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2024 Return to Happy Jack Mountain

Janna and I made a pilgrimage to Happy Jack Mountain near North Loup and Scotia, Nebraska this summer. Okay, maybe Happy Jack is more hill than a mountain, but because Nebraska (Otoe for “Flat Water”) is pretty dang flat, any rolling hill easily becomes a mountainous monument in memory. Happy Jack sits over the chalk mines below, and we’ll get to that wonder of the valley in a future article. The goal of us trekking up Happy Jack — me, for the second time, and for Janna, first — was to land in front of a giant, wooden cross atop the mountain. Easter services are held under the cross every year, but my question, now as an aged, and somewhat wizened 59-year-old man-child was, and still is, this: WHO IS CLIMBING HAPPY JACK MOUNTAIN ON EASTER MORNING? (the threat of dying is palpably real!)

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How to Button Your Pants and Other Covenants of Urban Living

Today, I will share three observed examples of people doing absolutely the wrong thing in public and how these bad behaviors adversely affect others.

First on the list is knowing how to properly button your pants.  I saw a rather large fellow on the street the other day struggling to zip up his pants so he could button them.  He was doing it all in the wrong order.  First, you have to button the pants, then you pull up the zipper.  If you zip first and button second, you risk breaking the zipper.  Sure, it may be a little harder to suck in the gut first before the buttoning, but zipping and then sucking in only delays the real moment of truth.

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On Climbing the Stairs

by Marshall Jamison

Listening for the sound of a well remembered
rhyme,
my father always whispered aloud as he paused
before the climb
up the stairs to the attic, to wish me soft
good night
and say the prayer he taught me by the candle’s
flickering light.
I recall well it promised joy and sweet
relief of pain
and it answered all my doubt as I heard it
again and again.

For I knew if he believed it surely must be so
and for sixty years its message has shown
me how to go —
Up the attic stairs to the memories
of my youth
to give my little grandson my father’s
living truth.