Above is my favorite photo of my maternal grandparents, Esther and Albert Kegan, who were patent and trademark lawyers in Chicago. When I thought about what I wanted to write for my 200th post, I wanted to consider a topic that’s important for its history and its future implications. While the photo was taken almost…
Author: caritagardiner
199. Why It’s Not “Toxic”
I found the image above on Pinterest after I read this fascinating article from The Atlantic (thanks for sharing, AD!) about cutting people we’ve deemed toxic out of our lives. I agree with a lot of what’s in the article, which made me think more about the idea of people as poison. There are substances…
198. Why “Not Yet”
I took the photo above when we were in Maine in August to celebrate my birthday and our anniversary. We have a cabin onto which we’ve started building an addition; the whole structure will become our permanent home when we retire. When we were there, as you can see, we had a foundation but no…
197. Why Moxie
In July, I had the opportunity to talk with Main Street Moxie Podcast about literary characters with moxie. We had a great discussion and took some fun publicity photos, which will air with the show on October 17. Of course, I looked in my calendar to find out when would be the Wednesday before the…
196. Why Consider Two-Letter Verbs
As far as I can figure out, there are only five two-letter verbs in English. If you want to take a moment to try to come up with them, don’t scroll down yet. If solving such word puzzles is not how you roll, scroll away. Here…
195. Why I’m Sticking with Starfish
At this point, I’m old enough that I’ve had several moments in life when I’ve gotten to see the same event from new points of view and realized its greatness in whole new ways. I’ll give you two examples. When I was a little kid, I took ice skating lessons in Evanston, Illinois. Every Friday…
194. Why Try Again
[I took the photo above from sheknows.com.] Do you remember the first time you tried to sit up? To walk? To eat solid foods? To spell words? To draft a novel? To pass the bar exam? It’s likely that the first time you tried to sit up, you fell and that your first steps ended…
193. Why Seek Help
I screen-shot the above from an article in Psychology Today about asking for help. I like that in the image, it’s not clear if the person on the top also had help or if the person on the bottom couldn’t manage the climb alone, but it’s clear that the person above is helping. Over the…
192. Why Treating isn’t Cheating
The photo above is a screenshot of the Google image search I did for “treat.” I’m amused that (1) all are edible and (2) a couple pictures show dogs’ treats and the rest are human desserts. When I had the idea for this post, I wasn’t thinking only about food, but the message works nonetheless….
191. Why Diversify
When I did a Google image search for the word diversity, the top twelve images (above) all showed people with different color skin. I was thinking about the idea of diversity for a different reason. When I first got to Hotchkiss, twenty-five years ago, the school assigned my newlywed husband and me a couple of personal…