“Whether teaching or writing, what I really am doing is shepherding revelation; I am the midwife to epiphany.”

January 10, 2019

It’s the dead of winter, which is a hard time to begin something new. And yet, that’s exactly what those of us who are preparing to start a new semester must do. That’s why this is a perfect time for help from poets. This poetry collection comes … Read More

Best Books of 2018: Five Favorites

December 21, 2018

The books I have recommended most often to my friends this year are:

Pioneers! Strong families! Resourcefulness! I’ve always been drawn to the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and I’ve often recommended her books to those who are learning to write memoirs. I’m rethinking all of that … Read More

“It stands to reason, then, that if we notice similar patterns emerging from psychology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, then they might together help us to understand how human beings learn.”

December 6, 2018

In the last ten years, research by cognitive psychologists has led to many interesting books on how learning works. And yet, questions about why humans learn the way we do remain. Would a cross-disciplinary approach give us a richer context for understanding what by all accounts is … Read More

“From elementary through graduate school, we receive little guidance for the inner journey . . .”

November 23, 2018

Parker Palmer continues, “even though Socrates – the patron saint of education – regarded self-examination as key to a life worth living.” I couldn’t agree more.  Because Parker Palmer has been a steady advocate of doing the “silent, solitary process of reflection” for nearly 50 years, … Read More

“He wanted revenge. He longed for it. He daydreamed about it.”

November 15, 2018

Is there a person on earth who hasn’t daydreamed about revenge? It’s easy to relate to a person who wants to get even, which is the basic story line in Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood. It’s based on The Tempest by Shakespeare. In both stories, the central … Read More

“I see the point of poets now. They notice things.”

November 1, 2018

This is what the poet Ruth Padel’s mother said after she was “dragged” to her first poetry reading.  The truth is that many have to be “dragged” to poetry because of the technical issues with rhyme and rhythm or with the way ideas are compressed in … Read More

“Lincoln came close to killing himself in January 1841.”

October 25, 2018

In Flourish, Martin Seligman uses Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill as examples of “severe depressives” who learned to function well even when they were massively depressed.  Shouldn’t more people learn how to do this?  Yes,  says Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association and founder … Read More

“To live the complete human catastrophe is terrible indeed, but to write about it?”

October 11, 2018

Karl Ove Knausgaard is a Norwegian writer who conducted a public experiment.  He wanted to see what would happen if he wrote honestly about his life, aiming to “penetrate that whole series of conceptions and ideas and images that hang like a sky above reality” in a … Read More

“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of nation we are and what direction we want to move in.”

October 4, 2018

When it seems that division and anger characterize many so many conversations, it helps to look back to see how we made it through terrible times before.  This week’s quote comes from a speech given by Robert F. Kennedy three hours after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. … Read More

“Neuroscience has now provided preliminary confirmation that long-term meditators have structural differences in brain areas associated with metacognition and interoception.”

September 27, 2018

Would you like a guided tour through research on how the brain works?   This book is one of about eight published in 2018 that you might find exciting. I’m drawn to this topic because reading about neuroplasticity – the brain’s ability to change its structure and patterns … Read More

“The trends are also remarkably consistent: loneliness, depressive symptoms, major depressive episodes, anxiety, self-injury, and suicide are all on the rise, mostly since 2011.”

September 20, 2018

Today I heard Dr. Twenge give a presentation to college faculty members on the characteristics of people who were born after 1995. The questions that followed were remarkable for two reasons.  First, there was broad acceptance of her research-backed claim that our youngest students are experiencing a … Read More

“The courage to teach is the courage to keep one’s heart open . . .”

September 11, 2018

 The school year has just started, and I’ve begun to meet students who seem to have everything going for them and other students who seem to have the deck stacked against them. At this point, I don’t know how any of this will unfold, but I can … Read More

“There is something missing in our definition, vision, of a human being: the need to make.”

September 2, 2018

Frank Bidart, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, explores this “need to make” in the twenty-part poem “Advice to the Players.” Yes, that’s right: twenty parts. He’s known for psychological complexity and paradoxical observations, and this poem provides both.  For example, he writes, “Horrible … Read More

“By turning the experiment of life into a heroic task he was able to turn Walden from a philosophical tract of unattainable goals into a guide for the perplexed.”

August 19, 2018

Jeffrey Cramer argues that if you read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden as an autobiographical record, you are bound to be disappointed.  (After all, Thoreau was selective about what he included, and the bits he didn’t write about – such as having his sisters do his laundry – … Read More

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”

August 11, 2018

Stating the premise of your work simply and clearly in the first sentence requires courage. Readers might say, “Is that all?”  Or, some might feel skeptical about your ability to show how an original story can follow from a classic premise that Kafka, Dante, and other masters … Read More