Most of you know by now that I have a book coming out in two weeks on the Serenity Prayer. Some of you also know that I've had no child care since July, a situation that has been testing my own serenity of late. Rather than writing a long blog post about the spiritual lessons [...]

For those of you in the Philadelphia area, Martha Kemper will be performing her moving one-woman piece "Me, Miss Krause, and Joan" at Abington Friends School on September 26. (Heads up for members of our meeting--we will be having a session with Vanessa Julye that night, so it will be a tough choice.) Proceeds will go [...]

I went to see that hit chick flick Julie & Julia for the second time last night because my daughter was dying to see it and because I can never get enough of Meryl Streep. For those who don't know, it's the story of Julia Child in Paris when she first found that cooking was her [...]

I'm sitting on the beach of a beautiful Vermont lake, as my kids and hubby sleep. I don't hear the loons this morning, just the crashing of gentle waves. And here I am checking my email and blogging, since Internet comes in here intermittently and probably won't where we're going next. This vacation has shown [...]

The fracas over health care reform is making me think of George Lakoff’s book The Political Mind, which I reviewed a year ago. Lakoff discusses what he calls “privateering”—the privatization of previously public functions like education, prisons, and even security in Iraq—pointing out that government is accountable to the public in ways that corporations are not. [...]

It’s that point in the summer. Camp is over, and my kids are sitting around arguing about whether Paul McCartney’s bare feet on the Abby Road cover prove that Paul is dead and that guy whose been collecting his royalties (and paying his alimony) all these years is just a big faker. By the way, did [...]

I finally gave away my mother’s wedding dress a few weeks ago. When she died three and a half years ago, I didn’t linger over her possessions or procrastinate their disposal. She paid rent by the month, so there was an incentive to get going on the task, which fit my disposition anyway. After a year of caring for my mother, keeping vigil in her apartment during her waning hours, I was prepared to let go.

So, this is my inaugural blog post over here in the new digs. It’s been fun to see over four years of blog posts move with me. Skimming down the list I’ve realized that there are common themes that seem to repeat: children and consumerism; work/family balance (especially in the summer); simple living struggles. I found one that seems particularly timely, even though I wrote Pool Politics four years before a private pool in suburban Philadelphia made international news...

Before last week’s FGC Gathering, one of the scheduled plenary speakers, Shane Claiborne, challenged the planners to offset the carbon that would be released into the atmosphere as a result of his travel to the event. As many of you know, some people purchase carbon offsets to support initiatives aimed at reducing global warming and to [...]

Bonnie Tinker is still teaching that Love Makes a Family, the name of the organization she founded. The mortician who cared for her body in Virginia was moved—both by her condition after being crushed by a trash truck and by the love in the room as he met with her family and a few friends [...]