World Peace?

February 15, 2012

I may certainly be wrong on this but I have an inkling that future humans may look back at the Superbowl half-time show of 2012 and mark it as the great turning point—the moment when the Titanic of inflamed and de-famed Western civilization collectively, tragic-comically, hit an unremarked iceberg of rising introversion and authenticity. In […]

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Goats Head Soup

February 8, 2012

You’re following three lovely lasses up six flights to a tiny East Village walk-up, three lovely asses leading the way over white tiled stairs to who knows exactly where.  You’d say it was around 1987, but in post-modern Los Angeles you’re starting to lose track.  Soul’s train’s now a ghost train unseen by helicopters hovering […]

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Dropping Eggs with the Riff-Raff

February 1, 2012

Women are like eggs—mysteriously attractive.  Men are like sperm—manically looking for the egg, but with a one in a billion chance of amounting to anything. When I was in seventh grade I had a cool science teacher.  He lifted weights and wore quiana shirts with groovy patterns and might have been listening to The Doors […]

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Mosses in the Dessert

January 25, 2012

“F- – – – -” I gazed at this arcane and unfamiliar symbol, written thoughtfully on the back of my first essay in AP English, in a similar state of surreal dejection as I would later view my early decision rejection from Penn. Dr. Graham was an imposing teacher.  She told us that she was […]

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The Case for More Social Support for Pregnant and New Moms (and Dads)

January 18, 2012

In the first year of life children develop either basic trust or mistrust, secure attachment or more problematic attachment.  The implication of this ripples through every child’s life, and through the society in which he or she lives. Research points to several things that impair this process.  The ACE (adverse childhood effects) study established a […]

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Cooking up compassion for a better world with The Kitchen Witch

January 11, 2012

I’ve been thinking about how exactly, we might help our world be a better place, and one thing I keep coming back to would be helping babies be secure, particularly by helping new moms to feel loved, safe, supported and secure—perhaps bringing casseroles (rather than books) to new moms. When I started to think about […]

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Back to Basics: Basic Trust (Honey Badger on the Couch)

January 4, 2012

Welcome to 2012—as we slog through our potential post-holidays blues, here’s to hoping we can make it a Happy New Year for all of us, one with a little less work and worry and a little more fun and hanging out. Given whatever clouds of Mayan Calendar mystical mumbo jumbo this year may come in […]

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The Rise of Women and the Feminine Principle

December 28, 2011

Hat’s off to moms, to Andy most of all. What am I, as a man, to say? Perhaps only that I love the world, I love my wife, I love my family; that I love all our collective children and also our world and the trees and animals and insects.  That I love the wind […]

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Hello, Again

December 21, 2011

Being the winter’s solstice, it seems a propitious day to offer up my “good-enough” parenting book, Privilege of Parenting, and to unveil my new blog home with much thanks to Sarah Fite (and for the book cover design as well). One of my favorite psychologists, D.W. Winnicott, coined the term “good-enough mother,” intuitively arguing against […]

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Moving

December 14, 2011

“No!” My mom shouted at the cat, which promptly ran into the house through the open door. It was a fraught morning, the moving guys ready to roll, the house empty after 50 years of life there. It was not our cat; grey and white; lovely, really.  We had never had a cat. My brother […]

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