A while back I started an experiment of smiling brightly at perfect strangers while out and about doing my daily routine. Knowing that times are difficult, my intention was to bring a little joy into random people’s lives, while also causing them to wonder where my joy came from. Admittedly, I don’t always practice this
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Back in the day, guidance counselors were those helpful (but not unduly intrusive) high school officials who dispensed vocational and career advice, reminded you of college application deadlines, and made sure your transcripts and letters of recommendations got where they needed to go. But like so much else in the 1960s and 1970s, traditional roles
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Presentism: Now there’s one ugly duckling of a word. My online dictionary defines presentism as “uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts.” To my surprise, the 40-year-old dictionary on my shelf also contains this eyesore of a word and definition. To be present,
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How did the non-conformists and radicals of the 1960s and 1970s, who were also heavily skeptical of the medical-industrial complex and who helped turn alternative medicine into a billion dollar industry, become some of the most rabid supporters of lockdowns and COVID vaccine mandates? My mother, a woman who has spat in the face of
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The public education system has been failing students for years. From misappropriating funds to providing inadequate lessons and passing illiterate students; public schools are losing support. Despite this they continue receiving extensive budgets which do not properly represent enrollment rates, attendance numbers, or staffing issues. While it is true that 2020 was an extremely difficult year for
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I’ve been doing a lot of gardening and landscaping lately, building new flower beds and filling them with salvaged soil, edging them with rocks and planting them. I’ve moved plants to give them more suitable growing conditions—more or less light, or wind, or exposure to street traffic, depending on their sensitivities—plants sort of tell you
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