It takes me a full six days to get the most out of Thanksgiving and to transition to Christmas. So, I use two vacation days each year to prepare, enjoy, transition and rest. Continue reading “Transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas”
Backstabbers
When I was in the seventh grade, I had a classmate named Joyce who went around talking about everybody. She wasn’t just a gossip, but she was also a person who used the information she obtained by cozying up to people for her own purposes. Sometimes she used the information to boost her own favorability in the eyes of a teacher by tattle telling on someone. Other times she used the information to undermine the credibility of someone she saw as competition. And at times she used information as revenge. Many times she wasn’t completely honest in her representation of what she knew. She stretched or contorted the information to make herself look good or someone else look bad. She created conflict where there was little or none. Her behavior was disruptive. On the surface Joyce was caring and likable, but beneath her charming façade she was devious and manipulative and we all knew it and hated that destructive behavior. One day, I had had enough and I was determined to do something about it. Continue reading “Backstabbers”
Gun Violence Strikes Home
Coincidentally, the day before the Borderline mass shooting, I did a workshop on the March for Our Lives movement for colleagues on campus. The movement promoted “Turnout Tuesdays”, a key element showing that the students recognized the need to get lawmakers in place to enact reasonable gun control laws. On election day, the day of my workshop, the democrats took over the House of Representatives and we rejoiced. Just one day later, the unthinkable happened yet again, but this time the gun violence struck the community where I work and shop: Thousand Oaks.
Stoking Violence
This was a violent week in our country. And I join most Americans who are heartsick by it. I truly lament that violence is part of our human nature. It is all too evident that human beings are capable of violence and that some are much more prone to it than others in the same way that other human attributes are distributed among our species. How easily a person turns to violence depends greatly on their emotional and intellectual makeup (nature) as well as their upbringing, exposure, and cultivated social morality (nurture). It also depends on the right provocation. And hatred and fear are huge provocations.
Continue reading “Stoking Violence”