In Which the River Makes Off with Three Stationery Characters
The river beckons the lumberjacking beaver and spawning chinook salmon to capture its currents, to countervail its flow. Befurred and befinned they dance to its gurgling song but do not yield to the flow, living for their time as dissenters, laboring at cross-purposes against currents as frantically stationary characters in their water world - "there is music that will dissolve your anchors, your ... posted on Jun 12 2019, 2,127 reads

Free Trip to Egypt
Seeking to build a bridge of mutual understanding and friendship, a Canadian-Egyptian entrepreneur living in Switzerland decides to reach out to the very people who fear him. He travels across the United States to find Americans concerned about an Islamic threat and makes them an intriguing offer: a Free Trip to Egypt.... posted on Jun 11 2019, 2,462 reads

Helping Hospitals Discover the Person Within the Patient
"Bob Hall was recovering from yet another surgery when the volunteer first walked into his hospital room. It was March 2014, and unfortunately Hall had been in and out of the hospital quite a bit. It had been a rocky recovery since his lung transplant, three months earlier, at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison, WI. But the volunteer wasn't there to check on his lungs o... posted on Jun 10 2019, 4,655 reads

The Seasons of the Soul
In The Season of the Soul: The Poetic Guidance and Spiritual Wisdom of Hermann Hesse, Ludwig Max Fischer, Ph.D., makes Hesse's vivid, evocative poems on love, imagination, nature, the divine and the passage of time available in English. Through his commentaries, Fischer helps readers understand Hesse's poetry and wisdom within the context of his life. Although Hesse, author of the novels Steppenwo... posted on Jun 09 2019, 8,711 reads

Make a Living, Make a Life
I met poet and independent bookstore owner John Evans over 20 years ago. Here, he paraphrases Louis Patlers response to a womans question about the place of independent bookstores in the culture. "This may sound strange to you, but I think a bookstore's main function is to provide an aesthetic presence in its neighborhood." Evans writes, "I understand that completely." In this short essay he unpa... posted on Jun 08 2019, 2,921 reads

How Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
Today young people are trying to balance the question of "What do I want to do when I grow up?" with the question of "Who and how do I want to be in the world?" Physician and writer Abraham Verghese and education researcher Denise Pope argue that's because the way we educate for success doesn't support the creation of full, well-rounded humans. And they see the next generation challenging our cult... posted on Jun 07 2019, 6,185 reads

Navigating the Transition into Caregiving
"Being a caregiver is not something most people think or dream about, let alone prepare for, even though it's a role many of us will inhabit, since there are approximately 43 million informal caregivers in the United States and 6.5 million caregivers in the United Kingdom. When a loved one becomes a caregiver everything changes, including responsibilities, beliefs, hopes, expectations and relation... posted on Jun 06 2019, 10,273 reads

Weeds: A Conversation with Doug Burgess
Photography is a way of probing the world, says Burgess. Take weeds, for instance. "Two or three years ago, one weed was the same as another for me. That's changed now. I can go anyplace and feel that I have friends and knowledge. I mean I know the weeds by name now and know a little about them. Maybe it's one of the major tools I've found to come to some sort of ease with the world." There's much... posted on Jun 05 2019, 2,215 reads

Meredith's Joy Jars
How do you help a teen get over a broken heart? Pam found a way and Meredith found a calling. A simple solution which has reached thousands around the world. Learn more through this beautiful short video.... posted on Jun 04 2019, 4,016 reads

Luc Reynaud: Welcome to My House
Luc Reynaud is a musician from Washington, focused on combining music and service to others. When Hurricane Katrina hit the southeast coast, Luc felt compelled to go down and help, using some construction skills (and a guitar) he had picked up during a soul-searching trip. Luc began playing his guitar around the shelter he was volunteering at, eventually writing a song with one of the children, ca... posted on Jun 03 2019, 5,103 reads