According to the 2025 Compassion Report from Sanford’s School of Medicine, only 1 in 3 Americans feel compassion for all groups of...
The Collapse of Compassion
According to the 2025 Compassion Report from Sanford’s School of Medicine, only 1 in 3 Americans feel compassion for all groups of marginalized people. Lindsay C. Gibson, author of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents thinks [...]
Pat Taub
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Can I Live Without Email?
GUEST POST by JANET WEIL “It is possible that you do not receive many emails at all, in which case I am very jealous…” “A Simpler Guide to Gm@il by Ceri Clark “Could I live without email?” The question popped into my head as I was perusing “how to” computer books in the library. Why would I even think of such a thing? I first [...]
Pat Taub
Aging – consciously, generously? ~ No, aging fiercely
GUEST POST by TOM SANTULLI “Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate; I grow more intense with age.” ~ Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell, playwright, author, psychologist; d. 1979 May Sarton asked, ‘What is the opposite of “growing old?” [...]
Pat Taub
Struggling to Find Balance In A Deeply Troubling World
Chaos is a seductress, but peace is the real power.—Diamond-Michael Scott Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, contends that Trump is intentionally creating chaos to unmoor us and advance his oligarchy agenda. The more we are stuck in shock and awe, the easier it is for Trump to advance his Right-wing agenda. Caitlin Johnstone [...]
Pat Taub
“A Life in Light,” Mary Pipher’s Memoir
As we enter a new year punctuated with images of wars, climate emergencies and the alarming prospect of a Trump presidency poised to threaten our civil liberties, Mary Pipher’s memoir “A Life in Light,” is a beacon of hope. Pipher offers personal examples, honed through a lifetime of beating back darkness, to discover light and resilience. [...]
Pat Taub
Home Alone
If you live alone, if your family is scattered far and wide, if you recently lost a partner or spouse, if you can’t afford the plane fare to visit family or to enjoy a holiday escape, you may be feeling miserable and lonely, making you a prime candidate for the holiday blues. No one wants to feel left out, but don’t fall prey to [...]
Pat Taub
Admit! Adapt! Adjust! Accept!
GUEST POST by MARY LOU SMITH I will be turning eighty-five in January. I work hard trying to admit, adjust, adapt, and accept what I can do. Easier said than done at times! I am an independent, active, creative and compassionate woman who left a forty-three-year abusive marriage in 2005 at the age of sixty-five. I have never looked back. [...]
Pat Taub
What Will Our Priorities Be?
GUEST POST by TOM SANTULLI I woke up Thanksgiving morning thinking of Picasso’s astounding and revolutionary masterpiece, “Guernica.” It depicts horrors in the Spanish Civil War. What would you see if he painted, “Thanksgiving 2024?” In the US: 700,000 unhoused waiting in soup kitchen lines. 37 million in poverty, many [...]
Pat Taub
People I’m Thankful For
This Thanksgiving I’m giving thanks to people who have acted with courage and compassion. Some in a big way and others in small everyday actions that warmed my heart. Among those to whom I offer a big thanks is Ursula Slavick, a Portland, Maine resident and member of a women’s peace group to which I belong. Ursula died at age 87 on [...]
Pat Taub
“Can’t we all just get along?”
This was Rodney King’s plea in 1992, when he was physically assaulted by the LA cops during that year’s race riots. Thirty-two years later American society still struggles to “get along.” Now it appears that Trump’s re-election has intensified our differences. I’ve been surprised at the rancor among gentle people, like the women [...]
Pat Taub
Thank You’s I Never Got to Deliver
What if you had a chance to pose lingering questions to important people in your life who are now deceased? Poet Victoria Chang did this very thing, writing letters to her deceased parents, which she compiled into the book, “Dear Memory.” Chang, in trying to come to terms with her sketchy knowledge of her parents’ upbringing [...]
Pat Taub