I really wanted to write something positive today. Then I saw this.
The first time I had seen that picture was last Sunday. It was on the front page of the New York Times. My seven-year old daughter had just crawled up on my lap and asked me who that was. I told her that this picture was of another seven-year old girl who lived in Yemen and because of the war going on in that country could not get enough to eat.…
Recently my 10 year-old daughter participated in an event called, Battle of the Books. The premise seemed noble. Spark interest in reading by creating a program where students would be given five books to read over the summer. They would meet as a group to discuss the book and then in the fall, they would gather with students from other schools for a competition based on recalling the book’s content. Sort…
It’s hard to argue with the convenience shopping carts have added to our shopping experience. But upon further inspection this seemingly innocuous invention may be both a cause and symptom of some of society’s gravest ills.
In 1937, Sylvan Goldman the owner of Humpty Dumpty grocery stores in Oklahoma created the first shopping cart by attaching wheels and two shopping baskets to a chair. His goal wasn’t shopper convenience but a desire for people to be able to carry more groceries around and out of his stores.…
As I write this, my two-year old Cairn terrier mix, Scout, is sitting on my lap. Occasionally, he rests his head on my right forearm, making the act of typing a more delicate matter.
The benefits of dog ownership are well documented. They improve both our physical and mental health, reduce stress, increase our sociability, confidence and sense of responsibility and generally just make us happier. But…
Uncertain times raise the stakes for raising a child. We project our own fears upon their future and our anxiety seeps into our actions and ultimately theirs.
This manifests itself in ways big and small, many of which are chronicled in the new book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. (Ironically, the title itself may unwittingly add to this anxiety.) …
My six year old daughter stepped off the bus with a very long face. “Daddy, you’re going to be so mad at me. I did something awful at school today.”
Embarrassed, upset and ashamed, it took twenty minutes for her to work through her tears and tell me that she got in trouble for talking in gym class. A crime that was punishable by sitting alone on the stage at the front of the gym. A…
John Lennon once referred to Help! as one of only two true songs he ever wrote with the Beatles (the other being Strawberry Fields). In contrast, so many of his other songs felt “phony” to him.
Both the lyrics and the backstory behind this Beatles’ hit contain many truths about the nature of help, and how hard it is to both give it and ask for it.…
In general, people believe that their own actions are more important than the environments in which they live. It’s a belief that’s so powerful its name is Fundamental Attribution Bias.
At the same time, the decision of where to live, work, go to school or raise our kids is among the most important and serious ones we will make in our lives.
If you’re curious to know how much where you live may impact your life, check out these two tools:
The first from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation uses CDC data to estimate life expectancy down to the census track level.…
Several weeks ago, I was leaving Grand Central Terminal. As I was going up a very long staircase, a young Asian woman was descending in the opposite direction on the escalator. Talking on her cell phone, I noticed a single tear slowly trickling down her cheek.
My initial inclination was to turn around and walk down the 40 steps or so to ask her if she was ok – her pain was that palpable. Thinking…
China, Columbia, England, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Peru, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States — twelve students representing eleven countries. This is the makeup of a masters level class I’m teaching this fall at Parson’s School of Design.
As I sat with them discussing what we’d cover over the course of the semester, I couldn’t help but think what they would teach each other and me – just by the very nature of their diverse life experiences.…
Yes, you are bananas!
I mean this not in a figurative sense, like you’re crazy – but literally.
Anne Wojcicki is a co-founder of the genetics company 23andMe. In her recent “The Big Ideas” essay in the New York Times, she shared a pretty remarkable fact about how much of our genetic foundation, we share with bananas.
Instinctively, I would have imagined 5 or 10% would have been a good guess. …
After running around attending to the needs of various kids, I had just poured a fresh cup of coffee, grabbed my book and sat down to relax.
As if intentionally timing her request to my first sip, my daughter summoned,“Daddy, get me a glass of milk.” This is the exchange that followed:
“You realize this vacation is for Mommy and Daddy too, you know. …
| When you are born on the bottom rung and now stand near the top, you ask,“How did I end up here?” When you grow up in trailer parks and now live in a beautiful home, you wonder, “How did I end up here?” When no one in your family went to college and you now teach at one, “How did I end up here?” The typical answer to these questions is “Hard work.” |
Ted Williams was arguably the greatest hitter to ever play major league baseball. Yet his parents never watched him play a single game.
In her memoir, Educated. Tara Westover tells an incredible tale of being raised by survivalist parents and never went to school or to see a doctor as a child. She went on to receive her PhD at Cambridge and is now a best selling author.…
Nine years ago novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave what remains one of the most viewed TED talks of all time. Her topic was the danger of a single story. The single story refers to a dominant narrative we tell about a group of people or a place. Using examples from her own life and in popular culture, the talk it is both comic and tragic, simple and profound.…
Years ago, I felt honored to deliver the eulogy at my Grandmother’s funeral. I talked about how the average person’s heart beats 30,000 times a day. This meant that during her 87 years, it had beat right around a billion times.
I recounted how her heart must have beat differently at different milestones in her life. Racing to her first picture show as a little girl, going gaga over Bing Crosby, straining while working odd jobs during the great depression, or nearly coming to a stop when she learned her first husband was killed in the war.…
This week, I read the obituary for Gudrun Burwtiz. Her father was Heinrich Himmler – the Nazi architect of the Holocaust. The focus of the obituary was her undying loyalty and defense of her father that continued throughout her lifetime.
Last week, I attended a lecture by Caroline Fraser, whose book Prairie Fires examines the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder – author of the Little House on the Prairie series. …
Leading up to the July 4th holiday, several friends told me they were traveling into America’s heartland for the week. There they would undoubtedly encounter people whose political beliefs were the polar opposite of their own. My own family vacation to Lake Erie meant that I would share both their predicament and trepidation.
Yet there is something uniquely apolitical about how Americans celebrate July 4th. …
This July 4th most Americans will have a vacation day – one “free” from work. But how free or independent does your work normally make you feel?
Technology was intended to be the great liberator – transforming our lives and ushering in the 15-hour workweek. I’m not there yet are you?
The number of people working in blue-collar jobs has decreased since 1970 from 31% to less that 14% today. …
In the film First Reformed, a reverend and environmentalist are experiencing existential crises – each waging a battle between hope and despair. In one exchange, the environmentalist shares his conflicting feelings about being an expectant father yet having to answer for the catastrophic effects climate change will have on the earth his unborn daughter will inherit as an adult. He asks, “What will I say when she looks at me and asks – ‘You let this happen?’”…
I didn’t even see her. I had walked in and out of our local supermarket with my eight-year-old daughter to run a quick errand for a next day’s class picnic. Once we were both buckled in the car, she said, “Daddy, didn’t you see the woman holding the sign saying – Homeless. Pregnant.”?
I said I hadn’t and now was in a rush to get home as it was well past her bedtime. More…
| It is one of the most influential social science research studies ever conducted. For the past thirty years, it has served as a foundation for most work on the subjects of willpower and grit. The Marshmallow Test, as it is referred, was a simple experiment that offered kids a marshmallow to eat. However, if they could wait 15 minutes – while sitting alone in a room with the marshmallow in front of them – they would earn a second marshmallow. |
A few weeks ago, someone suggested that I watch the video, This Is America, from Childish Gambino (aka Donald Glover)
A better recommendations would have been to watch it twice.
My first viewing left me mesmerized, but also wondering, “What the hell was that about?”
My inclination was to google that very question. The results were revealing. Countless articles broke down the multiple layers of the video, pointing out important things I had clearly missed in my initial viewing.…
A recent study observed groups of people in public settings. They recorded that every ninety seconds someone does something for someone else. Hold a door. Pass the salt. Fulfill a random request.
Interestingly, only one in every six instances included someone saying thank you.
Some would say this is a classic example of some people who are selfish or ungrateful. While others are by nature are more selfless and altruistic.…
This week buried beneath the din of politics and conflict was a brief article in the New York Times featuring an 81-year-old Australian man who was donating blood for the last time in his life.
He started giving blood as a young man – a way of paying back those who had donated the blood he needed to survive surgery as a 14-year-old boy.
He would go on to give blood every few weeks for over 60 years.…
