Danny Taylor: Skinny Guy Thinking it Through

My daughter just recently had an assignment at school where students were required to give a “TED Talk.” The focus was deliberately vague—speak on something for which you are a bit of an expert (by 8th-grade standards, of course), some experience that had a profound impact on your life, or perhaps something you just find meaningful. The topics reflected the kinds of conversations that normally happen in the halls of a middle school:   "Why Baseball is the Greatest." "The Value of Studying Math." "Cafeteria Lunch Choices are Horrible." Some were rather surprising. One classmate spoke about his grandpa’s military service. Another questioned the morality of plastic grocery bags. Yet another spoke deeply about his Christian faith.   My daughter equally wanted to address something faith-based, but with a particular focus: her Papa’s experience with dementia. Since moving back to Ohio, she's had a front row seat to my dad’s very rapid cognitive decline. This...

In college, I belonged to a mentoring group, and once a semester, our mentor would invite us to his house for a whole weekend of home-cooked meals and a crash course in some form of character development. When we had downtime on those weekends, we would take long walks through the cemetery that lay across the street from his house. It was only creepy during the twilight hours when day became night and an eerie fog fell among the tombstones. We would meander through the park, inventing stories about those who lay beneath our feet. Faceless names etched in stone. That's all they were to us. Not unlike those who appear on a family tree. I know my parents. I knew my grandparents. At the very least, I met two of my great-grandparents. All the rest, going to the Mayflower in one direction and the Irish Potato Famine in another, are nothing more than faceless names branching out in too many directions to count. While I know the character of my parents and the stories of my grandparents, t...