Whatever Happened to Conner MacBride?

Peer Pressure, Friendship, Manliness

Thoughts of peer pressure bring a parent’s worst fears to mind: sex; drugs; uncategorized acts of stupidity; the fact that our kids cannot be who they are when they are the most themselves. When they get home at night, there is no escape from the peacocking of peers on Instagram…

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Sisyphus and the Path to Meaning

Sisyphus-Meaning in Life

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus retells the ancient Greek tale of the king Sisyphus who was condemned to forever push a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again.  Despite an eternity of “futile labor”, in the end Camus concludes “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” …

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I Choose Astonishment (Part 1)

As a poet and reader, I love words. As a child “dyslexicly” trying to make sense of inky scribblings and smudges on paper, I fell in love with the majesty of language. I was amazed at the way words can create whole new worlds and change the contours of how…

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The Rain Stick

No one is sure of the exact origin of the Rain Stick. Ancient versions of the percussion instrument have been found in Africa, pre-Mayan Peru and with the Aztecs in Mexico. They have been discovered among the artifacts of the Diaguita people of northern Chile and Argentina, as well as…

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An Argument for Kindness (Part II)

(portions of this article first appeared on positive psychology news daily:  http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/sean-doyle/2013032525681) In my first post on this topic, I concluded that in the face of hardship, injustice or deep trauma, the only answer was love and holding even tighter to kindness.  This seems naive, trite.  However whether in the…

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What Good Are Words?

What good are words?  Can there ever be a poetry that saves nations or people? Abraham Joshua Heschel pointed out that “the Holocaust did not begin with the building of crematoria, with tanks and guns. It began with uttering evil words, with defamation, with language and propaganda. Words create worlds.”

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An Argument for Kindness (Part I)

Sometimes things in life happen that shatter your world.  I am not talking about those expected traumas, as raw and difficult as they may be: The death of a loved one or the way time starts our decay while we are still conscious and breathing.   Even if we have banished…

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