Through the Gateway

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Porch sitting
It provided hours of carefree daydreaming at the family home downtown that we parted with last year; now there’s a big void, for sure
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John Van Dalen
Portrait of Lone Star: The ghost town that won’t disappear
Visiting the nearly abandoned town of Lone Star, about 80 miles from Charleston in Calhoun County, SC, is truly to step back in time. I’ve been to this…
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John Van Dalen
2
The power of memories that come from the deepest, farthest places within us
In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness. Sarah Orne Jewett…
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John Van Dalen
I, too, always dreamed of faraway places whenever I heard that long and lonely train whistle in the night
The loneliest sound on earth is a train whistle in the night. From an online journal It’s not the who, what and where memories I savor from my…
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John Van Dalen
6
Email letter addressing the materialist, empirical worldview and why it is only part of the larger picture of life
The following is an excerpt from a writer who regularly challenges my own worldview and beliefs. This is a good thing, for it means that I am not…
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John Van Dalen
Encounter: A long ago revelation on a ferry boat ride across the Mississippi River
Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?” Indeed I do! As the years pass without a visit back to the city where I was born and lived for the first…
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John Van Dalen
Remembering the heavy toll of depression, but also the very real possibilities of a new life and new beginnings
Flash back to the end of summer, 2017, one of those fatefully significant years in my life. I had retired only a few months before, and I was having a…
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John Van Dalen
2
Through the Gateway
Through the Gateway
Exploring the dimensions of the personal essay
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Ghost towns
Lone Star 1974 and abandoned house

Through the Gateway

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