2015 – Have We Hit Bottom Yet?

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It’s now the time of year when everyone seems to be doing recaps of what happened in 2015 and making resolutions or predictions for 2016. I usually like these efforts and look forward to being reminded of all that has occurred and the speculations of what lay ahead. This year, however, is different. Our challenge and my message is that if we’re going to have next year be better than this one, we need to get beyond thinking in terms of a ‘good year’ or a ‘bad year’ and

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Is there a ‘good’ side to climate change?

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I am in Paris and the UN Climate Change Conference is in town along with 50,000 delegates and more world leaders in one place than at any other time in history. This shows up as ‘factoid’ in most of the media but it might be worthwhile to pause and wonder how this could happen. Even the Climate Change deniers should ask themselves, can this many leaders and all the information they have at their disposal really be in some sort of conspiracy’? Given they can’t agree on anything

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Responsible Gun Ownership

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How we approach change and how we personally relate to issues can make all the difference between whether we get upset and fight to defend the status quo and our values or whether we listen and consider that maybe we can have our cake and eat it too! Like most progressives, when presented with hard-line conservative positions, I just shake my head and become resigned. Gun control is one of those issues. I simply cannot understand how unrestricted and laissez-faire attitudes toward guns make

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We’re in this boat together.

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Almost everyone I know who has traveled to or lived in the developing world have stories about their experience being close to levels of poverty most of us cannot imagine. When asked how they dealt with it, most said they were only able to confront it by “disconnecting” — going into a kind of blind zone where they “tune out” the death and suffering. Indeed, how do most of us deal with statistics such as a more than a billion people live on less than $2.50 a day

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Hetero, Homo, or Plain Horrific

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No. This is not a discussion about his or anyone’s sexual orientation. This about living heterogeneous or homogeneous lives and whether there is any room in the political arena for generous listening and respect for someone else’s point of view. This is an inquiry into how we think about life and the world and the current state of our Uncivil society.

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog called “Free Speech: Who’s Listening” in which I pointed to the fact that

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Trump and the Tar-Baby Metaphor

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In Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus stories, Br’er Fox strikes out when his plan to catch Br’er Rabbit using the “Tar-Baby” backfires. Instead, the “clever” fox traps himself in what he’d created to the point of being totally stuck in a situation from which he cannot free himself, preventing any move that doesn’t worsen the situation. This seems to me an apt metaphor for what’s playing out in the Republican Primary race and America’s

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Indepreneur Rising

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In my blog “Middle Class Meltdown” earlier this month, I suggested that more and more Americans are creating their own jobs by making offers.

Essentially, I was suggesting that more and more of us are stepping up to the fact that at the end of the day, each of us is solely responsible for our livelihood and we succeed by adding value in whatever ways we can. We contribute value and value is rewarded. What is less obvious is that our value is a function of what others value, not

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I Want To Be Me.

“I Want To Be Me,” written and directed by Lauren Selman and produced by Pina De Rosa, is about amplifying the voice of our children and reminding us that the future depends on being ourselves and following our dreams. You know it’s up to you, what do you want to be?

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