We just got back from voting in the North Carolina primary. Voting is an activity that brings back lots of memories…
About my paternal grandfather who claimed that he never missed an election, not even a local school board race, in his long adult life. As we face the difficult questions about how to [...]
When I was growing up, I was attracted to books about children facing very difficult times and finding a way to thrive. There was a fair amount of change and insecurity in my growing up — my father died when I was two, my mother moved her three preschool children to New York City [...]
I’ve been rather absent from my blog recently dealing with the death of someone close to me. It’s quite remarkable how much energy it takes to mourn. Everything seems to move in slow motion.
This was a person I’d known my entire life. So I have a whole gamut of feelings, some [...]
If somebody asked you whether you’d like to read a book about a collection of friends reshaping their lives after one dived into shallow water and permanently injured himself, would you jump at the chance? How about a book about a family and friend reshaping their lives after the daughter attempts suicide?
These are not [...]
Thinking about disciplines that help people see and express the positive made me think of Richard Gabriel’s book, Writers’ workshops & the work of making things: Patterns, poetry, and … . The book is out-of-print, so I’m delighted to find a pdf of the final typeset version online, along with information by the [...]
I like the idea of virtue being the expert mean between deficit and excess (thanks, Aristotle). For example, courage is the expert mean between cowardice and rashness. Expert indicates that finding the right place in the middle requires judgment. A particular act may be courageous in some situations and foolishly rash in [...]
Quite by accident, I watched Nova last week. The show was about epigenetics, the biological mechanisms that control gene expression. The rest of this post is based on my TV show’s worth of education, so please just take it as just my impression. Look in Wikipedia or other sources for more accurate [...]
The fig season has ended, at least down low in the area of the tree that we can reach. The tanagers and jays and robins and vireos and thrushes are still finding ripe figs up high, so the tree is still a huge bird feeder right outside my office window.
It makes me think [...]
My aunt invited me to her house this week to see my first cousin once removed who was vacationing here from Florida with her husband and young son. (They picked a fine time — it was 104 degrees here and 82 degrees down in Florida!) After my 2 hour drive, I thought [...]
I’ve been involved in a discussion on Positive Psychology News Daily in response to the challenge “How can we use Positive Psychology to improve the lives of the veterans living with never-before-seen levels of debilitation?” (Jordan Silberman, Let’s put our heads together and subsequent comments.)
It’s an interesting question to ponder. It makes [...]
