Like many families, our family has a tradition of watching movies together on Friday nights… affectionately called Family Movie Night. To the delight of my husband and I, our movie choices have been graduating as our children age, and we are finding ourselves watching movies we might have chosen to watch on our own. Not only this, but a flood of movies from our youth are moving to the top of the queue.
This February, in honor of Groundhog Day, we watched… Groundhog Day. (If there’s another way to celebrate the lowly holiday, I’m not sure what it is.) It’s…
An Emotional Case-Study of Former Prisoner Richard Pierce
Richard Pierce is a man I learned about years ago while listening to a broadcast of This American Life. The episode was called Transformers and there were several slice-of-life segments about people making a choice to transform their lives. It’s just the kind of stuff I eat up! The story about a man named Richard Pierce is the only one that has stayed with me, however, while I’ve forgotten the rest. His story had a rough start and a hopeful future, but what I was most affected by was the negative trajectory…
My 8-year-old son and I were in the bathroom one night, brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed. While searching the shelves for more flossers, he was going on and on about school and the games he was playing at recess. I was half-listening.
“…And then he pushed me to the ground,” he said.
“What?” Suddenly he had my full attention.
“He pushed me to the ground,” he said again.
“Why?” I asked. (Dare I say “who?” and give away that I wasn’t really paying attention.)
“Because he wanted to take my ball, and I wasn’t giving it to…
I don’t envy leaders right now. Leaders in politics, leaders in schools, business… you name it. One day, when we look back on this period of time, history will have shaped some opinion about what was good and what was bad during the coronavirus pandemic. That’s a history lesson that none of us have access to yet. We all have our opinions. Some have highly educated guesses. But what happens if (and when) that education changes. One can be highly educated and wrong.
The point is, no one knows the best way to lead right now. There are only bad…
Acacia Bergin is the creator of the Feelings Spinner, a toy designed to help children share their feelings with their caretakers. www.feelingsspinner.com