by johnnoltner
It’s my third father’s day without my dad, and just yesterday I finally dropped off a stone to be carved for his marker. It took a while, but like he told me once, some things take time. I’m not always a patient person. I get frustrated as I learn a new skill and progress is never as fast as I’d like it to be. It was in high school that he gave me that little gem. I was practicing a […]
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by johnnoltner
As we move into the Memorial Day weekend, I am aware that I don’t personally know anyone who died in military service. Nobody. I certainly know women and men who have served, even though less than one percent of our population has done so. I know people who have been injured both physically and emotionally through the experience of combat, but I haven’t known anyone who has died in military service. Last week I was in Grand Lake, Colorado for […]
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by johnnoltner
Colorado is nice this time of year. Today, I visited Mesa Elementary School in Boulder and spoke at an assembly for a few hundred students. One first grade teacher returned to her classroom and asked her students to share what they had learned, and this is what they said. Sometimes we make life complicated. These young ones understand things we seem to forget. Maybe they will grow up and sort out some of the mess we big people have created. […]
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by johnnoltner
I often hear people express ideas in ways that resonate when we set up studios. Sometimes they are ideas I am familiar with, but they say them in new and articulate ways that make me see things with a new clarity. It is one of the things I love about this exercise of our studio days. Last week at Pacific Lutheran University we asked people to answer this question: “How has your college experience allowed you to build bridges?” and […]
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by johnnoltner
I don’t tend to preach here, but I got a chance last week in chapel at Pacific Lutheran University. And I’d like to share it with you here. I should tell you that I’m not a theologian, I am an artist. I can’t quote a lot of scripture. I’d be hard pressed to recite all ten commandments, although I think I get the general idea. But this project, in fact, is rooted in my faith, and I keep coming back […]
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by johnnoltner
I often describe A Peace of My Mind’s process and development as a walk down a foggy path…where you can see two steps ahead, but not much more. Look any farther, and the path disappears into a murky mist and the destination is uncertain. But, if you commit to walking those two steps, more of the path is revealed. Not much…but enough to keep going. All A Peace of My Mind’s early days, I knew I was on a good […]
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by johnnoltner
Last month I spent time at The Miami Valley School in Dayton, Ohio. They hosted our American Stories exhibit, I led school assemblies, visited classrooms, and we set up a studio in their greenhouse to ask the student body to reflect on what makes us human. It’s a complicated question…but one that drew thoughtful replies with an interesting range of perspectives in their pre-k through 12th grade student body. Sometimes we lose our ability to dream as we get older. […]
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by johnnoltner
You know the picture. It’s a grainy black and white from 1972 Vietnam. A 9-year-old girl runs, crying, from a village that has just been napalmed, the clothes burned from her body. Photographer Nick Ut won a Pulitzer for the image that so powerfully captured the human cost of war. I saw the photo just last month in Washington DC when I visited the Newseum, and got lost in their gallery of Pulitzer –winning photographs. As I stood in front […]
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by johnnoltner
I was a Marine. For six weeks. As a journalism student, I believed I should try to understand as many different perspectives as possible and I knew nothing about the military. So when I returned to my dorm room one afternoon and found a flier in my mailbox that said, “You could be a Marine,” I called the recruiter. At the time, their officer candidate program allowed you to dis-enroll at any time without a commitment. I read that fine […]
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by johnnoltner
I’m not a pacifist. I believe it’s vital to resist evil in the world, and sometimes force is required. But I also believe we use it poorly. Syria’s Assad has little legitimacy as a leader and the alleged use of chemical weapons in his country is indefensible. I would have preferred Obama to have acted early in the conflict to find a resolution before so much human suffering occurred. But I don’t believe our country’s missile strike early Friday will […]
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