Conversation Starters

 "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  When the student is really ready, the teacher will disappear." - Tao Te Ching For over 11 years, I had an almost daily yoga practice. It started in February 2008 when a housemate and dear friend of mine all but forced me to join her for a class.  She'd selected the studio and told me what time to be ready and because I'm a good wingman, I went along with it -- just for her.  I am  certain  I told the desk staff that I would never return. Famous last words. Not only did I return a week later, I returned the week after that and the week after that until I found a teacher or two I really enjoyed and the next thing you know, I was hooked. Before long, I was enrolled in a monthly membership and prioritizing time on my mat over afterwork drinks. Sometimes I'd compromise and go to class  and then  show up to drinks, normalizing the "wear your yoga gear in public" long before it became the now-standar...

It is doing that March-weather thing outside today: big, fat snowflakes that dissolve as soon as they hit the pavement.  I gotta admit: there's something sort of joy-inducing about the beauty of these fluffy white blobs descending from the heavens while knowing full well nary a shovel will need to be employed.  Certainly, we're nowhere near the point where we're ready to bust out the beach balls and the swimsuits but we're creeping ever closer to the in-between where those kinds of daydreams drift closer to upcoming reality. Spring in Ohio, folks.  This is it. I enjoyed this day from the comfort of my work-from-home setup, a glorious space that I have grown to adore.  It's this funny flip of the script in my life, this capacity to be able to do my job in the same place where I live.  For so much of my adult life, I lived in apartments with one to three other people (and their cats -- their many, many cats) and the thought of  work from home  not only s...

Recently, I met up with a friend of mine from MSASS and had an incredible four hour lunch where we caught up on our lives and talked about what's teaching us these days.  Near the end of our time together, my friend was talking about how she sometimes falls into this "therapist" role with people to help them "solve their problems."  And I smiled at her and said, "Let me throw this at you and see how it sticks: what if, instead of the problem-solution model, you used Asset Based Community Development?  What if instead of deficits, you thought about strengths?" My friend grinned at me because she knows my affinity for ABCD, so she indulged me as I explained: "I think in my own life, I've struggled a lot with this idea that I should 'get over stuff.'  That there's a pressure to 'get over' a relationship or a traumatic event or really anything.  What does that even mean, 'get over it'?  Who does that language benefit?  ...

As you may know, I'm a fan of the podcast   Ghost of a Podcast .  This weekly show is hosted by the psychic/medium/astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo where she answers a listener question and then gets into the astrological forecast for the week ahead.  Sometimes I skip over the listener questions because her answers are so specific to this one person's chart and while that can be interesting, it's not always the sort of voyeurism I'm into on any given day. This week, though, the listener wrote about her own psychic abilities and how she'd followed them in pursuit of finding her own life partner.  Now, I'm not super-expert on this, but what I know about psychics and mediums is they often can't "read" themselves -- so I'm going to chock this up to the listener's own intense gut-instinct and intuition, which is what most psychic ability derives from.  Anyway, this listener said she asked the Universe to bring her a soulmate and it did -- but what sh...

  Reflection on the Simulation of Working With Parents of Elementary School-Aged Children  Returning to In-Person Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic Identifying the Community  For my video simulation, my selected community is parents of elementary school-aged children in a district that is reopening to in-person classes. I selected this group because I have school-aged nephews as well as a number of friends who work in schools, and so I have seen all sides of this conversation around safety for students and staff amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on this group of parents also provides an opportunity for me to explore a multi-faceted and dynamic array of viewpoints and concerns. While some parents have worked from home during the pandemic, others haven’t had that as an option, while still others lost or given up their jobs in order to be home with their kids.  Additionally, different families had different assessments of safety during the pandemic, ...

Yesterday one of my friends was telling me about how her mom -- let's call her Samantha -- seemed to be over-complicating her ability to get vaccinated against COVID-19.  Samantha has been ultra-cautious during the pandemic, staying very informed about the latest news, really taking the entire situation seriously.  Because of her age, she now qualifies to be vaccinated and by all stretches of the imagination, there are no major barriers for her to get said-vaccination: she is able-bodied, she has transportation, she has a strong local support system, including a partner to be with her or help her monitor any possible side-effects.   All she has to do is book her appointment and go .  But something seems to be stopping her.  She has lots of excuses for why she can't do it or why it's a cumbersome process or why it's too frustrating.  My friend shared this story about Samantha with me because, well, we're close friends, but also, I'm close with her mom....