Samples of recent work.
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Perspectives
Flip Side of Gratitude The highest response to nay-sayers is to flourish joyfully in our choices. Letting them understand how and why gives those nay-sayers a chance to grow as well.
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Light & Shadow We can past the need to separate our lives into good and bad, putting us right into the seamless whole of a fully lived life.
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Listening to Bees Our beehives stand within the boundaries of woodland, blackberry bushes and pasture. Each time I approach this clearing I sense I am entering a separate realm.
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Life as a Quest I am burdened by positive motivations. I am convinced that I am on this planet to spread peace, deepen truth and create joy. Unfortunately details get in the way.
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Public Love I couldn’t resist clicking on a link titled “Learning to Love You More.” Turns out it’s a site where participants share art in response to numbered assignments. These assignments are compellingly odd…
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Memoir
Imaginary Motherhood The real me falls terribly short. I kvetch. I get tears in my eyes easily, even from poignant long distance ads. I plot giant world saving accomplishments while forgetting to water the plants. I fuss and grumble and speaking of short, I’m also shorter than everyone in the house. That can’t be right. In my imagination I am tall.
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How The Secret Garden Saved Me A child’s inner life can be a mystery, to her and to the adults in her life. That’s why books are so important.
morgetting to water the plants. I fuss and grumble and speaking of sho
Talking During Recess I went up to Mrs. Lauver’s desk as slowly as possible. Anxiety made my senses acute. I could smell the awful geraniums she kept on the windowsill, their brown sickly leaves rotting away. I could feel my classmates’ eager curiosity—cartoon watchers waiting for the silly wabbit to be shot.
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Moving to the Hinterland The car stereo shorted out repeatedly during our move to the country, defaulting from quiet public radio to a station transmitting evangelical hellfire at top volume. I guess that was the first sign.
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Flying Together II saw that all the mothers were crying, connected in some horrible way I couldn’t understand. I thought of Bible stories. I remembered picture books of strange myths. I wondered if the men would go deeper till they were gone, leaving us in some migration that hadn’t been explained to children.
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Piper, Pipe That Song Again Bagpipes weren’t something one heard often in Ohio the 60’s, at least I couldn’t tune them in on my plastic AM radio.
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Family Architecture A family is a building. The ground under it shifts, settles, shifts again. Sometimes there are blocked off rooms, steps leading nowhere, basements flooded with ruined memories. Its size and strength can’t be seen from the exterior. Inside, it can be reinforced with the simplest tools—a warm meal, a lingering touch, shared laughter.
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No Pain, No Gain? Knee surgery. No big deal. Simple carpentry techniques applied to a human leg.
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Learning
Fun Theory I’m not aware of any official Fun Theory in the field of learning. But fun shimmers under the surface of motivation and focus like a very big fish.
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A Child’s Place is in the Kitchen It’s easier to cook when our kids aren’t in the way. Besides, bubbling pots and sharp knives are hardly child friendly. But there are many reasons why our children belong in the kitchen. One is the way their learning advances as they stir, chop and converse with us. What may seem like average culinary tasks are actually rich educational projects for them.
Climb, Swing & Snuggle: Reading Readiness Involves the Whole Body Readiness isn’t created by workbooks or computer programs. It’s the result of brain maturation as well as rich experiences found in bodily sensation and movement.
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Get Ready to Read by Playing In ways deeper and more vital than we can imagine, play helps children develop the skills necessary for reading. We don’t have to engineer that fun but we can play along.
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Making History Relevant Twenty-five engaging ways to bring history into our everyday lives.
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The Boy With No Toys Play is vital to development. It has everything to do with autonomy, exploration, imagination, and fun. It has very little to do with purchased playthings. In fact, structured programs and commercial toys tend to co-opt the most beneficial types of play.
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Innate Gifts Few young people have clear indications of their gifts. Most have multiple abilities. A single true calling is rarely anyone’s lot in life as it is for a legendary artist or inventor. Instead, a mix of ready potential waits, offering a life of balance among many options. Education emphasizing the child’s particular strengths allows that child to flourish, no matter if those gifts fall within mainstream academic subjects or broader personal capacities. Traits such as a highly developed sense of justice, the knack for getting others to cooperate, a way with animals, a love of organization—-these are of inestimable value, far more important skills than good grades on a spelling test. (Also available in digital flip version pages 20-26 )
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Free Range Learners “Don’t help, Mom,” Claire says as I go to pick up the three-day-old chick. So I watch instead. It’s peeping helplessly…
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No Parrots Here I like safety precautions like helmets, seat belts and peace accords. My 10-year-old son adores skateboards, stunt biking and tree climbing. He plans to be a pilot. He talks to me about airfoils and ailerons. I’d only fly if I were being awarded the Nobel Prize. Even then I’d probably ask if it could be delivered.
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Re-engaging Youth In Community Life The benefits of bringing kids back to the commons, with five ways to involve young people in the workings of their communities.
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Armed Only with a Clipboard Long ago, we declared freedom from workbooks.
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Sprouting Plant Advocates “She wanted me to kill it Mom!” he said, wide-eyed at the injustice…
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Interest-Based Groups Just about any interest can spark friendship and learning in a group of children.
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Five Ways Frugal Living Benefits Kids The surprisingly powerful and positive effects of living more simply. *
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Helping Young People Establish Mentoring Connections Mentoring relationships are vitally important as young people mature. Why as well as how to find mentors in fields of interest.
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Real Benefits of Real Work For Kids The benefits of hands-on, purposeful tasks to develop responsibility, skills, and direct learning. *
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Community Building & Peace
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Making Peace in Your Life & Peace in the World When we deal with signs of conflict right away, firmly and with compassion, we don’t permit problems to get worse. That’s just one principle of nonviolence. The more we know about nonviolence, the wider the range of options we have to choose from in each situation.
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Bringing Kids Back To The Commons Five ways to involve young people in the workings of the community around them.
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We Don’t Need No Age Segregation The tale of a teen seeking his own adult role models, a radical concept in today’s safety-obsessed culture.
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Farming
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A Cow’s Life When we were new to farming, everything we read warned that a calf left with its mother to nurse freely was likely to develop scours, a potentially fatal condition. We couldn’t imagine that nature had it wrong…
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The Queen’s Gift It’s human nature to look for signs. Easy success appears to be a portent of even better things to come. Enough bad luck and we tend to think perhaps we’re meant to change direction. Give up. Run away.
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Adventures with Isabelle Within 24 hours of Isabelle’s arrival, we understood how the nursery-rhyme cow might have jumped over the moon.
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Sold to the Highest Bidder “There’s a lot of talk about maintaining family farms, but there’s not much done,” Owen says. “Over the years, the total amount of dollars kept local by the auction is in the millions. That means hanging on to farms for a lot of people.”
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Case of the Disappearing Honeybees More than 4,000 natural pollinators, including butterflies and bumblebees, actually live in North America, but habitat loss and modern farming practices have left much of the workload to the busy bee herself, Apis mellifera.*
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What Children Learn on the Farm Life lessons learned working together.
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Humor
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Brilliant Trousers I was called “Smarty Pants” a few too many times in my childhood. A little girl who can’t keep sarcastic asides to herself isn’t silenced by a nonsense term, especially when the invective is hurled by underpaid math teachers who are encased in terribly unflattering polyester slacks. The ultimate not-smart pants.
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Vegetation Attack Disrupts Peace Meeting The dark leaves seemed to grow as they headed toward my lips. Since the food was partway in my mouth it was too late to throw the whole action in reverse. So I shoved the rest of it in, afraid that I looked like one of those mulching machines grinding a tree branch.
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Shunned by Polite Society Our smiles and greetings were completely ignored, as if we were low ranking primates walking slack-shouldered around the perimeter of alpha animals. Fine with me.
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Dread Experience. He looked the way our dog does when he’s been outside after the rain and his belly is a dangling chandelier of mud.
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Interrogation Tips. I was pretty sure the Bad Haircut Fairy hadn’t visited in the night.
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Health
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Eating Like Monsters: 12 Ways To Get Kids To Eat Well Promote relaxed and healthy eating without power plays, bribes, and frustration.
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Junk Food Changes Your Behavior Never mind eating it. Just glimpsing fast food logos changes the way we think and act.
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Frugal Fare: Eat Well Without Breaking The Bank Sometimes a difficult economy causes us to rely more on ingenuity, thrift and community-building interdependence. Dozens of tips for saving on healthful foods.
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More About Mad Cow Disease These findings will have significant public policy as well as research implications.
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Does Technology Improve Memory? There are many other ways to improve your memory without spending time and money on mental gymnastics.
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Lose Weight Using Honey Losing weight has never been sweeter.
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Holistic Living
Beliefs Create the Marketplace A quiet revolution based on information and idealism is changing the marketplace.
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Improve School Lunches with Locally Grown Food Connecting school lunch programs directly to local farms is good for everyone.
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Word of the Year Describes Eco-Friendly Eaters Each time a choice is made to eat healthy, locally grown food we put sustainability on the menu.
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Truth About Honeybees=Clues to Disappearance Honeybees are disappearing. Searching for likely causes leads us to find out about adulterated honey, poison in beehives and other shocking realities.
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Give Gifts of Service Consider giving presents that give twice.
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Spirituality & Religion
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Urrealism Reynolds is waging creativity in the streets, the classroom and even in academic journals. He is the originator of an art movement called Urrealism. It is backed by a complex philosophy connected in ever-widening circles with such disciplines as depth psychology, cultural studies and astronomy.
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Mixed Messages Some come as a last resort, their faces dulled by pain or sorrow. Many are loyal repeat visitors. And a few arrive with giddy anticipation, giggling and hushing each other like fans waiting for a celebrity to appear. Who are they expecting? The Virgin Mary.
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Biking to Salvation Graskemper, with the worn good looks and bad boy laugh of a rebel, opens the meeting with a gentle prayer. He asks that the group act as “light and salt” in their ministry. His hands, scarred from years of working as a glazer, open the Bible with confidence.
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Worshipping (series of 35 articles) The organ postlude, “Siyahamba,” based on a South African freedom song, resounds through the building. No one stirs. As the last note fades, congregation members can’t help themselves. They clap.
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