Last night I attended the book launch for Friends Council on Education’s new publication, Tuning In: Mindfulness in Teaching and Learning. I went partly as a university teacher, partly as a parent and former school committee member at a Friends school, and partly to support members of my meeting–Irene McHenry, the book’s editor as well as one of the contributors, and Christie Duncan-Tessmer, a contributing author­. Unlike most book launches, the evening was designed to be experiential. Most of the contributors who spoke directed us in the kinds of exercises teachers might use to introduce mindfulness to their students (or calm themselves down when necessary), such as closing one’s eyes and observing one’s thoughts or following one’s breath. For one exercise, each of us received a [...]

I once asked a Harry Potter enthusiast in my Quaker meeting what she liked so much about the series. “The magic,” she replied, as she cleaned up the stacks of dishes in the meeting kitchen. I understand. I’ve often wished I could wave a wand like Mrs. Weasley and have the pots scrub themselves. I’ve been thinking about magic’s appeal lately as my son has gotten into card tricks and making coins disappear. Being asked to pick a card at 6:30 on a Saturday morning does not always endear me to the magical arts, but then I see the glint in my son’s eyes when he pulls off a trick, and we can’t figure out how he did it. There’s something about doing the impossible [...]

Some of you got a kick out of my ice cream cake update on Facebook, so here’s the full confession (Last year's cake pictured):My son only wanted two things for his birthday: a DSi and an ice cream cake shaped like an M&M. We decided we didn’t want to buy the DSi ($169 electronic devise, though he is allowed to save up for it himself). He was a good sport. Still, that made the ice cream cake seem pretty important, so I was feeling like a mighty lousy mother when I left that till the last minute and then couldn’t find the kind of M&M shaped cake we got last year. I rushed home from the supermarket empty-handed to meet the school bus, brought both [...]

Today's paper has this piece which fits nicely with yesterday's post.

In honor of tax day, I want to be a contrarian. I want to speak in defense of taxes. No, I’m not thrilled that our money helped bail out AIG, but so far today I’ve seen three public complaints against taxes—one from people on the left and two from people on the right—using April 15 to raise questions about government spending they don’t like. Fair enough. There’s plenty I don’t like, too. But I think in the past decade or so conservatives have succeeded in making “taxes” a dirty word, as if the whole idea of people investing in the common good via our government was just a big scam.A few things recently have reminded me of the importance of investing in the common good. [...]

My son will be ten in a few days. As if to drive the point home, he has been listening to Metallica and wearing black nail polish. His sister meanwhile has been teaching me to play poker, which only goes to reinforce the fact that we are in a new phase of family life. I thought about that last weekend as I dug up the flagstones in our tiny back yard and found traces of sand from a long discarded sandbox. Our yard has had several transformations in the ten and a half years we have lived here. When we first moved in, it was very shady, over-run with ivy of all sorts, and contained a few small animal carcasses, confirming my suspicion that no [...]

The New York Times brought me to tears this morning, which doesn’t happen very often. I haven’t even been skimming it lately, to tell the truth. Aside from being busy, I haven’t felt the need to read one more article on AIG. But the murder of three police officers in two different incidents at the hands of an IRA faction sent me to the Times and this opinion piece by David Park, which describes how people in Northern Ireland reacted to the possibility of resumed violence:Across towns and cities people of all traditions assembled to protest in dignified but powerful silence. There was a constant reiteration that what had been achieved could not now be lost, that a peace process, for all its problems, could [...]