What to Wear

By CLF Staff | September 17, 2025

2014-05-17 OK, time for the teensiest bit of a rant, here. It starts with the fact that a girl named Jessica had her photo kept out of her high school yearbook because she was wearing a tuxedo. (Class pictures are required to be in either a tuxedo or a drape.) Or maybe it starts with…

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Tinfoil Hats and the Examined Life

By CLF Staff | September 17, 2025

2014-05-22 Let’s say I tell you I’m wearing a tinfoil hat today . . . What does that say to you? Crazy? Paranoid? Safe from the mental meddling of governments and/or extraterrestrials? It’s shorthand, isn’t it? A tinfoil hat says crazy or paranoid or safe, not because of anything inherent in the tinfoil hat, but…

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However They Have Writ the Style of Gods: Wounds and Healing

By CLF Staff | September 17, 2025

2014-04-24 Here is the beautiful truth—saints and sinners are the same from the start. Hsu Yun, Chinese Chan Buddhist (freely adapted by me) As a young writer, I read everything I could find on the subject of writing. One of the books that impressed me at the time was written by novelist John Gardner called…

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Springtime Beckons

By CLF Staff | September 17, 2025

2014-04-29 It’s springtime. Spring stirs in me a feeling of anticipation along with a feeling of unsettledness. What does the future hold? Left turn, right turn, which way? I love the days of good weather and I start to get too much sun for the first time in months and months. I feel that springtime…

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Rest Easy

By CLF Staff | September 17, 2025

2014-04-29 The high April winds blowing damage across the US this week also blew something into town that my lungs are treating as poison.  This morning I face the day with more empathy and exhaustion than I have known in a while.  To everyone who struggles with their own health through the quiet hours, may…

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