Ruby Jones, 67, worked in the hospice unit at Lindy Boggs Medical Center in New Orleans. Last August, as Hurricane Katrina was zeroing in on the city, she elected not to evacuate, but to stay with the eight dying patients under her care. She has been recognized by Newsweek as one of “15 People Who Make America Great”: Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Life
Father’s Day Secrets
Via PostSecret. Read more →
HW Explains the U.S. Newborn Mortality Rate
Just in time for Mother’s Day, Save the Children has published its seventh annual State of the World’s Mothers report on newborn mortality. As usual, the U.S. takes a beating: Read more →
The Dragons of our Lives
Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once brave and beautiful. — Rainer Maria Rilke Read more →
The World of Make-Believe
I take my cell phone out of my pocket and notice that the battery’s gone dead. “Way to plan ahead,” my son says, without looking up from his GameBoy. Read more →
Inspirational Quote of the Day
There is one bright spot at the back, at the beginning of life, and afterwards all becomes blacker and blacker and proceeds more rapidly—in inverse ratio to the square of the distance from death. — Leo Tolstoy, “The Death of Ivan Illych” Read more →
Secret Griefs and Fears
The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears. — Francis Bacon, “Of Parents and Children” Our son turned 12 in July . . . “I almost cried today,” my wife says. “Every year, I take Casey to the pumpkin patch and I take the best photo, but when we drove by today, he didn’t want to go . . .” Read more →
Red Shoes
I’m reminded of this line from the movie The Red Shoes: “Life rushes by, time rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on dancing forever.” All of that applies to me, except for the red shoes part. — Jonathan Ames Read more →
Happiness
In the early 1970s, when a friend and I were newly hatched social psychologists, we decided to write a book on happiness. The head of an eminent Boston publishing house took pity on us and, over lunch, explained the facts of life. ‘No one wants to read a book on happiness’, he said kindly. ‘Happy people don’t; why in the world would they want to? They are already happy. Unhappy people don’t want to, either. Why in the world would they want to read about happy people when they are feeling sullen and miserable? Moreover, it’s faintly embarrassing to be seen on a bus or park bench reading a book on happiness. It’s like being caught reading a book on paedophilia. A passer-by will question your motives.’ And so my friend and I went our separate ways; he to write a book on loneliness, and I, a book on anger.… Read more →
Be the Worst
Pat Metheny was asked in a recent interview what advice he would give to younger musicians: I have one kind of stock response that I use, which I feel is really good. And it’s ‘always be the worst guy in every band you’re in.’ If you’re the best guy there, you need to be in a different band. And I think that works for almost everything that’s out there as well. Read more →
I Feel This Guy’s Pain
Misspellings are in the original document: I am not the most organised person in the world. I have a poor short-term memory, so I write things down. But because I have a poor short-term memory, I loose the paper. I tried to become more organised — I brought Getting Things Done. Then I lost it. I feel I might be more organised if I stop loosing my organisational aids. Read more →
Sharks: Another Reason I Don’t Snorkel
Shark Bites Australian Snorkeler in Half — Associated Press This is such an inane activity — snorkeling, that is, not biting people in half — that if you find yourself engaged in it, it’s a pretty good indication that your life has already gone on way too long. Read more →
The Ephemeral Beauty of the World
Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her—who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world? — Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse Read more →
Dark, Ironic Frost
My son was asked to memorize “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost for a 6th grade assignment: Read more →
Worst Day of the Year
A British psychologist has devised a mathematical formula for computing the most depressing day of the year: Read more →
Learned Helplessness
Psychologists have found that if you put a dog in a cage and repeatedly zap him with an electrical shock, the dog will soon stop trying to avoid the shock because he realizes he’s got nowhere to go. This is called “learned helplessness.” I mention this for educational purposes, not because it sounds like life in a nutshell . . . Read more →
The Meaning of Golf
But what do I get from existence? If it is full I have only distress, if empty only boredom. How can you offer me so poor a reward for so much labor . . . — Arthur Schopenhauer Another weekend approaches, bringing leisure hours that we don’t know what to do with. As the busy work week winds to a close, we have a couple of days in which to ponder the emptiness of our lives. How dreary! How much more pleasant if we could fill up the time with other activities. Hence: Golf! Intoxication is another option. Or both at the same time! Read more →
Happy Halloween
I look forward to taking my son out trick-or-treating every year. I have lots of Halloween memories, mostly happy, some sad . . . One year — he was in kindergarten or 1st grade, I can’t remember which — I took him out and he was so excited, running from house to house . . . As he was running back from one house, he slipped and fell right in front of a group of older kids. They were very nice, helped him up, asked if he was okay, which he was, but it really demoralized him. A couple of houses later, he said he wanted to go home. I asked him if he felt bad about falling down in front of everybody and he said no, he was just tired and wanted to go home. So I took him home. He’s 11 now and tonight he and his friends… Read more →
Temptation
It’s tough to eat healthy . . . I usually buy a fruit smoothie for lunch, but as I was telling my wife, to get from the parking lot to the smoothie shop, I have to walk by the taco shop, the pizza shop, the sub shop and the doughnut shop, all with the doors open so you can smell everything. “Why can’t you just eat normal food?” she says. Read more →
Fishtailing
I didn’t get much sleep last night. This morning, I had a 32-ounce iced coffee on an empty stomach. I’m fishtailing between nausea and euphoria . . . Read more →