The Courage to Be Mortal
Five years ago today, my friend Laurie Foley died. For the last five months of her life, we talked to each other a lot. I wasn’t feeling well myself and mostly tried to sleep on a couch in my office so I wouldn’t disturb John, and she was in the …
Know the point of your life
“Sheridan’s gifts as a teacher were as rare as the purity of his passion. Wherein did these gifts lie? In his brilliance? Yes. In his mastery of his subject? Of course. In his capacity for lucid, concrete, and vivid explanation? Again, yes. But there is another factor, one whose roots …
poetry wednesday : it might have been otherwise
I flew home from San Diego on Sunday after two amazing engagements there–a speech to the California Association for the Education of Young Children and a workshop that Jane LaFazio and I created, combining writing and art-making about grief. Full, intense, wonderfully tiring days. Then up early in pouring rain …
Come, let’s ride brightly painted inner tubes, you and I
If you have watched TV commercials for the new teeniny microscopic MacBook Air, perhaps you will recognize this song by Yael Naim. Come, let’s ride brightly painted inner tubes, play cymbals in a field of sunflowers, sing with a gorgeous Israeli-French accent, and realize that there is a whole big …
I is for inside looking
Man need only divert his attention from searching for the solution to external questions and pose the one, true inner question of how he should lead his life, and all the external questions will be resolved in the best possible way. – Leo Tolstoy In 2008, I will end each …
N is for now
“Nothing is worth more than this day.” –Goethe In 2008, I am going to be here now. When you unpeel it, 37days is all about now, but I find I don’t live in now very often. I live in then, or when, or one day. I want, instead, to live …
Retreat to move forward
Sometimes we have to retreat to move forward. The next 37days retreat is scheduled for September 28-30, 2007, and registration has just opened for it. Limited to 14 people, I hope you can be one of them. I’ll be joined by my business partner, David Robinson, in facilitating the weekend …
Wear a candle on your head
“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.” -WH Auden, 1907 A few years ago one December, as I prepared to leave for a business trip, my husband John (aka Kurt Vonnegut’s …
See the waterfall
“At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At 40, we don’t care what they think of us. At 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking about us at all.” –Jock Falkson I once designed a three-day conference on diversity for a professional organization whose members are …
Do or do not do
"Do or do not do. There is no try." – Master Yoda Something floated to the surface of my consciousness recently, vying for frontal lobe space, squeezing into precious real estate needed for phone numbers, due dates for 8th grade science projects on water pollution, and the first verses of …
