I’ve been given two blog awards recently, which is very flattering. The first came from Natural Mom a few weeks ago. I enjoy her blog Speaking Life and enjoyed meeting her at the Parenting interest group at FGC Gathering this summer. Thank you, Stephanie!The Brilliante award comes from Jennifer, who writes Tree of Life Musings, which deals with homeschooling, as well as other family issues. Thank you, Jennifer!Both awards come with the stipulation that you should nominate some other blogs to spread the love, so here are a few you may or may not have heard of that I often find thought provoking:My American Melting Pot, by a member of my writer’s group, Lori Tharps, who blogs about multicultural parenting issues; Can You Believe? by [...]

Amid all the emails I've been getting about the election, two different people this week sent me this quiz by Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. His intention is to shake up our complacency and make us think about what justice really means on a global scale. See how many questions you can answer correctly:1. How many deaths are there worldwide each year due to acts of terrorism? Answer: The US State Department reported there were more than 22,000 deaths from terrorism last year. Over half of those killed or injured were Muslims. Source: Voice of America, May 2, 2008. "Terrorism Deaths Rose in 2007." 2. How many deaths are there worldwide each day due to poverty [...]

Maybe it’s all the talk of sexism in the news (Newsweek’s Anna Quinlen points out that the Republicans have used the word more in the past week than in the past fifty years.), but sexism seems more visible this week. Or may it’s because I’m reading The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Sue Monk Kidd’s account of how she—a Southern Baptist and member of the select “Gracious Ladies” club—got fed up with all the sexism in her church (and society and marriage) and discovered feminine spirituality.After a torturously slow journey filled with fear and angst about leaving what is familiar, Kidd ends up with an alter filled with nature imagery and the bare-breasted Minoan Goddess who holds snakes, a renewed and more equal marriage, and [...]

No, this is not a post on the Democratic National Convention. It’s a review of a very interesting book I read over vacation, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. Author George Lakoff, a Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics, argues that Democrats have long made a strategic mistake by basing their campaigns on the outdated Enlightenment idea that people are rational and that given the facts, they will vote in their self-interest. Instead, Lakoff explains, our thinking is largely unconscious and shaped by emotions, metaphors, and even language. Radical conservatives, he asserts, have used the insights of contemporary cognitive science to shape, not only the way Americans vote, but the way they think about the issues. Progressives, he [...]

Still no time to write a review of that book, but here are a few photos of amazingly active whales in Massachusetts and the stunning scenery in Maine.Trying to savor that summer feel back in Philadelphia.

A few interesting things have happened since I last posted. First, my computer died. Hard drive kaput. The good news is that it happened when we were preparing for a week of vacation, during which I wasn't going to use it anyway. I had just enough time to get it to my computer repair guy before leaving town, which is so much better than having it die nine days from now, when the kids go back to school, and I go back to writing.The other good news is that we've had a wonderful family vacation. Highlights include visiting my half-sister, whom I didn't meet until my thirties, and having my kids meet the cousin they didn't know they had; taking a whale watch cruise with [...]

It’s August, the month where school seems to be rushing toward us in slow motion. This week we dug out the list of books my daughter was supposed to read over the summer and discovered that she has three “projects” due in less than three weeks, reflecting on three of the books on the list. Unfortunately, the two we had acquired (but not read) have both gone missing, including one from the library. In fact, we’ve spent quite a bit of time looking under the couch for materials from the library lately. It’s one of the hazards of having a summer where we did something different every single week. No routine, no organization. The good news is that I’m not as stressed as I used [...]

Yesterday I stumbled on the book The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids by Madeline Levine. This discovery came on the heels of Judith Warner's New York Times piece on $10,000summer camps where the counselors make the kids' beds. My daughter says she'd like to go to such a camp, and my son says I should pay him $5 for a five minute chore so he can buy a computer game. All of this just means it is time for another post about how hard it is to practice simplicity in a materialistic culture.I haven't read all of Levine's book yet, but the gist seems to be that in her affluent community, and [...]

After speculating about the “what if’s” of war prevention last week, I’m now focused on a different kind of what if—the averted tragedy. While sitting at the dining room table with my daughter yesterday afternoon, I literally watched a huge tree limb peel off of the trunk like a band-aid. It stretched from our neighbor’s yard, across our garden fence diagonally, also filling the ally that runs behind the houses and the yard of the third house in the row. It just missed the car of the fourth neighbor. More importantly, there were no kids playing in the ally, as is often the case in summer. There were no cars driving down the ally, no one doing yard work. In short, we were all very [...]