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The Complex Legacy of George Orwell 4
- Featured, History, Literature, Politics
- November 14, 2024
George Orwell, one of the most influential political writers of the 20th century, is widely recognized for his searing critiques of totalitarian regimes in his novels Animal Farm and 1984. Orwell’s portrayal of state control, propaganda, and the manipulation of truth has resonated with readers across the political spectrum. However, Orwell’s personal political ideology and his critiques of totalitarianism
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Swedish Death Cleaning and Aging in Place 17
- Culture, Featured, MomThink
- November 13, 2024
Several of my relatives and friends are in the process of cleaning out a parent’s home. Some have tragically lost their aged parents, and some are rearranging living situations to accommodate medical needs. In each situation, however, there is an overwhelming factor: Each of them are dealing with a house stuffed with … stuff. No
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How Parenting Got So Intense 4
- Family, Culture, Featured, MomThink
- November 12, 2024
You can’t find a better explanation of the rise of helicopter parenting and how, when and why that morphed into “intensive parenting” than this New York Times podcast from a few weeks ago, inspired by the surgeon general’s report on parental burnout. Michael Barbaro, host of “The Daily,” interviews Claire Cain Miller, a Times reporter
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Mao: Worse Than Stalin and Hitler 3
- History, Featured
- November 11, 2024
American schoolchildren learn about Hitler and, possibly, Stalin, but few know much about Mao. And yet, while Hitler and Stalin were deplorable, Mao murdered far more people than either of his European counterparts—and his tactics have made their way to the United States. Mao Zedong was born in a rural village in 1893, but he
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Letting Shakespeare Be 1
- Literature
- November 11, 2024
In a recent piece for the New York Times, Drew Lichtenberg, the artistic producer at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, laments the closing of the California Shakespeare Theater and the widespread decline in productions of Shakespeare across the country. The reasons, he suggests, have to do with many things, including the expense of mounting a
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The Therapeutic Power of Stories 2
- Featured, Health, Literature
- November 8, 2024
Stories hold a powerful sway over the human spirit. They reach us on the deepest levels, moving, inspiring, instructing, and even healing us, as modern therapeutic practice has shown. Stories and poems consolidate and interpret random occurrences and emotional and sensory activity—the raw inputs of experience—into a meaningful whole. This allows us to understand reality
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