Simple Pleasures

January 21, 2010

I’m sitting in my kitchen listening to Jon Hassell, drinking dandelion and thyme-from-my -garden tea.  It’s quiet, a late morning for me; the kids are at school and my wife is cozy asleep as is the dog.  It’s been raining hard and looks like more to fall and I love it. I’m writing a blog […]

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Helping in the face of disaster

January 20, 2010

Obviously the earthquake in Haiti is strongly on our collective world’s mind and as I come up against the limits of what I can personally do (i.e. sending money and some good thoughts) I found the stories and images from Haiti triggering memories of the past for me personally. Back in 1994, when I was […]

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aggression within overprotection

January 19, 2010

I have an image of myself as a three-year-old: it’s summer and we’re at “Sleepy Hollow,” a vaguely depressing summer vacation place of cottages and “the dome”—where more socially adjusted kids happily participated in activities; I’m ready for my morning swim, wearing a life-preserver, water-wings and non-slip shoes of some dimly remembered rubber; I’m being […]

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Get on the Bus that takes Me to You

January 18, 2010

Happy Martin Luther King Day, a good time to think about freedom—not just from oppression, but from fear and desire.  And for me it’s a good day to think about busses. Living in LA, I’m not on busses very much (although we have them, and some rather nice ones at that), but MLK Day always […]

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A blog of outsiders

January 17, 2010

Whether it’s Coppola’s The Outsiders or Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders (Bande à part) I think we can all relate, in our secret selves, to the oddball, the misfit and the outlier. Now if we can relate, we must intuit that our kids, no matter how well they do or do not seem to fit […]

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Ideals and realities of loving the planet in the context of sleep deprivation

January 16, 2010

I ran into a friend at the market, shopping for baby’s first solid food and it was lovely to see him talking about planning to feed all organic food from his garden—and it was also humanizing and understandable to hear lofty ideals giving way, in the context of sheer exhaustion, to the pragmatics of store-bought […]

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Seeing evil, doing evil

January 15, 2010

A recent article in Monitor on Psychology by Tori DeAngelis, “Porn use and child abuse,” presents evidence about links between those involved in internet porn and those who perpetrate abuse on children directly. Now this may seem obvious to those of us who would intuit the relationship between acting out and watching (after all, why […]

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I say yes, you say no: oppositionality in teens

January 14, 2010

As mentioned a few days back, I wanted to follow up on the issue of oppositionality in teens, particularly with regard to the inquiry that asked for feedback on how a mom can stay connected with her child, honor the need to individuate, but keep him safe as well (when grades are dropping, weed has […]

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When all the young girls loved Alice… and I did too

January 13, 2010

When I was in second grade the teacher asked everyone what his or her favorite book was.  She then went around the class and every child stated a book title.  I was around the middle of the pack, and simply stated my truth:  Alice in Wonderland. By three quarters of the way around the room […]

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The Right Touch

January 12, 2010

When it comes to parenting the answer to virtually every question is: it depends.  Everything depends on so many variables, such as our child’s age, developmental level, emotional level, physical health, levels of sensitivity, our own challenges and how they interface with our children’s needs, etc. etc. that no one can really know better than […]

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