Being separated from your sons is always rough -- which can happen even when you're living in the same house. It happened to me and my dad -- happened with me and each of my boys and step-sons. I love them all, and I'm pretty sure they love me as well, but men often have distance between them when apart, or just sitting in the same room with each other. Deciphering the quiet is as essential as finding words that bond. With dad, it was always about getting him out in natur

I find I have a fascination with farms -- not farming, but just the visual aesthetic of the farms themselves. Well, yes, I grew up in Illinois, spent countless summers racing down the backroads between the cornfields, approaching most intersections blind because the corn was so high. On any given night, my friends and I might be out there, parked along the side of the road drinking a few brewskis and discussing the meaning of life -- life as such, only as we knew it in our