The seduction of noise. Do an online search and you can see a 21st century way of conceptualizing our addiction to distraction: noise pollution. Researchers have studied the effects of noise pollution and discovered its surprisingly broad impact upon adults and children. But the subject of this piece is even more insidious. Truthfully, is there any […]
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A life of one’s own Sound familiar? A Life of One’s Own? Maybe you’re thinking of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, as was I until I learned more about a book published in the 1930’s. I’d never heard of Marion Milner, a British psychoanalyst and writer who embarked on a seven year experiment in
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Culture of superlatives: What does that mean, exactly? Recently, I’ve become aware of my tendency to use superlatives both in my writing and in speaking. Consequently, I’ve been thinking a lot about word selection, both mine and that of others. The fourth in the Lindsey McCall medical mystery series, Malthus Revisited: The Cup of Wrath
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In praise of procrastination and doubt? Really? I met a neighbor while coming back from my daily walk with my dogs the other day. Although we live very close to one another, we see one another rarely, just when I happen to be walking by. She was delighted when I asked about her ten day
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Justice and politics Ideally the concept of justice is considered to be independent of contextual factors like politics. And the notion of correlating the two feels somewhat odious, or at least repugnant. But the recent Speilberg movie, Bridge of Spies, is a fascinating tale. of the oxymoronic twists of our government and its desire to appear
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Thinking about thinking As a recovering bibliophile, I made a promise to myself to read each of the books purchased in the last decade or two. And I am now making my way through After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. Despite the density of the philosopher’s prose, reading this book is bringing me back to a place
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Creativity is something most of us cannot get enough of, right? Because each day we are placed in situations requiring us to be inventive, imaginative, innovative. Whether a stay- at- home- mom, engineer, salesperson, mechanic, or a writer, we are immersed in situations which require imaginative responses. Angry customers, bored kids, touchy husbands and new
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The value of critics In a recent post, I talked about the cost of a scathing review I received from an anonymous reviewer. I did not mention that this was a review I solicited as in paid for. The cost I spoke about wasn’t the money, it was the denunciation, the rebukes…the heat in my
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Tomorrowland the movie opened yesterday. You know those days when the ‘to do’ list is lengthy but somehow you cannot focus? Cannot seem to beat the distractions or stop the futile jumping from one thing to another? Friday morning was one of those days. So when my husband John appeared with the suggestion to leave
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Remember Big Hairy Audacious Goals? Made famous a couple of decades ago by management and leadership gurus like Tom Peters, BHAG stands for big, hairy, audacious goals. I was reminded of my love hate relationship with goals by Dan Pink while listening to a podcast of his speech to the 2014 graduating class of Northwestern
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