Saturday, November 09, 2019

family, Cooper Hewitt

Cooper Hewitt Museum nature as inspiration, AI and Paisleys

Brain damage in Flint

Lead poison impact in Flint Jaylon would cycle through two schools, receive 30 suspensions and rack up 70 unexcused absences. In one of Ms. Wakes’s clashes with Flint Community Schools, she delivered administrators a warning: “You can’t keep suspending him because soon, you’re going to have to suspend the whole school system.” Five years after Michigan switched Flint’s water supply to the contaminated Flint River from Lake Huron, the city’s lead crisis has migrated from its homes to its schools, where neurological and behavioral problems — real or feared — among students are threatening to overwhelm the education system. The contamination of this long-struggling city’s water exposed nearly 30,000 schoolchildren to a neurotoxin known to have detrimental effects on children’s developing brains and nervous systems. Requests for special education or behavioral interventions began rising four years ago, when the water contamination became public, bolstering a class-action lawsuit that demanded more resources for Flint’s children.

Joy Ladin

A home in oneself That’s a really great question. I want to back up to it because when I — most of my life, even though I didn’t fit in the “you’re either a man or woman” system, that was still the only system that I had access to. So when I thought about gender transition, I did articulate that to myself as becoming a woman, but through a lot of kind of agonizing reflection and experience and really crucially through discussions with my now ex-wife while we were still married. She pointed out things that are very true, which is that you can’t have a male body and live for 40-plus years as a man and be socialized male and ever become a woman in the sense that somebody who’s born and socialized and lives as a woman, as a female, is. And that’s just — that may sadden me. Whatever, it doesn’t matter how I feel about it; it really is true. And when I started publishing about this, some of the comments — I know we’re never supposed to read comments online — but some of the really hurtful comments also really taught me a lot. They taught me women across the political spectrum, from deeply conservative to kind of radical feminists, were saying the same thing.

on the paradox of the autumn of one's life

Parker Palmer Because we live in a culture that prefers the ease of either/or to the complexities of both/and, we have a hard time holding opposites together. We want light without darkness, the glories of spring and summer without the demands of autumn and winter, the pleasures of life without the pangs of death. We make Faustian bargains hoping to get what we want, but they never truly enliven us and cannot possibly sustain us in hard times.

Tuesday, October 01, 2019

words to live by

"To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don't try to be a magnolia flower. If you crave acceptance and recognition and try to change yourself to fit what other people want you to be, you will suffer all your life. True happiness and true power lie in understanding yourself, accepting yourself, having confidence in yourself. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

grandparents

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/well/family/what-will-my-grandchild-remember.html?action=click&auth=login-email&contentCollection=The%20Checkup&login=email&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Your children are not your children from Khalil Gibran

When a young mother with a newborn baby at her breast asks for advice on children and parenting, Gibran’s poetic prophet responds: 2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Kashmir

No longer a democracy

Menopause

The gift!

Kiran's brain

Kiran Dyslexia fact sheet