This will have to be quick because I am in the middle of a big family reunion. Wait, there’s Uncle Vince. You better quit those butts or you’ll never make it to 60. And that was a fact.

The reunion is taking place, you see, on my laptop. I am lucky to have a big sister who appointed herself the unofficial archivist for the family. God knows how many backbreaking hours she put in, organizing Dad’s home movies that went way back into two DVDs.

One of the many things that bewildered me as a kid was the concept of God’s omnipotence. How could God be everywhere at once? How could such simultaneity be possible? For instance, I couldn’t be playing baseball and sitting quietly in church at the same time.

Sometimes failure can be inspiring.

I was driving to a hiking spot with Millie when I heard on NPR that George Jones, perhaps the greatest country music artist ever and certainly the most influential, had died at 81, which was a miracle in itself.

A few minutes later I got a text from one of our online editors wondering if paying tribute to Jones on our Facebook page was proper in light of the wild and intemperate life he mostly led, especially his painfully public battle with the bottle and his several failed marriages.

Sometimes a voice has a personality all its own. One of those voices went silent this week at age 82.

I apologize for being late with this blog but there is a good reason I waited: I thought I was going to have some great, inspiring material.

In honor of Good Friday I will not be posting a blog today. Happy Easter everyone.

A friend told me he skipped work last week for a mental health day. He spent it in his basement building a side table for his daughter, who has recently graduated college and gotten a job. My friend said it did him a world of good.

Last week I wrote about an amazing dog named Capitán who has stood a nightly vigil at his master’s grave for six years. Capitán, a shepherd, looks like a sentry, a sort of spiritual sentry, not so much waiting for his master but honoring him, communing with him in some way that we will only understand when we too pass to the other side.

Funny how I used to feel my life was empty if I didn’t have a big party to go to on a Friday night or some other wild event—a concert or dinner at a hip restaurant. For a good deal of my life an open weekend night was like an indictment that my very existence was boring.

Now, though, nothing makes me happier than to go home on Friday night, figure out with Julee what delivery food to order, watch a movie, read and hang out with my dog, Millie. Especially tonight. Tonight I plan to run home and give her the biggest hug I can.

Here we are at the end of another busy week. As someone once said, the days are long and the weeks are short. But it’s all good.

We’re getting ready to ship the May issue to our printer and digital distributor. We do this every month, of course, but this issue is special. In May we introduce an exciting new redesign of the magazine.