Study for the essay questions
“It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.” – Alec Bourne, A Doctor’s Creed Way back when I was learning my ABCs, names of state capitals, and the preamble to the U.S. Constitution at happy Hillcrest Elementary School way up there on …
Follow the chili peppers
“how like the bumble bee I am in my work or my life i see where i want to go and in my panic i forget to look for the open window” -Marybeth Fidler This week, I had an extraordinary experience with chili peppers, mints, a smoking cook, and big …
Examine your car for dents
“When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.” –Tuli Kupferberg One interesting thing about life is that at a certain point, it all starts repeating. Or perhaps it’s been repeating all along and it just takes a certain distance (age?) to begin seeing the patterns that emerge, again and again. And …
Stand on your own rock
“The map is not the territory.” – Alfred Korzbyski This week we took our older daughter to summer camp where she will spend the next five and a half weeks rollicking in the woods, riding horses, swimming, hiking and climbing, making friendship bracelets, kayaking, and not writing home. She …
Dance in your car
“We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.” – Japanese Proverb While driving downtown last Wednesday, I was pondering the epistemological problems of social cognition and constructivism, the origins of values in transcendent functions, and Kantian categorical imperatives. Okay. Well. Maybe it was Johnny Depp …
Don’t stop to wave, you’ll drown
“Why are women immobile? Because so many feel like they’re waiting for someone to say, “You’re good, you’re pretty, I give you permission.” –Eve Ensler This week, I watched a videotape of Eve Ensler speaking at the 2004 Omega Institute “Women in Power” conference. Ensler is a playwright most famous …
Embrace your clearness committee
“Whenever I climb, I am followed by a dog named Ego.” –Friedrich Nietzche I came across a story this week that intrigued me. I could see myself in it, if truth be told, and perhaps if you squint, you can see some tiny part of yourself in it as well. …
Be outraged by your own racism
“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.” –Elie Wiesel When my oldest daughter was in the first grade, she stopped me cold with just 16 words. “Mom,” she said as we stopped at a traffic light near Dupont …
