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• Nothing Loves You Like A Dog

  Recently I was stopped at a traffic light when I saw a homeless man struggling with his shopping cart. It was on a sloping portion of the sidewalk and he appeared to be trying to put his bedroll and a few other belongings inside, but the slope was winning...

• The Usual, Chris?

  Last weekend while wandering around Williams Sonoma I came across a particularly affable woman who was demo-ing a new little espresso machine for home use. It uses tiny pods filled with coffee to brew one cup of espresso at a time. It's nice because the p...

• Birthday Letter to Isabelle

  On a recent visit to Maryland I had the pleasure of seeing my granddaughter Isabelle, who was turning 10. Before I left home, I spent a lot of time thinking about what to give her as a gift. Living across the country from her and her brother, I am not as ...

• An Easter Thought

  (Picture two little bunnies nervously sitting near the tomb where Jesus' body was placed. They see two women talking to an angel and they see a kind of joy cross their faces that they have never seen in all their bunny lives. They peek in the tomb and see...

• Golden Days

  I call them golden days, those days that just feel incredibly real and wonderful. They don't even have to be perfectly happy days, but they have to be days that, I believe, you'd be sorry you took for granted. Golden days. I'll be having one on Thursday. ...

• The Pencil Me Inn

  I imagine occasionally a place I can go to get away. Not so much my physical self. More my mental self. Just a little getaway where I can smell cookies baking and that wonderful newly polished wood smell. Where bitty sparkly little sunbeams find cracks in...

• The "G" Word

  One night many years ago, my dad came into the kitchen where I sat drawing at the table. ( I was staying with my parents for the weekend while I attended the Los Angeles Gift Show at the LA Convention Center.)He looked at the drawing I was doing as I expl...

• Wondering For Two

  God, I'm having trouble finding any hope. I said those words nine years ago this month in the parking lot at Grossmont Hospital, where , on one floor, my father was awaiting serious news about his health and where on another, my mother had recently had su...

• A Way With Words

  When I was ten years old I made a discovery that has never left me: words move people. Even in works of fiction, words are powerful. It was summer, a particularly hot day in Whittier, California where I grew up, and it was one of those perfect days for f...

• The Artist and the Dragonfly Wing

  A few months ago, I walked through my office at home on my way out to my car to head off to work. I picked up my car keys and looked out the window at all the activity on my street.  A new sewer project up on my hill had brought a symphony of sound a...

• Peanut Butter and Perspective

  Recently while shopping for peanut butter in our then being reset Target Store, I found myself unable to find any of the organic smooth kind. Just organic peanuts and salt. Nothing else added.The shelves were kind of empty, because they were expanding the...

• People Who Give Gifts Without Even Knowing It

  Dear Mrs. H, I don't know if you remember me, but I remember you very well. In fact, I think about you almost every day because of something you did a long time ago. You gave me a gift probably without even knowing you did. Your gift came when I voluntee...

• My Jesus - A Little Christmas Miracle

  There was a woman who was going through the worst time of her life. It seemed to her that all hope of happiness had now completely vanished. Husband gone. Bills piling up. Loneliness growing by the day. On her way to bed on Christmas Eve she noticed her...

• The Cat in the Window

  My  next-door neighbor is moving out of her house to an assisted living facility. She has lived in her house for 45 years and we have been next-door neighbors for the last 16 of those years. When I moved in next to her on a bright April day, I had a ...

• The Umbrella

  On a recent trip to Washington DC, I was riding in my son's car and we were stopped at a light at a busy intersection during morning rush hour. It was raining.  And windy. Across the intersection I saw an old woman with a shopping cart overflowing wi...

• S.NITE

  When people ask me which of my cards are my favorites, I usually answer that it's like asking which of my children is my favorite. I don't have favorites. I love them all. But I do have some cards that have interesting histories and particular traits I r...