifted deep all the cold night long.  The cattle was bedded down snug in the stalls,                          ...