Can anything beat this beautiful song by Bob Marley? If you haven’t heard it in awhile check it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55s3T7VRQSc Old pirates, yes, they rob I Sold I to the merchant ships Minutes after they took I From the bottomless pit But my hand was made strong By the hand of the almighty We forward [...]

I’ve been so busy writing the NMNW Training Manual that I haven’t had much time to write for this blog after my day is done. But hang in there, I’d love to take up blogging again – in the meantime I’d like to begin posting interesting pieces writen by others. I’ll start with this essay [...]

I finally found a Harriet Tubman book that I can bear to read. Every night just after 10pm I go to bed and read about her. No one, but no one affects me the way she does. I stare at photos of her and find it so hard to believe that she ever really lived. [...]

Everything changes for me in summer. The kids go off to travel the world, I go to the National Women’s Martial Arts Foundations annual rockin’ conference and then back East to summer where I was born. This is all fine with me. It’s just those last few weeks of school that send me off my [...]

They came from another planet! A safety planet where cheerleaders become self defense trainers and female students become very dangerous to predators. In a 6 hour period one could hardly tell the difference between teacher and student – the mysterious morphing had begun. They learned from us – we learned from them. We negotiated, de-escalated, [...]

Paula Plessas is a miracle in my life. I love her, admire her, think she’s the real deal. That’s all I want to say about Ms Plessas.

“Like others suddenly elevated to authority, all the bullying instincts in his nature rose to the surface. It wasn’t that he was basically unkind, it was because he was so frightened and unsure of himself. He was harsh lest others learn his inadequacies and refuse his authority. Besides, there was some pleasure in shouting at [...]

I’ve been talking up a storm about this curriculum I’m working on and I got such a wonderful new perspective on it today. I was listening to NPR and there was a story about this government run program in Kenya to educate the children of semi-nomadic tribes people. They sent teachers out to the remote [...]

There is a wonderful article about marriage in the latest issue of Psychology Today. It’s called “The Expectation Trap.” Oh, please read this thing if you are in a relationship of almost any length. It has some insights into how we interact with our partners that I found interesting and helpful. Lord knows, we’ve all [...]

I was just over at the grocery store and noticed a sign above the aisle pointing the way to the “Health Food” section – and it struck me…isn’t it so strange that it has to have a separate area? A little aisle of nutritious sanity amid the rows and rows of what – edible food [...]