In Monday’s blog I wrote that living simply for me meant being clear about about my values, and then living in a manner consistent with them. This eschews the important question of what those values are – what it is that matters most to me. I…
My Mennonite Missionary Father in front of his Home in Paraguay It’s the ‘in’ thing: Simplify. Unclutter. Less (smaller) is better. As I’ve written about elsewhere, my good Mennonite missionary father was anti-materialist and anti-consumerist to an extreme. He firmly believed that God only…
This week’s topic has been about what parents and their grown children owe each other. My conclusion was that the language of debt and obligation is inappropriate. Rather, we should be talking about love and appreciation. I feel like the biggest gifts my…
I am pleased to bring you the thinking of today’s guest, Harriet Brown. She is a writer, magazine editor and professor of magazine journalism at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Harriet writes,…
My Dad Is the Pale Guy in the Middle This week’s blogs have been about “circles of inclusion.” I grew up on a leprosy compound in Paraguay, South America. My husband Ed and I are currently writing an historical novel about the lives and…
There’s a lot of discussion about the risks of COVID-19 for the elderly. But I worry more about the impact of this pandemic on our just-turned-teenager grandson. He’s at the stage in life when he’s very invested in social connections and…