ANOTHER YEAR’S SUNSET: Long winter twilights prompt memories of a life’s many Christmases. (Photo by Flickr user Photojo2005; used under Creative Commons license) The doe and her two yearlings brought company during the night. When I woke to reload the woodstove, their clan had gathered in the moonlight outside the bedroom window. An urban friend […]
Jim Heynen
Jim Heynen has been a journalist, ghostwriter and organizational consultant for his own firm, RTM. He lives east of Pentwater inside the Manistee National Forest, off the grid and beyond postal delivery, linked to civilization via satellite dish. You’ll find him at brunch with coffee and a stack of sourdough pancakes. The views and assertions of guest columnists do not necessarily reflect those of Bridge or The Center for Michigan.
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
Try as we might, there’s no seceding from the world
A LONG TWILIGHT: It can be hard to tell when one’s motives are about preserving heritage, or just resenting change. (Photo by Flickr user Letting Go of Control; used under Creative Commons license) Living deep in a forest, there’s no slap of morning newspapers on our front porch. A satellite dish tucked into a circle […]
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
In an echo chamber, language loses its power
SAY WHAT? Words really do have meaning, and distorting their meaning can have disastrous consequences. (Photo by Flickr user Ashley Marinaccio; used under Creative Commons license) I think evil is real. I also think we need to pay attention to language. For example: I’m haunted by my memory from a photographic history of Jim Crow […]
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
After outliving a father, a son considers two different lives
THE OLD MAN: Fathers and sons share a blood bond, but may lead radically different lives. (Photo by Flickr user Landahlauts; used under Creative Commons license.) I remember the day I turned 59. I had survived 58, the age at which Tony Heynen, my father, died. In the years leading up to 58 I’d wondered […]
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
Communities are built, not conjured for our personal convenience
NO MAN IS AN ISLAND: Solitude can be solace against an abrasive community, but if you want one more to your liking, you have to wade in and work for it. (Courtesy photo/used under Creative Commons license) Born in 1945 on the edge of Fremont, across a gravel road from Cook’s hatchery, my childhood had […]
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
A country’s anger pierces even the silence of the forest
We live in the Manistee National Forest where, each year, as spring first creeps and then roars to life all around us, I think about death. It isn’t religion’s observance of Passover’s Seder or Easter’s resurrection that does this. It’s the land. ANGER WAFTS IN: The national anger and frustration over the behavior of elected […]
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