By the mid-afternoon of June 7th, Manhattan was shrouded in a thick, toxic, orange haze of wildfire-induced particulate matter.
Imagine this: The five-year-old squats in damp dirt under a shrub willow. Her safe spot in the leafy stems was part of a hedgerow backed up against a neighbor’s wooden fence.
To our south, people likely are hunkering down to spend the next several months indoors, if they can, with air conditioning blasting. Meanwhile, I look forward to spending my time outdoors.
Both Oksana, who is in her twenties, and I, in my late sixties, grew up in Hashomer Hatzair, a worldwide Jewish socialist youth movement which began in Poland one hundred and ten years ago.
I am about to tell you a difficult story. Stay with me, please. There’s a reason I’m sharing it.
In the few months that I’ve been a volunteer at the Lawrence Memorial Library, I’ve realized that many of my activities require using tape: Scotch tape, binding tape, that wide tape I call “gorilla tape” because it’s relentless (once in place, it cannot b … (read more)
I think about trauma a lot, because I earn my living working with people’s bodies, and the body is where unresolved trauma lives.
Grandpa was a small, serious man who stood straight and took pride in having become a modern American.
When acting on an impulse, I usually do not know why I am doing it. My guidance tells me what I need to do but not how or why.
I traveled to Washington, D.C., last year. When I arrived with my little vacation suitcase and emerged from the Metro, I encountered a sight which took my breath away.
Early spring almost always ushers me into a spirit of possibility.
The first time I saw a Van Gogh in person I was 15.
“Can anybody live in Vermont?” asked the two young boys who had been visiting us for a couple of summers in the 1980s.
We are in the midst of a war on education. Not against all learning, but certainly against any lessons about racial injustice.
Our neighbors’ challenges can be invisible. Like the folks who show up at Have-a-Heart Food Shelf each month.
