Good Clean Reads

Rare are the true healers, doctors who are not only skilled in their craft, but generous with their attention. Jerome Hobbs was a studied and skilled acupuncturist and naturopath; but it was his gentle manner, easy laugh and abiding curiosity that made his patients well. I was blessed to be one of his long time patients seeing him at least monthly over ten years. I can still close my eyes and hear...

Contributed by Grady Tude
(November’s Key to Gratitude Contest Weekly Winner)

When my wife died suddenly and unexpectedly at only 58 years old my life unravelled. After a few months I began my slow return to reality from the daze and haze of shock and legal bullstuff. My life seemed to be in  shambles, pointless and simply too much trouble to continue. In retrospect, and awareness,I can say...

For many years when my children were small one of their favorite birthday rituals was the bouquet of balloons I would bring them, one balloon for each year of their life. We would make a family circle around the birthday child and they would let go of the balloons one by one, making a wish and letting it fly up into the sky. Sometimes they would let go them all at once with a giant wish, standing...

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.”  -William Penn

Early this morning when my 15–year-old daughter who shares the daily morning makeup and hair routine with me, turned towards me, straightening iron in hand, to do my hair; for a few minutes time stood still. I like to think of myself as close to my teens, but honestly, we don’t talk much during those morning makeup sessions,...

“The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.” -William Blake

Falling in love is easy; our biological imperative to mate kicks in naturally opening our hearts and flooding our nervous system with the euphoric experience of idealized connection. In these early moments of love’s embrace, we receive love viscerally. Every exchange is charged with the energy of passionate recognition and the deep...

One of the songs that stuck to me most closely as a child was 500 miles. I may have learned it at summer camp, but the gist of it is a journey song that takes the singer hundreds of miles from his home. Three times up and down 20,000 feet and I am hundreds of- thousands even, miles away from home. I have never been to Vermont and it as beautiful, even in the dark as I have heard.

It is compared...

I have owned an iPhone for years and have been hanging out on the edges of technology thanks to the young tech-savvy employees in my business and my kids, whose childhoods grew up on continuous, even if controlled, doses of the web world. I am just competent enough to be dangerous is what I always say and grateful that I have young people around me most days to show me the way back to digital...

“Self consciousness is the indispensible means to enlightenment; at the same time it is the greatest obstacle in the way.”  -Aldous Huxley

I live among teenagers, which brings me into intimate contact with the often crippling kind of self consciousness that awakens in the human mind during adolescence. The experience of being seen in these years swings between a primal desire and a punishing...

“Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need.”  -Rick Riordan

Fairness is a value construct that is inborn into all of us. Even the smallest of children recognize and bear witness to experiences of injustice among their peers. This very human urge towards making things fair is one of the fundamental ways that love acts as a currency in life. All of...