The righteous social justice publisher, Wising Up Press, from Decatur, Georgia, has released their latest anthology, this one simply called Goodness. Several dozen writers grapple with the concept, sharing poems, short stories, essays, and many affecting memoirs, all manifesting a sense, a feeling, of something we all recognize and yearn for but often cannot define....
Kids who can’t (or won’t) sit still and be quiet aren’t normal. They have a disorder. They have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It’s a serious disease that requires serious treatment. And if you don’t believe us, ask any pediatrician with a prescription pad. Since they’re desperately unwell, these ill children require medicine. Two of the best...
When news of the latest school shooting reached us, our first impulse, of course, was to offer “thoughts and prayers,” and to make sure via social media everyone understood that we were offering thoughts and prayers. Our second impulse — and this seems to happen every time there’s another mass murder involving an angry white...
By many measures, Donald Trump, his entire cabinet of self-dealing robber barons, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — the whole lot are extraordinarily successful people. (By many other measures, they’re wildly unsuccessful, but let’s not quibble.) We can all agree that when our children are grown, when they become...
Have you raised a child? Trained a puppy? Gone through puberty? Then you understand from experience the most intelligent and wise response to a petulant tantrum: give the child the attention he craves; validate his melodramatics; reinforce the idea that if the screaming-crying-barking-saber-rattling is persistent and annoying enough, the screamer will get what he wants. Everyone...
Eating nutritious, delicious, organic, un-processed whole foods can be crushingly expensive, especially if you procure your whole foods at Whole Foods. The Website Don’tWasteTheCrumbs is aimed at folks who want to live healthily and frugally. Created by a mother of two named Tiffany, DWTC offers clever recipes, monthly meal plans and “life hacks” for budget-minded shoppers determined...
Bedroom window open to the night breezes, and the morning call to prayers, when the children arrive wearing newly purchased clothes memorialized by high-volume mothers with fancy phones. On the first day of school hidden hopes soar to their improbable zenith, touching the underside of the fine line between delusion and ambition. Anything is...
At the Middle School two driveways down the street, Hollywood safari vans tote tipsy tourists and King of Pop-culture purists to contemplate like jurists the Michael Jackson Auditorium, whose much-lauded eponym was sleek and slim, and boyishly indiscreet. At this school, Russian parents take parking spots and umbrage, when their children start to bleat about the...
When the angry mother of two successors to her gene pool behaved with an absence of cool failed to set a good example for her precious offspring neglected to teach them the importance of thinking about others as though they were sisters or brothers not competitors at a shrinking trough she was at that moment...
Stubbornness wants to be a virtue, aspiring to be thought of as a mark of good character, nearly related (as if by marriage) to the better qualities Determination and Stick-to-itiveness. Stubbornness, however, is not Determination nor even Stick-to-itiveness. Stubbornness is an affront to Nature, an insult to Evolution, an honest admission of stupidity. I do...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Clarinetist Glenn Dickson, master of klezmer, has made a solo recording, “Wider Than the Sky,” that’s been on perpetual repeat at our home office. Using over-dubs and electronic digital effects, Dickson fills the aural soundscape with a rich melange of chordal textures supporting the melody. His celebrated virtuosity is subsumed here to long, elegiac musical...
