Here’s the Prompt

With AI, and using ChatGPT or Claude as an example, what you get out really depends a lot on what you put in, the prompt. Even then, the results can often be a mixed review. If you have a paid subscription your results may vary: mine is a free subscription and so far I have been happy with the results. But sometimes I just have to wonder…

Over the past several weeks I have been working with a team from our church to create a warm and inviting atmosphere for our Christmas Eve services. Yes, it was 90 degrees yesterday, it’s only August, but with projects like this you really need the time to think about, create, socialize or promote the ideas to the team, and have time to redesign or adjust. So we are working on an event that isn’t scheduled for nearly 4 1/2 months from now. And now you know a bit about church planning.

The area I am working on is our Lobby. It won’t be the first thing our guests and member see when they arrive December 24–hopefully we will have added some Christmas decor to the parking areas and our patio areas before folks ever enter the building. But once in, what will they see?

Our church has a Mid-Century Modern design aethetic in a very contemporary brick, concrete, and glass building. Whatever we come up with has to fit in with our furniture, concrete flooring and that massive glass curtain wall that overlooks our patio and a forested area beyond. It isn’t quite “Colorado cabin” style but at the same time, it isn’t MCM Palm Springs California either. But by rearranging some of the seating areas, perhaps adding pillows and blankets, area rugs and smaller design elements, we might be able to transform a very large space into something a bit smaller and more welcoming.

However. We are visual people and I’ve found it’s easier to present a few pictures of what I have in mind than it is to describe the changes in a Word document for nine people.

Below I have presented the original photo I uploaded to ChatGPT and the initial prompt. It took five iterations before I got what I thought I would have received as a first try. Let me know if you think I could have been more specific with Chat in my instructions. Or perhaps this is how we work with AI? a little trial and error until we say, “that’s good enough for now.”

Here is the prompt I gave ChatGPT: 

I’m looking for another Christmas decor idea here. Please remove the two chairs on the left and replace with the yellow couch. To the right of the brick pillar place a lighted and decorated Christmas tree. Remove the round coffee table and place large wrapped Christmas presents (4-5) up against the brick. Add a sled leaning against the brick.

Below are the images I received back. I like #6 and think that it most closely resembles what I had asked for, but you be the judge.

The final image (couch on left facing the two chairs, Christmas tree with presents and a sled against the brick wall) looks the most like my original intent. We did gain two pillows in the final design, and after the first image I had Chat brighten up the room. And for some reason the couch seems to have grown two feet wider but overall, not bad. I forgot to add the area rug but I’m not one to test the fates, this will do.

How about you? Have you gotten more or less than what you’ve tasked AI with? I have Photoshop, and when it comes to time spent, ChatGPT beats me hands down.

By the way, if you are looking for a warm and engaging church to attend for Christmas Eve services this year, give us a try at Christian Fellowship Church in Ashburn VA. Or stop by any Sunday and try out the couches–they are very comfy!

Walton’s Mountain: A Visit to Schuyler, Virginia

Take Highway 29 south of Charlottesville. The broad four-lane highway rolls gently away from the crowded streets of this college town, climbing into the wooded ridges of Nelson County. Mountains? Having lived in Nevada, I still think of these as hills. Beautiful, forested hills—but hills nonetheless.

The road passes wineries, cideries, and bed-and-breakfast inns that seem perfectly at home in Virginia’s countryside. As pleasant as they are, I found myself wondering what this landscape looked like during the 1930s.

Twenty-four miles south, turn left onto Route 6—Irish Road. A few minutes later you’ll arrive at the Walton’s Mountain Museum in Schuyler, Virginia.

Walton’s Mountain Museum building front

That’s how I drove home.

Getting there was another matter.

From Somerset, Virginia, I followed State Route 20, where road construction narrowed an already winding highway. Cars crept through one lane at a time, each of us patiently following the next toward destinations that, in my case, were entirely unfamiliar.

July in Virginia is predictably hot and humid. But on this particular day another visitor had arrived first: smoke from the Canadian wildfires, nearly 900 miles to the north. I had hoped that by climbing into the mountains I might outrun the haze—or at least rise above it. Instead, the smoky air that blanketed our valley had settled over Schuyler as well. The destination proved both new and strangely familiar, but the clear mountain air I had imagined never appeared.

Housed in the former Schuyler High School, the Waltons Mountain Museum features carefully recreated sets from the television series, including John-Boy’s bedroom, the family kitchen, and Ike Godsey’s store. Opened in 1992, the museum has become an important part of the local economy, drawing fans from across the country and around the world. During my visit, guests had come from nearby Charlottesville, North Carolina, and much farther away. A glance through the visitor log confirmed that the appeal of The Waltons extends well beyond Virginia.

The television series ran for nine seasons and 221 episodes before concluding in 1981, followed by a number of reunion movies through 1997. Nearly three decades after the last of those specials aired, visitors are still making the pilgrimage to experience the world of a family who, though inspired by real people, largely lived in fiction.

The museum occupies an interesting space somewhere between celebration and remembrance. Visitors come to relive the lives of the fictional Walton family, but the museum never lets them forget the real family behind the stories. Earl Hamner Jr., whose childhood inspired the series, grew up here with his parents and seven siblings. Throughout the exhibits, photographs place members of the Hamner family beside the actors who portrayed them, gently reminding visitors where fact ends and storytelling begins. The Hamners first became a novel, then a film, and eventually one of television’s most beloved series. Yet behind it all remained a very real family from a very real Virginia town.

Spencer’s Mountain, by Earl Hamner, Jr. image from Amazon

The museum’s caretaker that afternoon had grown up in Schuyler. She was old enough to have known many members of the Hamner family personally, although I never quite sorted out exactly who or when. What mattered was that she transformed the exhibits from static displays into living history. She shared firsthand stories, local memories, and bits of background that never appeared on the exhibit labels. More than anything I read on the walls, she brought both the people and the town to life. I found myself disappointed when she excused herself for a break.

Earl Hamner Jr. was born in 1923 and died in 2016. He was only three years older than my father, one of five children, and five years older than my mother, who grew up with six siblings of her own. Like the Hamners, my parents lived through the Great Depression. Yet standing in Schuyler, it was easy to imagine that those difficult years were considerably harder in the hills of rural Virginia than they had been for my parents in Southern California.

Still, hardship has a way of producing stories worth telling. In this case, those stories have endured for more than fifty years, continuing to draw people who long for a glimpse of a simpler world—or perhaps simply a kinder one.

I spent an unhurried afternoon wandering through the museum, complimenting the caretaker on the thoughtful exhibits. I lingered longest in John-Boy’s recreated bedroom, which somehow felt exactly as I had imagined it. Before leaving, I picked up a few jars of Waltons Mountain jam from the gift shop. The Moonshine Jelly contained considerably more “moonshine” in its name than in its recipe, but it was enjoyable all the same.

After more than thirty years producing graphics and exhibits for museums and visitor centers, I’ve seen displays of every size and budget. Every exhibition hopes to honor its subject well. Could the captions have been more legible? Certainly. Would improved lighting and newer display cases have showcased the collection more effectively? Without question.

But they also might have polished away some of the museum’s charm.

For me, the exhibits were memorable. The stories were unforgettable. And the best exhibit in the building wasn’t behind glass at all—it was the woman behind the front desk who remembered when these stories were simply the lives of her neighbors.

If you’ve been to the museum, let me know in the comments below. 

The Mountain

A Pilgrimage to Walton’s Mountain

Today there stands a small museum in the town of Schuyler, Virginia, not far from Charlottesville. It occupies the old Schuyler Community Center, where Earl Hamner, Jr. attended school. After living in Virginia for forty years, I finally decided to make the two-and-a-half-hour drive south to Nelson County to see it for myself—a pilgrimage of sorts. As I’ve been researching my own family’s life during the 1930s, it seemed fitting to visit the place that inspired the novel Spencer’s Mountain and which eventually became The Walton’s.

I grew up in the 1970s when there were two television shows that held a special place in our family: The Waltons and M*A*S*H. Looking back fifty years, they seem to have had little in common, except perhaps for the close family bonds that developed over years of living together. The doctors and nurses of M*A*S*H, thrown together under the worst of circumstances, created a kind of family that viewers came to love over the show’s remarkable eleven-season run from 1972 to 1983—far longer than the actual three-year Korean War in which it was set.

Both shows were built more around relationships than events. Of the two, MASH was always my favorite, but The Waltons created something equally special. It centered on a family of eleven—seven children, their parents, and both grandparents—all living under one roof in what today we’d call a multigenerational home. Somehow, it worked.

The Waltons aired on CBS for nine seasons, from September 14, 1972, to June 4, 1981. It began with the holiday television movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, which premiered on December 19, 1971.

The show’s roots reach back even further. Earl Hamner Jr.’s 1961 novel inspired the 1963 film Spencer’s Mountain, starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara. Hamner, who also served as the off-screen narrator for The Waltons, based the story on his own childhood in Virginia. While the film relocated the Spencer family to Wyoming, the television series wisely returned them to the hills of central Virginia, where the story truly belonged.

Growing up in the 1970s, the Great Depression felt impossibly distant. Forty years earlier? It seemed like ancient history. As a teenager, it never really occurred to me that my own parents had lived through those years. Not as adults—that would have been my grandparents—but as children and adolescents. They would come of age during the 1940s, another era with its own unforgettable landmarks.

Writing this in 2026, that same forty-year span no longer feels so enormous. Looking back forty years today takes me not to the Depression, but to the mid-1980s. And I remember those years vividly. In fact, I loved that era.

Our own family had a version of the Waltons. My father’s sister and her family lived on a ranch in southern Oregon during the 1970s. Their property had towering fir trees, open meadows dotted with cattle, chickens wandering the yard, and a large vegetable garden—many of the same elements I admired on television each week. Their family was smaller, with five children instead of seven, and our grandparents spent summers there in a trailer rather than in the “Big House,” but the feeling was much the same. It was a place where family gathered, where everyone belonged, and where life seemed to move at a slower pace.

I’ve come to realize however, that I’m no longer John-Boy Walton, writing about his childhood. These days I’m closer to Will Geer, who was seventy years old when he played Grandpa Walton. My beard has turned whiter than I ever expected, although I’d like to think I spend considerably less time in a rocking chair on the front porch than he did. And while the original novel followed Clay Spencer, a mill worker in a small Virginia town who struggled to raise eight children while building a family home and helping his oldest son, Clay-Boy—the inspiration for John-Boy Walton—go to college, well here we are, nearly ninety years removed from that story, helping our own granddaughter prepare for college.

I like the symmetry of that. Except, perhaps, for the rocking chair. Then again, Cracker Barrel has plenty of those.

And biscuits with sausage gravy. Hmm…


The actor Richard Thomas (born 1951) is best known for his leading role as John “John-Boy” Walton Jr. in the CBS tv-series The Waltons. Thinking back now about the television series, we were nearly the same age, he acting a television role while I was watching it.

More Hair

Reading this I recognize how we often fall into consistent, though perhaps not recognizable patterns or habits. I just got another haircut yesterday, and shaved off the beard I had been working on for a month. It’s Just Hair (from three years ago). Enjoy!

More Weeds

It had been a couple of weeks since my last visit to the cottage, and even then it was only a quick stop to meet with a contractor. We haven’t had much rain lately—not the kind of long, steady, grass-soaking rain that keeps everything green. So I expected the yard to look a little rough. It did. The grass was dry and patchier than usual. 

But it’s the middle of July, and summer heat, humidity, and scattered afternoon thunderstorms are simply part of the season. What I didn’t expect was the utter chaos of weeds.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the book of Proverbs. Our church is spending the summer studying it, and the most recent passage was Proverbs 6:6:

“Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”

I’ll admit, I’m not much of a fan of ants, so this verse didn’t immediately resonate with me.

Our pastor gave an inspiring message from those few words, but one word stayed with me: sluggard. Depending on the translation, it appears as lazybonesslacker, or simply lazy one. I’d run across that word before, and that’s where Scripture and experience suddenly came together.

Consider Proverbs 24:30–34:

I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense, and behold, it was all overgrown with thorns; the ground was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down. Then I saw and considered it; I looked and received instruction.

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.

That phrase caught my attention: “I looked and received instruction.” What a wonderful description of a teachable spirit. Back in my Army days, my friends and I quoted verses 33 and 34 to one another all the time.

“Get up, you sluggard!”

We loved that part.

But we rarely paid attention to the verses that came before it—the neglected vineyard, the weeds, the broken stone wall.There are countless lessons packed into this proverb, but on this particular morning, standing in my gravel driveway and staring at weeds that seemed to have appeared overnight, only one thought came to mind:

A little sleep, a little slumber… and your yard and driveway will be overrun with weeds.

It doesn’t take long. Ignore something for a little while, and suddenly the vineyard is overgrown and the stone wall begins to crumble. And once it reaches that point, a few minutes of pulling weeds isn’t enough. I spent hours out there… or at least it felt like hours. If I’m being honest, it was probably closer to thirty minutes. But it was hot! Of course, Proverbs isn’t really teaching us how to grow vineyards or maintain our landscaping. It’s pointing to something much deeper.

Another proverb we often quoted says:

“Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds.” (Proverbs 27:23)

Pay attention. Know what’s happening around you. If you’re a parent, know your children. If you’re a supervisor, know your people. If you’re a friend, stay connected. If you’re a follower of Christ, don’t neglect your own heart.

Weeds rarely appear overnight. They grow because small things are ignored for too long. The same is true in our relationships, our work, our spiritual lives, and yes—even our driveways.

A little attention today often prevents a lot of work tomorrow.

Crossing America

The self-titled 1972 album by Manassas, the band formed by Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills & Nash fame, features a memorable cover photograph taken at the train station in Manassas, Virginia. A Civil War enthusiast, Stills chose the location because of its historic significance and named the band after the town itself.

Photographer Ira Wexler captured the band standing casually on the platform, hands in their pockets, Stills leaning against a post. Aside from the unmistakable hairstyles of the early 1970s, they could easily pass for a group of groomsmen waiting for the train before one last evening on the town.

That photograph always brings back memories for me because I had stood on that very platform four years later—not as a music fan, but as a traveler crossing America.

Photo: Manassas album cover (credit: Ira Wexler)

A Summer on the Road

In the summer of 1976, during America’s Bicentennial celebration, I set off on a month-long bus tour across the United States. Along the way I met Simon, a young traveler from Wales who had come to experience America firsthand. We were the same age and quickly became good friends, sharing long hours on the bus and exploring each new destination together.

By the time we reached Washington, D.C., we had already visited places that seemed larger than life—The Alamo, New Orleans, Walt Disney World, and Cape Canaveral. Looking back, there wasn’t much to see at the Space Center itself, but simply standing where the Apollo missions had begun was unforgettable.

After the crowds and museums of Washington, Simon suggested something different. As a Stephen Stills fan, he wanted to visit the train station in Manassas that appeared on the Manassas album cover. It wasn’t on my itinerary, but that’s one of the joys of travel: sometimes the unexpected side trips become the memories that last the longest.

Photo: Manassas train platform, 2026

Crossing America on Two Wheels

That same summer, another branch of my family was making an even more remarkable journey.

My aunt Shirley and my cousin Colleen participated in Bikecentennial, the cross-country bicycle ride created to celebrate America’s 200th birthday. According to my mother, who has an incredible memory for family history, Shirley—45 years old—and eleven-year-old Colleen may have been the youngest mother-daughter team to complete the route.

They began in Reedsport, Oregon, and pedaled east across the country. Many riders struggled with heat, exhaustion, and injuries, and some left the ride altogether. At one point Shirley and Colleen separated from the larger group, continuing entirely on their own. They followed the established route and campgrounds, but without the companionship or support of other riders. Just the two of them—and they finished.

My brother Dave was serving in the Army at Fort Riley, Kansas, during their trip. He remembers visiting them as they crossed the state.

“I went to see them about mid-journey while they were crossing Kansas. They looked incredibly fit, thin, and tanned. It was quite an adventure they were having, and I remember thinking how unusual it was to see a mother-daughter team, especially with Colleen only about eleven years old.”

Reporter (and participant) Mark Donaldson wrote in 2016, reflecting on the Adventure 40 years before. 

“Four thousand cyclists hit the trail the summer of 1976 — young, old, male, female, representing dozens of countries. Two thousand bicycled the entire trail from coast to coast. We all share one common bond. We all feel that the summer of the Bicentennial was one of the best summers of our lives.”

Years later, Colleen reflected on how unlikely the whole adventure really was.

Her mother had recently earned a degree in U.S. History after more than twenty years of night school. When she read about Bikecentennial, she assumed it would be perfect for her eighteen-year-old son. He wasn’t interested and simply replied, “You should do it.”

So she did.

At the time Shirley worked a full-time desk job, smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and had hardly ridden a bicycle in years. Nevertheless, she bought the required camping gear, tents, panniers—and bicycles.

There was just one problem: the smallest adult bicycle was still too large for eleven-year-old Colleen. Their solution was wonderfully 1970s. A trip to Kinney Shoes produced a pair of platform sneakers that added two and a half inches of height, just enough to reach the pedals!

The family finally assembled the bicycles on Mother’s Day for a ten-mile practice ride.

Two weeks later, they left Reedsport, Oregon to bicycle across America.

Colleen, 1976

America by Rail

Nearly twenty years after my bus trip, I found myself circling the country once again—this time by train.

I boarded the Capitol Limited at Union Station in Washington, D.C., bound for Chicago. Twelve hours in a coach seat convinced me that sleeping accommodations were worth every penny, so I upgraded to a roomette before continuing west.

Traveling by rail offers an entirely different perspective on America. Unlike flying, where the landscape disappears beneath the clouds, the train carries you through small towns, mountain passes, deserts, rivers, and endless stretches of countryside that most travelers never see.

Looking back, I’ve crossed America three different ways: by bus, by train, and—through the remarkable story of my aunt and cousin—by bicycle. Each journey revealed a different side of the country, but they all shared the same reward: the chance to slow down, meet interesting people, and discover that sometimes the best memories come from the miles between the destinations.



In 1976, Americans celebrated 200 years of independence. Nearly fifty years later, as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, I realize those celebrations were never only about fireworks and parades. They were about movement—people setting out to see their country, whether by bus, bicycle, or train. My own memories of that Bicentennial summer, and the remarkable journey of my aunt Shirley and my cousin Colleen, remind me that America is often best understood not from a history book, but from the road itself.

Trains and the Sounds of Morning

In the distance I hear the rumbling freight cars passing by. The CSX Washington Subdivision, running west from Orange to Charlottesville, still sees regular freight traffic. Coal once dominated Virginia’s rail economy in the 1970s. Today, while coal trains still pass through, there is a broader mix of intermodal containers and general freight.

The long horn sounds, followed by the rushing anticipation of rail cars clacking by. I rarely see the trains—they pass more than a mile from the house—but the sounds take me back to an imagined childhood. We never lived this close to tracks before, yet somehow this morning rhythm reminds me of home.

Now the cows are sounding off. I’m always surprised I can hear them from this far away. Their calls drift up the hill from Fairfield View Dairy Farm. Historical records suggest Orange County once had nearly 100 dairy farms in the 1960s. By 1992, that number had dropped to 33, part of a decline that likely began decades earlier as the industry shifted toward larger, more specialized operations. Today, only a handful of active dairy farms remain in Orange County.

So the sound feels fleeting somehow—cows calling to one another in the early dawn from down in Somerset along Route 231, near the Somerset Steam and Gas Engine Association. Occasionally we hear some of their antique equipment come to life as well.

Our next-nearest neighbor owns a small construction company. Early each morning we hear his employees arrive, bouncing up the gravel road we share, older pickup trucks growling and downshifting as they dip and then climb the rise past our house. Thirty minutes later they all leave together, a small parade of trucks and trailers heading off toward whatever job site awaits them that day.

My neighbor’s rooster has been going on all morning too. Yes, we hear you.

Then there is a brief pause.

For a little while the gravel road grows quiet before the garden café opens for lunch and traffic on the road picks back up again. The European Market and Café anchors a large nursery nearby. We’ve bought a few plants there over the years, but mostly we go for lunch on the patio, lingering over sandwiches and coffee while looking west toward the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Some mornings, before the day fully arrives, all of these sounds seem to overlap at once—the distant train horn, cows calling across the valley, gravel crunching under old trucks, a rooster insisting upon himself. None of it dramatic. None of it remarkable on its own. But together they form the soundtrack of this place, a kind of rural liturgy announcing that another day has begun

Let’s Make Ice Cream

The hand-crank home ice cream maker was invented by Nancy M. Johnson. She filed the patent for her “Artificial Freezer”—the world’s first hand-cranked ice cream machine—on July 29, 1843, and was officially granted the patent on September 9, 1843.

Nancy Johnson’s patent (“Artificial Freezer,” U.S. Patent No. 3,254) was granted on September 9, 1843. Her design introduced the familiar hand crank and internal dasher that churned the cream mixture while surrounded by ice and salt — the basic principle still used in many traditional ice cream makers today.

The oak bucket design became the standard because the wooden staves insulated the ice-and-salt mixture surrounding the metal canister. That basic arrangement — wooden bucket outside, metal cylinder inside, hand crank on top — remained essentially unchanged for generations. 

I asked Mom what she remembered about growing up—did her family ever make homemade ice cream? She grew up during the 1930s-40s in Southern California. 

“When I was a kid we had a 2 quart one I think…maybe only 1  1/2…not sure.  It was green, and rather large.  With 7 kids and Mother and Daddy, it took a lot, but we had cows so we had plenty of cream. Strawberries from the garden, or chocolate, usually. And we had an ice box that held 300 pounds of ice, if I remember correctly.  We only bought 100 at a time. It was a real chore, getting it just right at the end, then packing it to ‘ripen.’”

There were many years, looking back even before the 1990s, when our church would celebrate the Memorial Day weekend with a church-wide Strawberry Social. Church members would prepare flats of fresh-picked strawberries, ice cream makers would be brought out from home storage and dusted off, and the chocolate syrup bottles and shortcakes or bisquits would be layed out on tables in the Gym. In those days, the weather would always cooperate and we would all sit outdoors under the trees, picnic tables and folding chairs set up in the parking area, eating and talking and enjoying the promise of summer.

When I bought the electric one, one of my friends said that he had a similar one but that they seldom use it. Even with the ease of an electric ice cream maker, it’s definitely more convenient o buy a half gallon at the store and skip the effort. But you miss the excitement of watching the miracle happen!

Our friends at Liberty Mills Farm in Somerset have a rather unique way of making their ice cream, hooking up a vintage John Deere tractor to power up a couple of units; so much fun to watch!

So, I guess the question isn’t “are you a Ben and Jerry’s fan or a Häagen-Dazs fan?” no, I think the real question is “hand crank or electric”? After all, anyone can buy ice cream. But dedicating the time to making it? Now that’s commitment! 

After trying the egg custard base, vanilla recipe, we are ready to venture out. I’m guessing the next culinary adventure will be double chocolate, and for the addition of small marshmallows and walnuts to make rocky road will be heaven. But I’m not opposed to trying out a good strawberry ice cream recipe. 


While there are millions of variations, most online recipes fall into a few primary methods:

Vanilla Ice Cream

  • French / Custard Style: Uses a base of egg yolks, sugar, milk, heavy cream, and real vanilla bean or extract, gently heated and then churned.
  • Philadelphia Style: No egg yolks used. The base is just heavy cream, whole milk, sugar, and vanilla extract.
  • No-Churn Style: Whipped to fluffy peaks with heavy cream and sweetened condensed milk, then frozen without a machine. 

Chocolate Ice Cream

  • Standard / Custard: Starts with a vanilla custard base, with unsweetened cocoa powder or melted chopped chocolate whisked directly into the hot milk and cream.
  • Two/Three Ingredient: The no-churn method, blending sweetened condensed milk, heavy cream, and cocoa powder.
  • Double / Dark: Typically adds both cocoa powder and melted bittersweet chocolate for a very rich, fudgy flavor. 

Recipe suggestions from Asktheicecreamqueen.com

Top Five most consumed ice cream brands in the US are (statista.com)

  • Ben & Jerry’s
  • Blue Bunny
  • Breyers
  • Dairy Queen
  • Blue Bell Creameries