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Café Terrace at Night

I’ve always believed that the most important rituals are the quiet ones—the ones nobody else sees. The brewing of an evening cup of coffee. The way steam curls up into the lamplight. The deliberate pause before the first sip. These are the liturgies that anchor us when the world becomes too loud, too fast, too uncertain.

As a teenager, I didn’t have that language yet. What I had instead was a girl named Christina, a high school sweetheart with a kind heart and an eye for beauty. For my birthday one year, she found a dish set imprinted with Vincent van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night. I already loved coffee and conversation, and I was just beginning to understand how art could act as a mirror to the soul. That dish set became more than a gift—it became a ritual object, a way of weaving something eternal into the ordinary. The years passed. The set vanished piece by piece. All but one coffee cup, which I kept as if it were sacred. Not for the porcelain, but for the memory it held.

Van Gogh painted Café Terrace at Night in September of 1888, shortly after arriving in Arles, in southern France. He wrote to his sister Wil about the painting before it was finished, describing the “immense blue sky studded with stars,” the gas-lit terrace, and the people walking through the square. What’s remarkable is that Van Gogh painted it en plein air—on the spot, at night, under the stars. No sketches. Just intuition, brush, and breath. He was chasing something ephemeral: not just a place, but a mood, a moment, a memory still in motion. He wanted to capture the way light spills out onto cobblestones, how darkness can feel alive, how solitude can hold space for communion.

When I look at that painting now, I see it not just with my eyes, but with my life. The glowing yellow of the café calls back the soft light of church foyers where I first learned to love coffee—not for the caffeine, but for the warmth of community. I think of drinking coffee with my grandfather, the quiet companion who passed away the year after I graduated. There was no need for many words between us. Just the presence, the coffee, the moment. A ritual of shared silence.

Van Gogh never had a Christina. He never had a dish set, or even stability. What he had was longing—a deep ache to belong, to find someone who would understand the way the stars moved inside him. In Arles, he dreamed of building a community of artists who would live and work together. That dream would become the Yellow House—a short-lived utopia that crumbled under the weight of mental illness and misunderstanding. But for a moment, in that square under the night sky, he believed in connection. He believed in the unspoken bond between strangers sharing a cup, a laugh, a late-night conversation. Café Terrace at Night is not just a painting—it’s a wish.

That’s where I find the through line: an unbroken café of moments. Christina. My grandfather. Myself. Each cup a quiet prayer. Each sip a thread in the long, glowing tapestry of a life lived in search of warmth and understanding. The yellows and blues of Van Gogh’s canvas are not just colors—they are moods I have felt. They are chapters of my own story, painted long before I was born.

Even now, as I sit with a cup of evening coffee in hand, I’m transported. I feel the hush of late-night streets, the echo of voices long gone, the comfort of having once been known. The cup is not the same. The people are not the same. But the ritual remains. That is the artist’s true gift: to create something that keeps living long after the paint has dried.

Annie Dillard once wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Van Gogh spent his days seeking light in the darkness—sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. So do I. So do all of us who hold our rituals close and use them to fend off the cold.

And so I return again and again to Café Terrace at Night. Not to mourn what’s been lost, but to honor what’s been carried forward. Some loves fade. Some cups break. But the light, the longing, the sacred quiet of a shared table under a star-filled sky—that remains. 

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Happy Caturday

The Pass of Saint Gotthard, Switzerland (1804)

When I was younger, I believed that every journey should have a summit—that if you worked hard enough, pushed long enough, you would reach the top. That belief wasn’t just something I carried privately; it was instilled in me from every direction. The American way, I was told, was clear: success comes to those who earn it. Work hard, and doors will open. Climb diligently, and you will be rewarded. It was a cultural inheritance, passed down like a family heirloom—unquestioned, gleaming with promise.

But like so many things we inherit unquestioned, it didn’t hold under pressure. Life, with its strange timing and shifting terrain, has a way of unraveling our neatest assumptions. I’ve come to learn that effort doesn’t always equal achievement. Sometimes the mountain doesn't yield. Sometimes your legs give out. Sometimes, despite everything, you don’t make it to the top. And the older I get, the more I find myself asking whether the top was ever the point at all.

I’ve thought about that question a lot lately—especially after revisiting a photo I took years ago while hiking the trail to Half Dome in Yosemite. It’s a simple picture. A set of uneven stone stairs climbing skyward, cut directly into the mountain. The kind of trail that looks handmade—part history, part determination. I remember how those steps felt underfoot. The way they pulled me upward even as my legs protested. The steady rhythm of breath and boot, the weight of my pack, the silence of the trail broken only by wind and my own exertion.

What the photo doesn’t show—what no camera could—was the moment I stopped. I never made it to the cables. I attempted the final switchbacks, the steep, relentless incline that snakes upward before the famous ascent. But my body began to tremble. Every step became a negotiation between ambition and reality. And then, just before the final climb, I stopped moving altogether.

I stood there—alone at the base of the last push—and watched as others passed me. I remember seeing their determination, their careful grip on the rocks, their ascent into the gray shimmer of elevation. And I stood still. Not out of fear, exactly, but out of honesty. My legs were done. My heart was pounding. My spirit wasn’t broken, but it was tired. And something in me whispered, This is far enough.

For a long time, that moment felt like failure. Not in a loud, dramatic way—but in a quiet, shameful sense of having fallen short. I didn’t write about it. I didn’t talk about it. I kept it hidden under the pile of things I thought I might one day redeem. I had believed that the story only mattered if I reached the top.

But then, months ago, I stood in front of J. M. W. Turner’s The Pass of Saint Gotthard while traveling through Birmingham. I hadn’t gone looking for it. But once I found it, I couldn’t look away.

The painting is thunder held in stillness. The cliff faces rise like ancient guardians, jagged and merciless. A winding road—stone-carved, almost impossibly narrow—traces the wall of the mountain. A lone figure moves along it, dwarfed by scale, half-consumed by the approaching clouds. There is no triumphant peak in sight. No finish line. Only the road, the chasm below, and the slow, perilous crawl forward.

And something in me recognized that scene. Not just the drama of it, but the truth of it. I saw in that traveler the part of myself that had stood at the base of Half Dome, watching others ascend. The painting didn’t feel like a portrait of heroism. It felt like a portrait of perseverance. Of continuing on, not because you are sure of success, but because it is the road you are on.

There’s a quiet dignity in that. 

John Muir wrote, “The mountains are calling and I must go.” But he also wrote, “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” I didn’t reach the summit, but I received something deeper—something I hadn’t known I was looking for. I received the kind of clarity that only comes when ambition and humility meet on the trail. I learned that the summit is not a measure of worth. The turning point—when you stop, when you listen to your body, when you surrender the narrative you’d hoped to tell—is its own kind of arrival.

Turner’s painting, like my photo, is not about conquest. It’s about confronting the immensity of the world and continuing forward anyway. It’s about recognizing that the road itself—dangerous, narrow, often invisible—is where the meaning lives. Not in flags planted, not in peaks reached, but in the act of walking at all.

When I look at that photo now, I don’t see failure. I see a man who honored his limits. Who knew when to keep climbing and when to let the mountain be. I see someone who still carries that moment—alone, aching, quiet—as a kind of gift.

And when I return to Turner’s painting, I no longer envy the traveler on the other side of the pass. I see myself on the ledge, not triumphant, but truthful. Not victorious, but fully alive.

Maybe the greatest ascent isn’t about reaching the top at all.

Maybe it’s knowing when to stop—and still calling it a climb. 

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New Hat

I did two years of graduate school at Mizzou. I didn't finish my master's there, but I'll always be a fan. Go Tigers! 

The Glass Engraver (1883)

As a young man, I believed the true measure of a man lay in his ability to master a craft. Not merely to participate in something, but to become it—to bend one’s identity around a skill so completely that the line between the man and the work disappears. A master is someone who, through quiet repetition and relentless dedication, transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. I imagined such men as existing in rarefied spaces—at the potter’s wheel, at the forge, in the dim light of a workshop. Charles Frederic Ulrich’s The Glass Engraver captures this ideal in haunting detail: a man absorbed in his labor, turning glass into memory, one stroke at a time. I see him now as the person I once aspired to be—precise, focused, and wholly committed to the quiet pursuit of excellence.

In the painting, the engraver works alone. His back is turned to the viewer, suggesting not secrecy, but absorption. The world outside the window blurs against the clarity of his tools: rows of grinding wheels, a heavy vise, scattered cloths and bottles. This is not the workspace of a hobbyist but of a professional—a man who has shaped his environment around a single purpose. The light from the window illuminates the glass in his hand, but also the intensity of his gaze, his posture curved into the very rhythm of the work. The writer Annie Dillard once wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” This engraver has chosen, without apology or distraction, to spend his life in service of his craft. He is the embodiment of that quote.

Yet as I reflect on my own life, I realize I have taken a different path entirely.

Rather than mastery, I’ve leaned into multiplicity. I am a teacher by profession, and now a doctoral student in leadership—roles that require not singularity but breadth. My days demand flexibility, not repetition; curiosity, not expertise. I’ve flirted with mastery over the years—I’ve picked up musical instruments with the hope that one might unlock something innate, something destined. But I always reached a plateau, a moment where I could no longer pretend that talent and time would meet in the middle. As Malcolm Gladwell famously suggests, “Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.” I have given ten hours here, a hundred there, but never ten thousand to one thing. I couldn’t. My mind wouldn’t sit still long enough.

Now, as I inch closer to earning a doctorate, I again find myself standing at the threshold of knowledge and wondering whether I’ve built anything lasting. The field of leadership—particularly educational leadership—often feels like a house of mirrors, full of reflections but few solid walls. The literature is bloated with acronyms, flowcharts, and tidy mantras that rarely survive contact with the chaos of a real school. I’ve read all the books, but find myself less inspired by each—a variation on a theme that feels more like a broken record than an original composition. The deeper I go, the more I hear echoes of what John Gardner once described as the difference between leaders and “peddlers of self-help pap.” The language is familiar, but the substance feels increasingly hollow.

I can’t help but compare that feeling to the world Ulrich paints. The glass engraver is not working from a manual filled with bullet points and buzzwords. His knowledge is embedded in his hands, in the hundreds of hours spent learning how pressure changes with each kind of glass, how mistakes cannot be undone but must be worked into the final design. There’s no committee, no professional development session, no keynote speaker. Just one man and the slow, intimate dance between tool and material. It is, in every sense, real work.

Still, I return to the classroom. Still, I meet students where they are, answer texts late at night, celebrate tiny victories that most will never see. My work may lack the elegance of an engraved goblet, but I am beginning to see it as its own kind of craftsmanship. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.” That line reminds me that my craft is not measured in polish but in presence. It is not the engraved line, but the conversation that lingers, the question that echoes. Perhaps I have been measuring myself by the wrong standard. Perhaps mastery is not always about narrowing down but about opening up—about the ability to hold many things, many people, many stories at once, and to make meaning in that complexity.

And yet, I still feel the ache. I can’t unlearn the longing for mastery, even if I now understand that my craft is broader, messier, and harder to frame on a wall. The painter gives us a still moment, but life moves. My work is motion. It is improvisation. It is—at times—fumbling and uncertain. But maybe that’s its own kind of artistry. Maybe, like glass engraving, it leaves marks that are only visible when held up to the right light.

I do not know if I will ever feel the deep contentment of the man in the painting. I don’t know if he even feels it himself. But I know the longing is mine, and that it has shaped the questions I ask, the paths I take, the standards I hold. And maybe that’s enough—to honor the desire, to understand its shape, and to keep going anyway. Not toward mastery, perhaps, but toward meaning. Toward a life etched with intention, even if the design remains unfinished. 

Early Voting and an Early Dinner

And I do my little turn on the catwalk.

Date Night

Rose #8

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The Reluctant Bloom

The Reluctant Bloom
By Dave

Spring whispered promises —
warm winds stirring the soil,
the sun’s fingers tracing gentle lines
on tender earth.

But I held tight —
clinging to the dark beneath,
where roots tangled like comfort,
where the soil was warm and safe,
where the frost could not find me.

I felt the heat of afternoon
but knew too well the cold of night.
I knew how warmth can vanish,
how morning dew can turn to ice
before it dares to fall.

So I stayed curled —
tight as a fist,
a bud wrapped in its own doubt.
The world above exploded in color —
petals unfurling like open hands,
offering themselves to the wind —
but I remained, sealed shut,
convinced the gust would tear me apart.

The bees came, dancing in air —
golden messengers humming songs
I could not hear.
They lingered at petals unfurled,
kissing each bloom with promise,
with purpose, with life.

But they never touched me.
How could they?
I never reached out, never opened wide —
never dared to believe
I was worthy of their touch.

Time pressed on.
The sun climbed higher,
then began its slow descent.
Flowers stretched wide to catch the light,
their faces golden,
their scent drifting like songs.

I waited too long.
When I finally dared to rise,
I felt brittle and thin,
my petals dry parchment.

And still the rain came —
weighing heavy on my leaves,
pooling in cupped petals
that had only begun to open.
The bees were gone —
carrying whispers of other flowers,
loves I never kissed.

I never bloomed —
just withered in silence.
No pollen kissed the breeze,
no seed carried my hope forward.

I fell alone,
cut loose from the root,
a failed bloom.

Yet even in my fading,
I fed the earth —
my brittle form becoming soil,
a quiet gift for flowers braver than I. 

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Currently Reading: T.S. Eliot

 Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

The Waste Land and Other Poems

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Hamlet and the Ghost (1901)

Ghost stories have always captivated me, not merely for their spectral presence but for what they reveal about the past. When I look at Frederick James Shields’ Hamlet and the Ghost (1901), I’m reminded of why these stories linger in our cultural consciousness. Shields’ haunting depiction of the Danish prince and his father’s ghost captures more than just Shakespearean drama — it speaks to the power of memory, unresolved trauma, and the need for truth to be unearthed. As Hamlet stands before his father’s spirit under a brooding sky, the painting evokes the way ghost stories function in both literature and life: as messengers of the past, demanding that the living pay attention.

In Hamlet, the Ghost’s role is far more than that of a chilling presence; it is a symbol of historical reckoning. When the Ghost reveals to Hamlet that his death was not natural, but murder — “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life / Now wears his crown” (I.v.39-40) — the truth emerges as something that cannot be hidden. The Ghost’s presence forces Hamlet to confront Denmark’s political corruption, his family’s betrayal, and the disarray that has taken hold of the kingdom. Ghost stories often function in this same way. They confront us with the past — not as dry facts, but as visceral experiences that refuse to be forgotten. I’m drawn to ghost tours for precisely this reason. The spirits described in those tales are rarely just disembodied figures meant to frighten; they are memories, the lingering traces of lives touched by tragedy or injustice. Much like the Ghost in Hamlet, these stories emerge to ensure that forgotten voices are heard.

Memory is a central theme in both Hamlet and the ghost stories we pass down. When the Ghost urges Hamlet, “Remember me” (I.v.91), it reflects the fundamental power of storytelling as an act of remembrance. The Ghost’s command places Hamlet in an impossible position — to remember the past is to carry its burden. Grief and trauma weigh heavily on Hamlet throughout the play, and the Ghost’s presence only deepens that tension. In this way, Shakespeare’s Ghost mirrors the lingering presence of tragedy in haunted spaces. On ghost tours, I’ve encountered stories of fires that claimed dozens of lives, of soldiers who never made it home, and of families torn apart by disaster. These stories, while framed in supernatural terms, often feel like acts of remembrance — a way of ensuring that those lives are not forgotten. The past, like Hamlet’s father, demands to be acknowledged.

Shields’ painting captures this tension with remarkable clarity. The Ghost’s ethereal glow stands in stark contrast to Hamlet’s darkened figure, reinforcing the idea that the past exists both as something distant and yet intimately connected to the present. The stormy sky swirls above them like a chaotic reflection of Hamlet’s inner turmoil — a visual reminder that the past, like grief, can never be fully contained. Ghost stories thrive on this tension. They blur the line between fact and folklore, memory and myth. It’s why I find ghost tours so compelling. The stories told on those walks don’t ask for certainty; they ask for consideration. The unsettling ambiguity of whether a spirit’s presence is real or imagined mirrors Hamlet’s own uncertainty when he wonders if the Ghost is truly his father’s spirit or “the devil… / To assume a pleasing shape” (II.ii.627-629). Ghost stories thrive in that space — neither fully believed nor entirely dismissed — and that ambiguity forces us to consider what it means to live with unanswered questions.

What captivates me most about ghost stories — whether in literature or local legend — is their ability to reveal forgotten narratives. On a ghost tour, history feels tangible. The figures haunting these tales are rarely the powerful or privileged; they are often the marginalized, the wronged, or the silenced. Ghost stories are a reminder that the past is rarely neat and orderly. Just as Hamlet’s father cannot rest until justice is served, these lingering spirits exist to ensure we remember what might otherwise be lost.

Frederick James Shields’ Hamlet and the Ghost reminds me why I love these stories. The painting’s haunting atmosphere mirrors the way ghost stories linger — not as mere curiosities, but as powerful reminders of what cannot be forgotten. Whether on the page, the stage, or a shadowed street corner, ghost stories ask us to pay attention — to listen to the whispers of those who refuse to be silenced. They remind us that the past is never far away; it waits for someone willing to remember. 

The Crescent Hotel

The Crescent Hotel stands like a sentinel above Eureka Springs, stately in stone yet weighted with the shadows of its past. Tonight, I walked its halls, past the grand staircase and beneath the stained-glass windows that still catch the light like jewels. The air smells faintly of wood polish and old stone — reminders that this place has been lovingly restored. Much of the Crescent’s tragic past has been scrubbed clean, but something lingers — not in the walls, but in the stories whispered through them.

The ghost tour winds its way through the Crescent’s history — a tale that began with elegance and ambition, only to unravel into something far darker. There’s something tragic about a place that’s worn so many faces — a grand hotel for the wealthy, a women's college, and finally, Norman Baker’s so-called "cancer hospital." Baker turned this place into a house of false hope, peddling cures that did nothing but hasten the inevitable. For those desperate enough to believe him, the Crescent was less a sanctuary and more a purgatory.

Time has softened the scars. The walls have been painted, the carpet is plush underfoot, and the lobby feels warm and inviting. Yet the stories remain — the true ghosts of the Crescent. A nurse glimpsed in the hallway, her face pale as if still weighed down by the suffering she once witnessed. The playful spirit of Michael, the stonecutter who fell during construction, said to flicker lights and tug at sheets in Room 218. And Theodora, the caretaker ghost who tidies Room 419 as if still watching over those in her charge.

The tour’s final stop was the basement — the space once used as a morgue during Baker’s twisted tenure. There's no autopsy table here anymore; it’s long gone, replaced by memories retold with reverent hush. The walls are painted now, and time has done its best to reclaim the room. Yet the air in that space is different — stagnant and still, like something holds its breath. The body lockers remain, lined against the wall, their rusted doors cold to the touch. They feel like artifacts — relics not just of what happened here, but of the fear and desperation that once filled this place.

In 2019, the Crescent's ghosts took on a more physical form when a landscaper unearthed Norman Baker’s forgotten cache of medical specimens — jars filled with tumors, organs, and other grim trophies. Seeing those jars tonight, lined up behind glass, was far more unsettling than any flickering light or whispered voice. They are proof of suffering — cold, preserved evidence of lives lost not just to illness, but to deception.

I left the Crescent feeling thoughtful. The hotel stands beautiful once again, a place of laughter and warmth. Yet beneath that glow, there’s a certain sadness that clings like mist. The ghosts of the Crescent aren’t just restless spirits — they are the stories of those who came here in hope and left in silence. And no matter how brightly the lobby lights shine, those stories will always remain — the true, lingering ghosts of the Crescent.