Archives I am filled with gratitude for my Mennonite roots. At age ninety I have spent more than half of my life away from that community, but the anchor of my life has always been the deep, unfathomable, and permanently sticky, connection to that community and its special people. A sociology professor once explained “marginal man” as people born to the immigrant parents who had decided to live in a new and unfamiliar country. Their

Archives Peter and Ernie don’t know each other; they belong, however, to the family of creative story tellers. Peter tells stories of his contemporaries as though on a mission. He sees it as his duty to describe the foibles of people in his cultural group in order to maintain the ethical standards of the community and to warn his acquaintances of the danger of stepping off the familiar and acceptable path. He is the community’s

Archives An old friend from college days was now professor of English at a small college in the States. It was the early seventies, and he was teaching a class of sophomores when, suddenly, two local police officers walked briskly into the classroom. One officer stayed at the door, hand on his side arm, the sergeant marched to the front of the room, and announced in clear tones to the surprized professor that he was

Archives Warm Spring days and tree planting at our beloved Whitepines of Northumberland Tree Farm went hand in hand. Visits to the Provincial forest station at Orono in rural Ontario was an annual ritual. We picked up our pre-ordered white pine, white spruce and black walnut seedlings on our way to the farm on Friday afternoons and the rest of the weekend would be spent planting them.   Succulent bright green little trees, no longer than

Archives The panic attacks should not have caught him by surprize. As a clinical psychologist, my friend, Tyler, had been working overtime to meet the demands for his wide range of services. In addition, he had been invited frequently to do workshops and lectures. His difficult clients had been a particular problem and he had failed to get consults for them. Sleeping fewer than his required eight hours added to his distress.  “What were you