Columns

Just because a mentor starts unconsciously humming Motown tunes during a heart-to-heart talk with you about temptations, that doesn’t mean his advice is irrelevant.
A church in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, has made national headlines because of an audacious “In order to save the village, we had to destroy it” strategy to rebrand itself.
The church plans to close its doors in June and reboot itself in the fall, with a new focus on young families with children.

When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced that they were “stepping back” from their duties as senior royals, it triggered a number of interesting reactions on this side of the pond.
Some Americans lifted their noses in the air and said, “We fought a revolution not to have to pay attention to these people. Not interested.” (Of course, these were the same folks who kept commenting on social media about how “not interested” they were when no one asked for their opinion in the first place.)

When my childhood home got a phone call, it was an event.
That was partly because my father, a longtime phone-company employee, installed four brass-belled phones throughout our home. The phones rang so loudly it sounded like crooks were breaking into Fort Knox.
It was also because we were eager to discover who was calling — though I was always disappointed when I answered and it was a young man calling for one of my sisters.
You see, before Caller ID became common in the late 1980s, I was our home’s Caller ID.
“Who is it?” one of my sisters would whisper.