Featured Post
Pondering The Possibilities: Digital Toilet Paper?
Like it or not. Embrace it or not. The digital age has brought a lot of changes to our world. But there has to be a limit. Right? Still … Can we really rule out the possibility of digital “toilet paper”? After all, there was a time when we used leafs, rocks, sticks and the […]
Honoring Creativity
BTSN Book Feature: A GAME OF PROOF by Tim Vicary
Whether British or American, we like to think of our laws and our legal system as the bright moral lines in the sand of our respective communities. Those clear points where we’ve collectively agreed thou shalt not cross. Sure we know no institution is perfect, nor the people within them. Still we hold firm to […]
Pondering Possibilities
Words To Live By: “Let There Be Justice For All …”
Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves. ~~ NELSON MANDELA, speech, May 10, 1994
Sharing Knowledge
Words to Live By: “It Is Not Enough To Understand …”
It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task. ~~ Robert Kennedy
Valuing Usefulness
Words To Live By: “The Secret of Change …”
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” ~~ Socrates
More Articles
Seeing Things In A New Light: Windless Kite Festival
A Windless Kite Festival (An oxymoron, if there ever was one.) Held indoors (Of course, where else do you fly a kite.) In January (Any other month every sane person would outside flying their kite — in the wind!) An annual event celebrating its 12th year in 2013 (It’s a joke. Right? What could there […]
Merry Merry Up-Side-Down Christmas
I originally posted this in 2010, but it still makes me smile. So here it is: I clearly remember going into gales of laughter as a child when seeing anyone talk while up-side-down. Chin talking is what they call it now. I don’t think we had a name for it then. And I don’t remember […]
For The Joy of Animals: Hamster Spin
People complain that life and work are such a “Rat Race.” To me, at least, it all feels like a giant “Hamster Spin.” Is your life a rat race or hamster spin? ##
BTSN Book Feature: SENATOR by Richard Bowker
“…a fascinating insider’s depiction of political life, and a compelling morality tale.” When should a senator (or any politician) stop serving in government? Is the slow seep of corruption in values and interests inevitable? Do politicians even know themselves when they’ve stopped serving the people’s interests except as a means to re-election? Senator James O’Connor […]
Celebrating Creativity: Somebody That I Used To Know
It is always fascinating to see how creativity feeds and inspires creativity. It’s a cycle that happens within and across every field imaginable. Ask any inventor, artist, writer, musician, designer or engineer — they seek and find inspiration anywhere and everywhere. Somebody That I Used To Know - by Australian-Belgian singer /songwriter Gotye, featuring New Zealand singer/guitarist Kimbra. It starts […]
Dear Fifth Wave Feminists, We Need You!
In Caitlin Moran’s outrageous, funny and heartbreakingly honest feminist manifesto How to Be a Woman, she calls for a fifth wave (by her count) of feminism to rise up. Pointing at the statistics that say only 29% of American women and 42% of British women call themselves Feminists, she rails at the anti-feminism sentiment and […]
For The Joy of Animals: Lip Smackingly Cute Possum
There is something about the sight of a Possum that usually makes me sad. Mostly because it’s almost always dead on the side of the road. But also because a little part of me is secretly relieved that what is died isn’t someone’s cat or dog. The relief is wrong — but it’s always there. […]
BTSN Book Feature: STIRRING UP TROUBLE by Juli Alexander
” … a delightful witchy … YA romance … “ Did you ever wonder why witches are ugly, green and have warts? Well… It’s not their wickedness showing through. It’s their punishment from Zeus for using their powers for self-serving purposes. Which leaves nerdy 15-year-old Zoe Miller, who is a witchwiz at STIRRING UP TROUBLE, trying […]
Soliloquy For An Avid Reader
Earlier this summer, fellow writer Suzie Ivy posted My Writer’s Twist on Shakespeare based on the “To be or not to be” Soliloquy for Hamlet over at the Reading and Writing Cafe blog. She urged other writers to follow suit with whatever issues they were feeling conflicted over — work, parenting, eating, exercise … Like most people, I have a […]
Sexism Is A Two-Sided Coin
The coin spins. Heads or tails? Male or Female? It shouldn’t matter. We are equal sides of the same coin of Life. There is no his side, without her side. We are forged together and bonded forever — valuable, compatible and inseparable. Pretending otherwise is a futile exercise because as any coin collector will tell […]