Thursday, November 15, 2012
TEDxBeaconStreet promises to introduce a wealth of ideas to adults and kids, in a weekend of participatory events and super-short speeches.
There is a vocational path from balloon-twisting artist to NASA flight engineer, and this weekend Joseph Maydell will demonstrate that connection at TEDxBeaconStreet. Instead of the squeaky, air-filled latex tubes Mr. Maydell once used in his old part-time gig to entertain kids, he’ll use a giant weather balloon and its attached camera and computer. During the balloon’s flight, families on the field at the Lincoln School in Brookline will get a real-time look at Earth’s beauty from 20 miles up in the atmosphere. Inspired by the video coming from the International Space Station one night at work, Maydell knew he wanted to share with non-NASA folks the spectacular view of Earth from space. So last year he finished developing a weather …
Thursday, November 1, 2012
From Boston’s brush with the superstorm, a lesson in gratitude.
On the morning after Hurricane Sandy, our routine rush released the kids from its boredom – their main takeaway. They returned to school toting raincoats and lunchboxes, ready for normalcy and catch-up. But even as Sandy was still moving past us, my husband and I were already soaked in the non-stop reports of an enormous storm that had not yet finished with this continent. Here in Boston, the effects were relatively light. At no point was more than 2 percent of the city without power (though if you were kept waiting in the dark, “light” is not how you might describe it). Yet like many in Boston, we have friends up and down a certain span of the East coast. So the images and stories of the “worst ever seen” conditions for our neighbors to …
Monday, August 13, 2012
Menino vs. Chick-fil-A, saving the bake sale, breastfeeding pumped up: Boston has been front and center for three recent flaps over food.
You couldn’t blame anyone outside our fair Commonwealth for thinking that we’ve pushed the needle high on the wacky-o-meter lately, all of it having to do with what we’re feeding ourselves. For sure, we’ve had more than enough of a certain chicken sandwich by now. Happily going without them for years, there isn’t a Chick-fil-A franchise anywhere in Boston. Yet for the past three weeks, the two have been inextricably linked. In July, when the company’s president, Dan Cathy, publicly reiterated his longstanding anti-gay marriage stance, Mayor Thomas Menino's wrote to him. In his Chick-fil-A letter he declared, “There is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it.” Chick-fil-A had …
Friday, July 27, 2012
I’m not trying to raise an Olympian, but I hope the Games will inspire my kids to try something new.
It’s the kind of hunger you wish to see more of: a child’s desire to improve, learn more, maybe even be the best. A fire in the belly to achieve – not the kind that’s sated with a cracker. At my house, the demand is more about handfuls of Goldfish than craving sailing or swimming lessons, some impulses we’d welcome. But the 2012 Olympic Games could change all that. As we turn on the TV this week to close-ups of determined faces and stories of how the Olympic athletes got there, I’m hoping a little inspiration leaks out of the tube and into my kids. They may be weak in their genetic gifts for sport, thanks to me. But can I expect that, out of dozens of events over 16 days, they might discover something worth trying? There are the kind of …
Thursday, July 12, 2012
"One child broke a bowl carrying her dinner dishes to the kitchen. One burned herself in three places with that first-world, post-Martha Stewart version of a necessary household tool, the hot-glue gun."
I’m being terrorized by a machete-wielding, three-year-old child: There are pictures of him in my head, working in his Amazon habitat, helping around the house, practicing cutting wood. His six-year-old neighbor is there too. She’s on an expedition away from her own family; cleaning camp, fishing for dinner, and preparing meals for an entire group of people. These accomplished children are the latest images of childhood competing with my own family, leaving me breathless as I discover what parenting mistakes I’m making today. Should I be a Chinese Tiger Mom? Or more Français? Am I overparenting and being overprotective? Depriving my kids of nature, a dog, or just sunscreen? All are topics covered in the latest health and parenting news, …
Monday, July 2, 2012
While Elizabeth Warren's TV ads try to explain the importance of her consumer protection work, Scott Brown demonstrates his homemaking. Within the Massachusetts contest for the U.S. Senate, it's a scuffle in the war between the sexes.
Forget the truck, the barn jacket, the Cosmo centerfold: Nothing about Sen. Scott Brown has appealed to me as much as what he’s doing in his new TV commercials, cooking and cleaning at home. I’ve seen the “Dad” and “Husband” ads repeatedly, and maybe because I don’t watch much TV (not because I shun it, I’m just too disorganized to fit it in), I’m drawn to watching every time, usually while I’m doing the dishes myself: Brown wears a T-shirt and eyeglasses, looking more homey than senatorial. He’s stirring up something in the kitchen, he takes clothes out of the dryer; he gives his wife a chastely romantic kiss on the forehead. Gail Huff—Brown’s wife and a longtime New England broadcast journalist, mother to their two grown daughters—…
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Massachusetts says bullying is down, but 40 percent of middle school girls report being bullied.
Dear Syd, It’s 10:30 p.m., you’re finally asleep and we’re both exhausted, but I think you’re bully-proofed for tomorrow. I was worried about the stomachache you said lasted all day yesterday. So I spoke with the doctor and went over some ideas with you after school: drink plenty of water, keep a pain diary, a food diary. Walking home on a humid, cool, green afternoon, we chuckled about that. But another diary may be in order. You were acting rather helpless at bedtime, preferring mom’s full turn-down service to a quick goodnight wish a couple of minutes later. I was trying to settle in for an evening of my own, non-parenting work, so I yelled, of course. Tears. And then, the confession that your friends are picking on you. Sydney, why …
Monday, May 21, 2012
Low attendance at a city-sponsored meeting sends the wrong signal.
When you’re a member of the audience, you hope to outnumber the performers. An empty venue is disheartening for those on stage and there’s less energy in the room. Boston Public Schools (BPS) took the stage on a rainy Tuesday night, holding its latest community meeting on improving school choice. But with fewer than two dozen people attending, speakers included – we barely made it. Go ahead, you can yawn – “community meeting on improving school choice” is one boring string of words, and not an event destined to be standing room only. But I was wide-eyed, thinking of the immense task Mayor Thomas Menino created for the city in January, in promising to overhaul the lottery assignment process and begin fostering school communities for 57,…
Thursday, April 19, 2012
New children's stores in the mall draw parents with kids to the Shops at Prudential Center, a place that relieves the dearth of community spaces in the Back Bay.
Stay in your lane, pass on the left and neither exceed nor fall under the speed limit: These are the unspoken traffic rules at Boston’s Prudential Center mall. Crowded with office workers, tourists, and locals, the busy hall off Boylston Street reminds you that you are still in the city. But pass the north-side main drag, and the aisles widen while the lovely skylight ceilings persist. Ahhh, space. It’s here that young families are making the mall their own. A landscaped garden, places indoors to linger, and now a family-oriented trio of businesses are all holding down the age of the average Pru visitor. With most residents in our urban neighborhoods tucked into condos without yards, we covet any living space beyond our own homes. The mall…
Monday, April 9, 2012
Whether or not the Florida’s teen’s clothing contributed to his death, we can use the lesson of appearance to protect our kids.
Squinting into the distance, I search for my 10-year-old. With rolling backpack in tow, she’s walking ahead of me after school. The meandering pace of her little sibling was slowing us down, and big sister was eager to get homework started. “Mom, can I go home by myself?” The leash lengthens as a child grows, and that day I let it out some more. So with plenty of daylight left, I handed her the keys. My daughter is a different color, shape, and size than Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old boy in Florida who was fatally shot by a man on a neighborhood watch five weeks ago. But fear of harm done to your child can shorten the leash. And what parent in America has not rethought the distance between herself and her children since Trayvon’s tragedy…
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