Remember when teachers told you reading was good for you? They were right. And now reading is even associated with living longer. Researchers at the Yale University School of Public Health have discovered that book…
Read MoreAs a stay-at-home mom, I used to dread meeting new people at social events. After initial pleasantries, so often the exchange would come to an awkward, grinding halt when they asked me…
Read More20 years ago, the first time I was on Koh Lanta, I experienced a monumental event. Not because I was on a tropical island for the first time, and not because I was new to Thailand, nor somewhere so remote. It was because of the brief overwhelming…
Read MoreAlthough I’ve been an avid reader all my life, I’d honestly never heard the term “bibliotherapy” until recently. Apparently, I’ve been out of the loop. The concept of reading books as therapy dates to the ancient Greeks who considered…
Read MoreDoing dress-ups as a child, I could visualize all kinds of gala costumes. Dresses, accessories and textures that would befit the most beautiful expressions of the wishful designs. In my imagination there were many special events…
Read MoreI was 14 when my parents and I sat in my pediatrician’s office and heard the news: I had scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine, most often diagnosed in teenaged girls. Called idiopathic, this type of scoliosis has unknown origins…
Read MoreThere is something about finding ourselves in our 60s that makes our heads turn to the past, in general, and more specifically – to our ancestry. Perhaps as we age, our perception of time changes…
Read MoreJune is often thought of as the beginning of summer. For some reason, I’ve always used the beginning of new seasons as a time for reflection. As a child, June marked for me the end of school and the start of summer fun, whether it was summer…
Read MoreGrowing up in the Midwest, I spent summer mornings playing outside with the neighbor kids. We’d break up and go home to lunch, where our moms served us Kool-Aid (red!) and bologna sandwiches and potato chips straight from the jumbo…
Read MoreDuring the height of the pandemic, in early 2020, I joined the Cornell University Feederwatch program. Each week, on two consecutive days, I recorded the species who visited the feeders outside my kitchen window…
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