I admit I was one of those who gasped when I learned that Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey will end all of its performances this May after a 146-year run. Now let me say this. I am an animal lover, so please don’t blast me for feeling sentimental. As crazy as it sounds, I…
Across much of the nation this morning, 6 AM rolled around at 5 AM. Ordinarily, I’m a glass half-full kind of a gal. So I’ll start by saying I’m thrilled at the prospect of having additional daylight hours in the evenings. Yes, I am. This morning, however, I would have given away my brand-new set…
At this very moment, I feel inspired and humbled, privileged and thankful, sorrowful and hopeful. And it’s all because of the words of Eunice Akoth, the sixth grader pictured here. This 12-year-old captivated the audience at the recent Women in the World Summit with her words, a response to her life growing up in Kibera,…
I am so looking forward to an extra hour of sleep this Sunday morning. If you live in Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Northern Marianas, or the Virgin Islands, you won’t get this extra hour. But here’s the deal—you didn’t lose an hour of sleep in March either! So, really, what’s up with…
I love to swing. The swing set was always my favorite piece of playground equipment as a child—and as an adult! Just last week, I was visiting my hometown of Midland, Michigan, and walked to my old elementary school where I hopped on a swing. I find swinging to be therapeutic—it’s probably the soothing back-and-forth…
When I first heard about the money drops in San Francisco and Los Angeles, my ears perked right up. Someone is stuffing bills in envelopes and then giving the envelopes away? Wow, inconceivable! Is it a brilliant idea for a person to share his or her wealth in this way? I can’t decide. I keep…
In The LEGO Movie, they sing that “everything is awesome” because, in the little brick world in which the movie begins, everything about life operates in such a way that even mistakes seem wonderful in the rare instances when they occur. And by rare, of course, they mean almost never. The real world in which…
Sometimes I worry that if I go to the beach, some muscle-bound guy carrying the latest awesome smartphone and a sleek new tablet PC is going to kick sand in my face. In a voice that sounds like it was carved from granite by union laborers in mud-caked overalls, he would say, “What’s the matter?…
Here in the south, a teeny bit of snow can throw a wrench into things. It’s not that we’re wimps or that our blood is thinner than Minnesotans—well, honestly, I can’t verify either of those things. What comes to my mind are words like inexperienced and unprepared. And really, when Mother Nature decides to shake…
I have one. You have one. My colleagues have them. Your colleagues have them. Your students have them too. Sometimes they are strong. Sometimes they’re not. Some folks get right in your face with theirs. Some folks sit on the fence with theirs. What’s great about this thing is there isn’t a right one and…