Bonus Essay

Won't you be my neighbor?


I am six years old, sitting on the floor of our living room, eyes glued to the screen. The TV in those days was a small black and white affair…

The Magnolia Tree (and a member-only sale)

Hey y'all.
 
I'm trying something new. I have a lot of things sitting around that I made that are not quite "good enough" to sell to the public. Maybe…

What I want to do.


Last night I was on a Zoom call with some folks, and I mentioned that when I was in high school in the late 80s, I wanted to be a…

There is no app for this

It's not there any more, but twenty years ago, there was a tobacco store on Madison Avenue in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. My friend Richard owned it, and he had bought…

F.I.N.E.


I'm not in recovery for any addiction issue. But I know a lot of people who are. 

For nearly a decade and a half I worked with lots of addicted…

Walking the grass


Hi friends.
A custom essay just for you today, mostly composed in my head yesterday while cutting the grass at church.

I was interviewed for
The Competent Pastor Podcast

Tiny joys

Hi all.

This is another piece for the new book. I'm picturing it having several long-form anchor essays, with a lot of 2-3 page short essays, similar to how I…

The little book of self-care

Hey y'all.
 
Since I almost died in 2017 from burnout, I have wished someone wrote a real-world self-care guide for people who did the front-line sort of work I…

Tulsa

NB: there is a short update at the end of this piece. - HH

It never would be allowed to happen now, at least not in the same way…

I cannot be me there

I wasn't friends with Jerry in those days-he was at least seven years older than I was, and when you are nine, that might as well be a hundred. But…

Nothing very bad is going to happen today.

You are getting this essay because you are a member of the support team that fund's my work. I'm so grateful for you.

People continue to order the book -…

Early Morning

Hey y'all,
Three four quick things: 
  1. I'm making a page with the archives for Life Is So Beautiful on it as an exclusive benefit for y'all. I can pretty reliably…

A place to tinker

Hi all! I hope this note finds you as well as it can during this horrible time in the life of our country. I don't have more to say than…

New Year, New Stuff (big update!)

NB: I have a lot of things to announce on Monday to the public, and as always, you guys get first dibs. 

I'm announcing the existence of my new company…

Solstice

Happy Solstice, friends. I am so grateful for you that I have  hard time expressing it.  - HH

As I write this, it's a few days before the winter solstice…

Cold, wet, and gray.

Hey all!

A couple of updates before the essay:

My self-publishing struggles continue apace. The good news is it is now for sale on Amazon as both a physical paperback

The last chapter of Food is Love.

Hey all!

The manuscript for Food is Love, my food based memoir, topped off right at 50,000 words, or a 200 page finished book, more or less. I've been…

Making Jelly (and a short update)

Hey y'all!

This is a rewrite of the muscadine piece from late August, with the addition of the formal recipe for jelly. This is the version going into the book.

I'm 53, and don't know what to do.

NB: Because most of my creative energy is being spent on revising this book I'm hoping to have out in time for the holidays, it's becoming harder and harder to…