My son Nicholas, autism specialist and psychologist Dr. Steve Love, and I were featured in this little news piece on WLOS talking about Julia, the new autistic character on Sesame Street. Click on the photo or the link below and have a look! http://bit.ly/autisticjulia You can read some of my top posts on autism here.
This year my autistic son Nicholas started calling strangers by their names. But are they listening to him?
I define a stretched presidency as lasting a minimum of eight years and including a presidency of the person elected plus potentially the consecutive presidency of her or his (it has always been his thus far) vice president. The original president wins re-election and/or the vice president of the president wins a consecutive term when the…
I had the chance to participate in Dr. Tiece Ruffin’s Education 379 course — focused on Special Education — at the University of North Carolina Asheville in December. Dr. Ruffin invited me to come to the last class of the semester. Some of the best and most impactful people I’ve known in my life have…
I am posting my March 2007 Byron Katie interview, newly edited to be completely true to the original conversation and transcript. In print in the magazine Pure Inspiration and in the material previously posted online, the interview’s edit involved a significant back and forth between me and Stephen Mitchell, Katie’s husband and a renowned classical scholar,…
I had a running commentary with a younger friend this past year about how very old I am. But for much longer it has been a running commentary with my son, Nicholas. Lifting up a box of books, back going out on our weekly hike, or just moving slowly on a weekday morning, I can…
I’ve been thinking a lot about joy lately, and especially about how the same experience or circumstance or day or week or year of your life, and perhaps the entirety of your life, can seem joyful or joyless depending on vision and context. All the things we all talk about, maybe too often, come into play:…
I absolutely love this interview. I love the voice Lisa Nichols has and shares here: so beautiful. I interviewed Lisa by phone in August 2004 just two hours after she first received a copy of Chicken Soup for the African American Soul — her first published book; I later got to meet and spend a…
Oldest River I was too happy to recognize when it happened to someone else too sad to realize when it happened to me until time passed which did not make me less sad but just slightly very very slightly more aware
A best-selling author for decades, Wayne Dyer was one of the most popular teachers in the self-help, mind/body/spirit, and New Age communities. This interview was my first with Wayne. At the time I was editor in chief of New Age Retailer (now Retailing Insight), the main industry trade magazine for the category, and this piece originally…
My son Nicholas turns 15 at the end of September, which is just ridiculous. In some ways he retains the pure innocence and excitement of a little boy. In others he’s already taken on the weight of a grown man. I wish he hadn’t done so yet, even as he consciously, purposefully offers support and…
My son Nicholas, who is autistic, has never really differentiated between men and women. He’s not much of one for differentiation, anyway. So, for example, Mr., Miss, and Mrs. don’t come naturally to him. For most of his life, he has been as likely to get the honorific wrong as right. He was, and still…
I’ve interviewed Marianne Williamson three times, and she is electric: smart, fast, passionate, insightful, eloquent. In some ways, Marianne is the most frustrating person I’ve ever interviewed, because each time I’m blown away and end up wondering how she isn’t the best-known teacher of our time. And then I really think about the question and…
I am 47 years old. I turn 48 late this month. I haven’t been someone who has ever given too much weight to birthdays or the passing of the years. But this year my impending birthday is hitting me some. I’ve really not thought too much about age until very recently, but at some time…
I haven’t been posting photographs on the blog mostly because I forgot I sometimes post photographs on the blog. I post some regularly on Instagram and Facebook, anyway, so this is what Eve once called low-lying fruit. Really I was about to post on Facebook the sleeping woman whose photo I took on Sunday underneath Whitewater…
