Fung-Shwa January 6, 2009

I will admit that I am not a big fan of  mystical/New Age/Woo-woo stuff. I have, at various times in my life, suspended my disbelief long enough to check out aromatherapy, I Ching, herbal medicine, Tarot cards, flower remedies and Deepak Chopra’s ideas about eating according to ones body type.  I did like yoga, and [...]

Morals and Basketball December 5, 2007

The children of attentive parents receive moral instruction early and often. Whether the context is religious or secular, conservative or liberal, a firm grounding in right and wrong is the first step in growing humans who give to charity and return lost wallets. We started Sam with simple lessons: it is wrong to take other [...]

On Compassion November 15, 2007

 ”Compassion is the basis of morality.”
- Arthur Schopenhauer
About a week ago, our local paper ran a story about a 33-year-old woman who had just given birth to premature triplets, and was jobless, in debt, and living in a shelter. She was trained as a medical transcriptionist, and had worked, but  lost her job and her [...]

On Stress November 12, 2007

           A while back, I drove into a woman backing out of her driveway. I apologized profusely, went home, cried, and later paid for the $937.00 worth of repairs. I confess that I was totally distracted at the moment of impact; I had not slept well, I had a toothache, and I [...]

On The Telephone October 18, 2007

I am not a fan of the “connected” lifestyle. In the same way that I feel perfectly justified in lying on the living room floor until the girl selling magazines stops ringing the doorbell and gets off my porch, I feel that I am permitted to choose whether or not to answer the house phone [...]

On Staying Home October 16, 2007

If I am doing the right thing, my son will look back on his childhood and remember that I was a room parent and a soccer coach, and not that our curtains needed to be replaced for 5 years and we only ate out once a week. Maybe by the time he has a family [...]

True Colors October 8, 2007

Since I was twelve or thirteen, I have been taking quizzes to find out who I really am. When I started, these questionnaires often appeared across from ads for “Love’s Fresh Lemon,” and promised to tell me whether I was “Date Bait or Total Turnoff” based on answers about [...]