I teach in a suburban high school. Our town decided to go with the Hybrid Model, but did not commit to the decision until mid-August, which left little time to make things happen: schedule 1800 students, reconfigure the building and solidify course re-planning. Kids arrived physically on 16 September. Since then this is what is…
Read MoreA nation exhausted by eight months of bungled, intentionally ineffective attempts to fight a pandemic, devastated by nearly a quarter of a million preventable deaths, and ripped apart by a president and a plutocracy pledged only to their own vision and greed—this is the United States tonight. The country that brought the ideal of democracy…
Read MoreThe pandemic and this year’s relentless stream of scarier-than-any-true-crime news is doing strange things to many of us. I had two dogs when it started. Now I have three. Desperate times call for desperate measures is what I’m telling people. This new dog was irresistible—as a puppy, she’s almost embarrassingly cute, Hallmarkian in a way…
Read MoreAfter spending two decades facilitating dialogues for some of the world’s most intractable conflicts (Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, Colombia, Sri Lanka, US/Cuba, Libya to name a few), one day I had the startling realization that I might have uncovered a missing link in my understanding of conflict. Why was it that parties could not sign on…
Read MoreDeadlines don’t care about pandemics, but it’s very challenging to craft a novel when the dumpster fire that is 2020 is more consuming than any work of fiction could ever be. This year is full of tangled storylines, confusing subplots, and conflicts that never get resolved. As @mia_sade’s viral post pointed out, “So many plot…
Read MoreLook around. The signs are everywhere—lives lost and transformed in the year of the pandemic. One doesn’t need to be a psychologist to see the widespread effects of COVID-19 on our collective psyche. Losses are everywhere; grief is thick. As mental health professionals, however, we have a unique perspective on how the pandemic impacts people.…
Read MoreJay Samit, innovator, artist, author, and internationally-acclaimed public speaker, usually spends a lot of time on airplanes and in hotel rooms, but the pandemic has restricted him to his home for more than 200 days, and counting. He has used these months to deliberate on the cultural meanings and implications of our current global crisis…
Read MoreI learned at an early age how to be alone. I had no choice; I was an only child. I grew up on a farm in southeastern Illinois, so I spent countless hours entertaining myself. On occasion, children from a nearby farm would come to visit, but for the most part I was left to…
Read MoreWe must use the lessons of history to save us. We must use them in practical terms and in artistic terms. Although it seems now that much of the leadership of our country is taking a hard line about “opening” schools and businesses, against scientific evidence of the dangers of too precipitate a return to…
Read MoreFor those of us who like to plan ahead, the corona-world has been a brute. Since last February, when this super-flu mushroomed into a pandemic, the future has been hazy. Sooner or later, it will come clear, but what will our lives look like then? They may be like they were before, or not. We…
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