Considering Media in the Light of Relationship and Attention, by Richard Whittaker
Conversation with Mary Rothschild Late one afternoon I got a call from Jacob Needleman. He’d been talking with a friend visiting from New York. “She has some very interesting things to say about children and media. I was thinking you might want to talk with her.”      It wasn’t necessary to spell it out any further. Twenty minutes later, I met Mary Rothschild at my door. I’d already set my trusty recorder out, made some space on the dining room table, and after a few friendly preliminaries, we sat down to talk… Richard Whittaker:  Would you tell me a little bit about your interests? Mary Rothschild:  My main focus is the... posted on Jul 11 2016 (21,368 reads)

Why We Need To Cultivate Awe In The Workplace, by Homaira Kabir
a profound feeling that shifts us outside the box of the routine and familiar and opens us to something much larger than ourselves writes Homaira Kabir. We’ve all felt it – the goose bumps on our arms when standing below towering Eucalyptus trees or the expansive feeling in our chests when watching the sun slowly set in the horizon. Researchers define it as the emotion of awe. Like most positive emotions, it boosts physical health and inspires altruistic action. And yet, awe is more – because it recruits both motivations of the paradoxical human brain. It gives rise to a feeling of fear that is initiated in the more primitive parts of the brain. B... posted on Jul 23 2016 (13,719 reads)

How Smartphones Are Killing Conversation, by Jill Suttie
happens when we become too dependent on our mobile phones? According to MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle, author of the new book Reclaiming Conversation, we lose our ability to have deeper, more spontaneous conversations with others, changing the nature of our social interactions in alarming ways. Turkle has spent the last 20 years studying the impacts of technology on how we behave alone and in groups. Though initially excited by technology’s potential to transform society for the better, she has become increasingly worried about how new technologies, cell phones in particular, are eroding the social fabric of our communities. In her previous book, the bestselling Al... posted on Jul 31 2016 (31,084 reads)

Magic Flute: A Conversation with Marvin Sanders, by Richard Whittaker
met Marvin Sanders during a film festival at Berkeley Art Center. At the time, Sanders ran the Sunday evening music series there. On the first evening of film screening, Sanders was there to help at the front desk. Chatting with him, I discovered he plays the flute.      "Jazz?" I asked.       "You say that because I’m black, don’t you?" he replied.         I was taken aback, but realized I’d been offered an opening to a deeper level of conversation. I admitted he was right and before long, we were in the middle of an unexpectedly rich exchange. The question of the use of music in... posted on Aug 7 2016 (11,982 reads)

Caught Red Handed, by Brother David Steindl-Rast
are inviting a dozen writers such as yourself to meditate upon something they have stolen and upon the motives and consequences of this act, and to share their insights with our readers.” Well, I confess, I got caught.  And now I stand convicted.  At first, that invitation seemed harmless enough: Parabola is planning an issue on “theft:”  “We are inviting a dozen writers such as yourself to meditate upon something they have stolen and upon the motives and consequences of this act, and to share their insights with our readers.”  Fair enough.  I glanced at the deadline, glanced at my calendar, carefully avoided g... posted on Aug 8 2016 (12,135 reads)

We Save What We Love: An Interview with Gordon Hempton, by Leslee Goodman
Hempton is an acoustic ecologist. He has traveled the globe three times recording the vanishing sounds and silences of nature—from the songbird chorus that greets the dawn to the crash of waves on a rocky shore; from the call of a whale in the ocean depths to the drip of rain on a forest floor. After 30 years recording the natural world, he reports that “There are fewer than a dozen quiet places left in the United States. Even in our wilderness areas and national parks, the average noise-free interval has shrunk to less than five minutes during daylight hours.” Hempton makes his home in Joyce, Washington, so as to be near Olympic National Park, the place he calls ... posted on Aug 12 2016 (18,011 reads)

All Life is Sacred: A Conversation with John Malloy, by Richard Whittaker
Malloy’s father was in Army Intelligence and assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Shanghai when Malloy was an infant. When Chiang Kai-shek fled China three years later, in 1949, Malloy’s family was the last one out of Shanghai on a plane. From there they went to the Philippines during the Huk rebellion. And then there was Java and Borneo and jungle living. By the time Malloy was seventeen, he had moved forty-four times. In his young life as a rolling stone, Malloy learned to rely on himself. Whatever allies and friends he might have begun to cultivate in one place were always torn away by his constant displacement. In schools in New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Oakla... posted on Aug 16 2016 (16,198 reads)

10 Tips for Effective Communication, by Liz Kingsnorth
KINGSNORTH explores the ways we can improve our relationships with others at home, at work and with friends, by improving the way we communicate. 1. An intention for connection. Aim for a respectful and compassionate quality of connection, so that everyone can express themselves, be heard and understood. Trust that the connection is more important and more nourishing than being right, or even just having your say. Connection means to try to be open and stay in touch with what matters to the other person – and to yourself – in each present moment. 2. Listen more than you speak. We have two ears and one mouth – a reminder of what is important! Listening is... posted on Aug 20 2016 (177,421 reads)

Martin Levya: Don't Ever Give Up, by Leslee Goodman
years ago when Martin Leyva walked out of Chino State Prison, a guard told him: “We’ll leave the lights on for you…” insinuating that Leyva would be back. Instead, seven years later, Leyva walked across the stage to accept his bachelor’s degree in liberal arts/psychology from Antioch University in Santa Barbara. Leyva grew up on the Westside of Santa Barbara, a genteel enough place compared to Compton or East Los Angeles, but potentially lethal to low-income Latinos all the same. Both Westside and Eastside Latinos make up the underclass in this wealthy, beachside city that—along with the rest of California—once belonged to Mexico and, ... posted on Sep 3 2016 (13,858 reads)

A Special Kind of Grace: The Remarkable Story of the Devadosses, by DailyGood.org
starts to speak, softly and in beautiful Tamil. Now and again he joins in, with a sly sentence here, a funny line there. They are sharing the story of their lives with a roomful of strangers. Before they started no one in the audience knew who they were. By the close of the evening- no one would be able to forget. Manohar is a scientist-writer-artist, an innovator with a restless intelligence and vivid imagination. He grew up in the Madurai of the 1940s, a schoolboy at large, roaming the city under the great gopurams (temple towers) of Goddess Meenakshi. Couple on Wedding Day Mahema, his wife, is an engaging person, lively and articulate. She was ... posted on Sep 10 2016 (21,070 reads)

Seeking Better Ways of Thinking & Being, by Maria Jain
August 2016 DailyGood featured the powerful story of Buddhas On Death Row -- a multi-dimensional collaboration between two pen friends, one of them a woman in Finland, the other a man on Death Row in the United States. Here is a follow-up piece on their journey as it continues to unfold... Note: Saturday, September 24th 2016 there will be a global conference call with Maria Jain, the Finnish half of this remarkable duo. You can learn more about the call, and RSVP here. Art, inner cultivation, and friendship. Buddhas on Death Row illuminates a profound journey unfolding in the darkest of places, sending rays of light to the outside. The small street-leve... posted on Sep 21 2016 (11,292 reads)

Seven Ways to Help High Schoolers Find Purpose, by Patrick Cook-Deegan
the past decade, I have had the chance to ask thousands of teenagers what they think about school. I’ve found that the vast majority of them generally feel one of two ways: disengaged or incredibly pressured. One thing nearly all teens agree on is that most of what high school teaches them is irrelevant to their lives outside of school or their future careers. One study found that the most common feelings among high school students are fatigue and boredom. Another study concluded that 65 percent of the jobs that today’s high school graduates will have in their lifetime do not even exist yet. But we are still teaching them in the same way that we t... posted on Feb 1 2016 (11,681 reads)

Gifts for Gifted Children, by Betsy Cornwell
Eisenstaedt, Children at a Puppet Theatre, Paris, 1963 Each summer I teach creative writing classes at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. It’s a wonderful job for many reasons: my colleagues are uniformly, eccentrically brilliant, I’ve taught at campuses all over the country, from Los Angeles to the U.S. Virgin Islands, and since the program is a sleepaway camp, the mood is always more summer vacation than school-day drudgery. But the real reason I love this job, what makes me cross an ocean and leave my spouse behind for six weeks every year, is my students: my breathtakingly intelligent students, radiating curiosity and teenage awkwardness and de... posted on Sep 28 2016 (34,194 reads)

How to Talk to Strangers, by Kio Stark
Rothman Kio Stark has always talked to strangers — she believes these fleeting moments give us new ways to fall in love with the world. She shares five ways to spark a meaningful interaction with someone you’ve never met before. What does it take to say a simple hello to a stranger you pass on the street? How might that interaction continue? What are the places in which you are more likely to interact with people you don’t know? How do you get out of a conversation? These sound like easy questions. They are not. Each of the following expeditions provides a structure and a contrivance to help you explore the world of people you don’t know. Ea... posted on Oct 15 2016 (17,628 reads)

Life Lessons from a Mountain, by Andrew Hinton
meet in the parking lot of a grocery store in Ashland, Oregon on Sunday morning. It is the 17th of July, a date I’ve celebrated as long as I can remember. The day I was born. I have driven 5 hours south to meet a group of strangers in anticipation of a different kind of birth. I am here, exactly 42 years after entering the world, to finally become a man. Nervous hellos. Final checks. Cars and trucks packed with camping equipment, rations, and gallon bottles of water. We snake up into the hills in convoy. Shops and signs and other vehicles gradually fall away until the tarmac becomes a dusty track. Huge pines tower above us, almost blocking out the clear blue sky.... posted on Oct 19 2016 (10,753 reads)

Why We Shut People Out and What To Do Instead, by Robert Waldinger
the thrill of building walls as a kid? Forts made from snow, or a giant cardboard box. Burying ourselves in blankets and pillows. Walling ourselves off from our enemies — real or imagined — to fight heroic battles until it was time for dinner. Even as adults, we swear undying loyalty to our local sports teams and hate their rivals. While the athletes themselves flit from one team to another in search of bigger contracts, we’re sure our home team is special. We’re passionate, sometimes to the point of violence, even though we know it’s only a game. We make artificial divisions everywhere: Democrats and Republicans, black and white, millennials... posted on Oct 20 2016 (24,046 reads)

The Beauty of What We Will Never Know, by Pico Iyer
hot October morning, I got off the all-night train in Mandalay, the old royal capital of Burma, now Myanmar. And out on the street, I ran into a group of rough men standing beside their bicycle rickshaws.And one of them came up and offered to show me around. The price he quoted was outrageous. It was less than I would pay for a bar of chocolate at home. So I clambered into his trishaw, and he began pedaling us slowly between palaces and pagodas. And as he did, he told me how he had come to the city from his village. He'd earned a degree in mathematics.His dream was to be a teacher. But of course, life is hard under... posted on Nov 7 2016 (20,679 reads)

Spotlight on Gratitude, by Shari Swanson
October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday of November as a day to give thanks, a new national holiday, Thanksgiving. He urged his fellow citizens then embroiled in civil war to not lose sight of the gifts surrounding them, among them "fruitful fields and healthy skies." Lincoln understood that, even in the worst of times, gratitude is essential. As we celebrate Thanksgiving this year, 153 years after Lincoln's pronouncement, perhaps it is just as important to set aside time for deep reflection and gratitude as it was during the Civil War. To help you find a deep sense of gratitude in this holiday season, we look back thr... posted on Nov 24 2016 (14,966 reads)

Educating Our Children's Hearts: A Mother's Reflections on Home-Schooling Her Daughter, by Meghna Banker
you for inviting me here. I will probably be sharing less from the perspective of a teacher, but more from the experience of a mother. Very early on, even before my child was born, I had the privilege to be located in a place where Gandhi-ji has spent so much of his life. Lot of the experiments in education and lifestyle, values had begun and thrived over there. I think the seeds were starting to be sown right in those moments. When I was to become a mother I had such beautiful welcome messages for the baby and how this baby is going to be shaped into this world. What are the values that the baby is going to learn and what kind of a person that he or she is going to grow up into... posted on Jan 6 2017 (18,905 reads)

A World Where We Trust Strangers, by ted.com
talk about trust. We all know trust is fundamental, but when it comes to trusting people, something profound is happening. Please raise your hand if you have ever been a host or a guest on Airbnb. Wow. That's a lot of you. Who owns Bitcoin? Still a lot of you. OK. And please raise your hand if you've ever used Tinder to help you find a mate. (Laughter) This one's really hard to count because you're kind of going like this. (Laughter) These are all examples of how technology is creating new mechanisms that are enabling us to trust unknown people, companies and ideas. And yet at the same time,&... posted on Jan 22 2017 (18,142 reads)