October 3, 2015

How to Deal with Grief

Ceremonies of remembrance

How to deal with grief varies from person to person. There’s no magic cure for the weight of sadness. But telling stories helps. So here goes.  My best friend growing up was Polly Noble.  We met on the first day of nursery school.  We both had adorable bowl haircuts.  Our apartments were 4 blocks apart.  The rest, as they say, was history. We spent years of our childhoods laying on the floors of each other’s bedrooms, playing Uno and Guess Who.  We have seen the movie Grease together 2,659 times.  At her apartment, we would play tag in the hall with her dog and have juice out of these endlessly…

August 29, 2014

Secrets of Effective Communication

coffee breakfast table

I don’t speak Spanish. Until recently, this never effected my ability for effective communication. Then, about 2 weeks ago, I moved to Spain.    All of a sudden, my lack of Spanish was quite a relevant and important part of my day-to-day life.  I am working in an American setting here and could honestly probably get by without learning much of the language, but my interactions with shop-keepers, waiters and cute boys in bars classy museums now center around my very minimal command of a foreign language. Like every time I travel, I was immediately reminded of the other ways that exist for friendly and effective communication.  Get your mind…