THIRTEEN MILES
I turn left off Highway #64, 75 miles north of Santa Fe onto Forest Road 151. 13 miles ahead, at the end of a single-lane, dirt road, lay my destination, a Benedictine monastery where I will spend the next three days, reading, writing, reflecting, meditating, walking and enjoying the surrounding desert landscape bordered by magnificent
0
SO, WHAT DO YOU DO?
One of the first questions most often asked when meeting someone new is an attempt to identify the person by his or her job. One of my favorite stories is about Reuel Howe, a professor of theology and author, who was met with this question by his seat mate on an airplane. “So, what do
0
THEN AND NOW
As an 82-year-old, I have a perspective on living conditions then and now because how I lived then is different from how I live now. I appreciate the differences. Then there were no digital devices on which to rely for communication, storage or photos, etc. Now there is a plethora of computers, chips and bytes,
0
OPTIMUM LEARNING: ENVIRONMENTS & OPPORTUNITIES
Choosing a school in some quarters is controversial and I understand why different people respond differently when the topic of school choice comes up. School choice has gotten a bad rap and there are some good reasons why. One of the reasons is that charter schools, new to the scene starting in 1992, have had
0
ONE PHONE CALL
I was trying to get information for a national organization’s conference coming up in February, 2020. Frustrated with the lack of up to date information on their web site, I thought about what I wanted to say and why and then picked up my phone to call. The response was that they were too busy
0
END OF LIFE MATTERS
Susanne Duijjvestein inspired this post with this quote: “Being dead is no excuse.” Susanne is a young, progressive undertaker/funeral director in Amsterdam. She ditched a successful career in banking to pursue her interest in our Western culture practices surrounding death, particularly how we deal with the end of life as we know it. Another of
0
CHOICES AND DECISIONS – WHY AND HOW
Every day we have this privilege to decide how we will spend or invest it, how we will give ourselves over to it through time, energy, effort, thought, feelings and perhaps most visible of all, behavior. For starters, do you consider this day a privilege or a gift or is it more of a job
0
STEPPING INTO THE UNKNOWN
Many people refer to stepping into the unknown as a leap of faith. It’s true that to jump you need to believe you will either be caught or have a soft landing. Letting go of the known for the unknown requires courage, confidence and for many people a belief that there is indeed a greater
0
LOOKING BACK LOOKING AHEAD
Positioned in the present, here is a brief public, personal and professional review and forecast. The past, at least up to 2010, was reviewed summarily in the little book, “Seven Decades: A Learning Memoir” (River House Press, 2013). There was much left out, details and stories that didn’t seem to fit into the scheme of
0