psychology dector

Permit me to be a bit of crank today. I am sick of the hyperbolic cacophony of Super Bowl related nonsense that has flooded America this week. You heard it here first: football is an excuse to worship violence as part of faux tribal warfare. Remember when games were considered recreation? On Super Bowl Sunday we get a pseudo-national holiday replete with domestic violence, rampant gambling, and overindulgence in food and drink. Let’s examine just one small glob of nonsense from that most middle American of Middle America publications, Parade Magazine , a cheaply printed, mentally challenged publication given away free in Sunday newspapers across the country. No deep, penetrating articles and analysis ever graced the pages of this rag; the reportage in Parade never delves deeper than what shoes a particular actress wore on the red carpet, or what Mick Jagger thinks of Maroon 5. This week’s screaming cover story is “Food! Football! Fun!” No clever headline for these folks! Inside, we ar...

I have come to the conclusion that the best years of my teaching career were the ones where I taught a single curriculum middle school classroom. It was a Catholic school, and I taught every subject to my sixth graders from religion to social studies to English to math. Throw in art, music, and handwriting and we had a complete day. The only subject I didn’t teach was physical education. This allowed me to develop broad themes that inter-linked the subjects, and the day became a seamless exploration of learning. I loved every minute of it. Some subjects were challenging because I was not an expert; math and science were probably my weaker areas, but I enjoyed the opportunity to investigate and research these subjects in my preparation, and I found ample avenues where I could link them to what we were studying in history, social studies and literature. Traditionally, those teachers pursuing an elementary credential studied all the subjects. They were the ones prepared for a self-contain...

This is an edited version of my story published by Karl Heiss in his magazine, Hippo , in that long ago summer of 1990. * * * * Outside the clear glass windows, the headlights of passing cars hurried home in the dark. Inside the crowded restaurant was a swirl of frenetic movement composed of wait staff, busboys, and patrons moving and bumping their way from booth to booth. People at a window table—man, woman, a bond between them that one could see in their eyes—whispered, smiled, chatted. The whole globe of this swirling world existed only for themselves. They stood suddenly, nuzzling each other and moved out of the restaurant together. In contrast, Clara and Josh sat, nearly motionless at a nearby table, he in his standard dark jeans, black tee shirt, and tweed jacket, and she in a simple pink, cotton dress. “So?” she asked. “So?” he replied. The waiter rushed by, sizzling platters resting on both arms. Tangible smells of roasted onion floated above their heads, mingling with the cig...

for K.H. It had been more than a few years since I searched for you. I plugged your name into the search engine generating 43 million hits. “Remembering Karl and Marisa…Karl Heiss…Marisa Bauducco-Heiss…taken from us far too soon…fatal traffic accident…Olympia, Washington, October 3, 2008…11-year-old daughter, Aliana, suffered brain injury…6-year-old son, Alden, severe case of whiplash…southbound Subaru braked for slowing traffic, but lost control and went across the median, under the cable barrier and into northbound lanes. The car struck the semi-truck head on.” I slumped in my chair. We were best friends in college, you with your trumpet and me on piano. Then, we decided together that a music career wasn’t for us, so we switched to creative writing and English. The only recording session I did as a musician, you produced. You published one of my stories in your magazine. Now, you are gone, dying with your wife on a lonely stretch of Interstate 5. * * * * “How are your blood sugar num...

What does it mean to be brave? Is it different from being fearless? Being brave means facing our fears and not letting them overwhelm us. Fearless means one is afraid of nothing. We can only be fearless in increments. There will always be something that terrifies us. However, it is possible to be brave in the scariest moments and in the horrible face of what terrifies us. Over the holiday, I was rereading Don J. Snyder’s 1997 memoir, The Cliff Walk: A Job Lost and a Life Found (Little, Brown and Company/Back Bay Books) . Snyder was a successful English teacher at Colgate University in upstate New York when he received his pink slip. The experience changed his life in dramatic and decisive ways. Snyder’s journey follows his departure from Colgate and details his emotional climb through anger and arrogance, his shortsighted immature approach to the crisis. He is 41 years old, married with three children under the age of seven with a fourth child on the way. Not a good time to be adrift ...