Category: Lifestyle

Environment, Health, Lifestyle

Business as Usual: Lockdown Unenforced

As experts have warned and a rogue president, prioritizing reelection, has ignored, recharging the economy when Covid-19 continues to ravage has exacted a surge in the pandemic’s victims, with a new wave anticipated this fall. But Americans are its lead cause, a spoiled populace ignoring the laws governing exit from the crisis, wearing a mask in public, practicing social distancing, limiting unnecessary activity. Fifty states, … Continue reading Business as Usual: Lockdown Unenforced

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Lifestyle

Why We Name Our Children as We do.

Have you been following today’s trend in baby names? Whatever happened to names like George, Susan, Henry, Robert, Marvin, Kenneth, and Molly? Names typically follow fashion and fashion, of course, changes just like clothing, hairstyles, and music favorites. We’ve this passion for the new, the trendy. For something that sets us apart. That says, “I am!” We want this for our kids as well. Among … Continue reading Why We Name Our Children as We do.

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Lifestyle, Politics

Perhaps Someday We Will Learn How to Live

Every morning I awaken to a country bristling with hate, intolerance, and violence.  Trump bullied his way to the presidency, exploiting public anxieties, e. g., steel belt resentment of jobs sent abroad, latent fears of a changing demographic replacing White homogeneity, evangelical rancor against abortion, and Islamaphobia, which sees every Muslim as a potential terrorist. Trump pledged he’d limit Muslim immigration and reduce refugee numbers.   … Continue reading Perhaps Someday We Will Learn How to Live

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Lifestyle, Psychology, Reflections

Is Mindfulness Warmed-over Buddhism?

Mindfulness meditation seems everywhere these days. Even the corporate world embraces it, e. g., Google, Facebook, EBay and Twitter. And in medical circles, it’s all the rage, particularly in psychiatry where it increasingly rivals pharmaceutical intervention as a primary therapy in treating depression and general anxiety disorders. But is there any real science behind mindfulness, or is it simply Buddhism warmed over for Western consumers? … Continue reading Is Mindfulness Warmed-over Buddhism?

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Books, Lifestyle, Psychology, Reflections, Technology

Live Longer Now

It’s funny how your mind takes vast jumps, transcending time and space, hurling you into the past or thrusting you into the future. It’s happening to me now. I remember sitting in my sixth grade class in Florida, fascinated with my teacher’s story of Ponce de Leon’s search for the fountain of youth, motivating him to travel to a new place, which he called Florida. … Continue reading Live Longer Now

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Lifestyle

My first attempts at meditation

Recently I completed a 28-day online course in Zen meditation from a Buddhist source, not that I’m thinking of becoming a Buddhist, but because I’m drawn to its spirituality, virtually absent in current secular approaches such as the wildly popular Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBDT) approaches. I think meditation doesn’t have to be a long, drawn out affair to reap its … Continue reading My first attempts at meditation

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Health, Lifestyle, Reflections

Why I Relish Going to the Gym

For many of us, throwing off the blankets and crawling out of bed on cold winter mornings to go to the gym seems pretty dumb. I felt that way too until my pre-diabetic diagnosis several years ago which meant that if I didn’t do something about it, I might well succumb to full-blown diabetes with its many lethal complications that include heart disease, kidney failure, … Continue reading Why I Relish Going to the Gym

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Lifestyle, Politics, Reflections

Cultivating Stillness

I am full of early morning, tucked beneath my comforter, stretching my legs, my brain filling its daily bucket of anxieties sufficient for another day’s wrestlings. These several days I’ve laid siege to my citadel of habit, rising in winter’s early morning coldness to meditate in dark stillness. It’s not easy. Plagued by inertia, I prefer my cocoon to elbowing out of bed and sitting … Continue reading Cultivating Stillness

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Environment, Lifestyle, Reflections

Don’t Be a Phoul: When Neighbors Cut Down Trees

My daughter has been complaining in her recent emails about a family on her street in Bellevue, WA. They’ve cut down two lovely Douglas fir trees, the kind that startle Easterners like me not used to arboreal skyscrapers, many of them magisterial in their silent dignity bequeathed by longevity. Bellevue, a fast growing suburb adjacent to Seattle, still enjoys a fecundity most urban areas in … Continue reading Don’t Be a Phoul: When Neighbors Cut Down Trees

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