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It Takes One Person to Act
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In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell asserted that studies show someone is less likely to be helped if in trouble in a crowd. In other words, the more people present in an emergency the less likely anyone will help. Possibly because people are all expecting that someone else will act. However, I…
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Miraculous Monarchs
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Nature has many marvels. One of the most miraculous is the Monarch butterfly. These creatures, fragile flying origami dipped in orange and black water colors, undertake a massive 2500 mile migration every year, often to the exact Oyamel fir tree in Central Mexico’s Oyamel Forest that they overwintered in the previous year. Monarch butterflies…
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Status Update: So Many People, So Much Despair ……… What to do about it.
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Social media opens all these windows into people’s lives. One sees much more than one would like to, a lot of the time. Young people’s anger and despondency and generally hostility broadcast in disappointed detail for all the world to see. Why? How does it help? Are you looking for pity or sympathy? Validation? …
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Owner Surrenders – A Shelter Animal Article
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16 year old owner surrender. Who does that ? It’s tempting to leave it at that question with all the disdain and judgement it conjures up. In our ‘holier than thou’ minds we see some callous Scrooge like character gather this bundle of tired bones and drop it on the shelter doorstep, no backward…
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Teach Your Children Well
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Tree frogs start their summer evening songs in the scented boxwoods and lilacs and assorted bee attracting foliage that shade our leisure evening view over the children running and playing on the green fields of their country club bubble. We’re talking about them. As usual. Do moms talk about anything else? “It goes so…
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You Suck at Basketball – Kids Say Stuff and How to Counter it.
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Sitting by the pool, a friend and I were watching our boys somersaulting off the diving board when she mentioned – “A friend of Ryan (not his real name) has been telling him: ‘You suck at basketball’ and this has hurt his feelings. I’m not really sure what to do about it.” Innocuous…
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Just One Thing
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I sat down at a table next to a woman in Starbucks, head buried in her computer, tapping away furiously. On a second glance I recognized her as an acquaintance. She looked up and we exchanged pleasantries. Not that she felt much like casual small talk. “I’ve just quit my job that I hate…
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In Your Grief – Thoughts on a Sudden Death
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Let the flowers die unwatered in their vases. Flowers? Yes, they are there. Someone needed to do something. Accept them graciously. Or not. God knows this is bleak, unchartered territory for you ….. You with this gaping hole, groping around in the dark. Sleepwalking. If sleep would only come and the fog dim for…
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This Adult Coloring Thing
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Three of the top ten books on Amazon’s best selling list are adult coloring books. I am not sure whether to be appalled at the dumbing down of the American intellect or amused at our attempts to escape the stress our children cause us by immersing ourselves in one of their activities. Every day…
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You Can’t Parent Happy
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Welcome to the age of parenting in a world that is supercharged with agendas, celebrates success regardless of merit and fast tracks early front runners, deserving or not. My friends and I lament the state we find ourselves in. We are caught in a riptide of super-competitive parenting, a race to create mini-moguls and…
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A Big, Bold Blessing Bag Plan
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Synchronicity (what a beautiful word) is the extraordinary concept of the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that can’t be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer. CNN recently covered it in an article titled, The Other Side : Where do coincidences come from. An…
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A Response : The Thing All Women Do That You Don’t Know About
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Read my Response to the Huffington Post article – “The Thing All Women Do That You Don’t Know About”. Way to grab attention with a headline! It’s a good one and I click, wondering: what do I, and all women do, that men don’t know about? The author writes wonderfully well. She is clear,…
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Christmas Presents
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What shall I buy for Christmas ? What I remember of Christmas mornings as a child is the tree, or more to the point, all the presents under the tree. My family was not wealthy, but we had enough, and my mother (perhaps owing to her own difficult and deprived childhood) made sure we…
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A Walk in the Woods
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Dogs sit in cages in “research” torture chambers around the world. Injected with diseased cells, force-fed powerful drugs, chemicals, hormones, alcohol ……….. in the name of “science” and “finding a cure”. We turn a blind eye to the inhumanity, buy shares in Big Pharma companies and swallow down an Advil when a drop in…
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Keep it Simple : Walk
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Keep it simple. Walk. You are not embarking on this to lose weight. This is just for your greater good. Start small. Around the block, even less. Just go for a walk. Better yet – take the dog – and walk it every day. While you walk it is tempting to run lists through…