“A penny for your thoughts,” Linda Gibson said to her husband, Don. She had looked up from the evening paper to see him, sitting in his lounge chair with his feet up, gazing off into space. He swiveled the chair to look at her. “A penny?” he asked. “Are you kidding? Allowing for inflation from the first time that expression was used, my thoughts are worth, at the very least, ten dollars.” Linda snorted. “Ten dollars? How do I know they’d be worth ten dollars?” “You don’t,” he said. “It would be like commissioning an artist to paint your portrait. You trust you’ll like it when he’s done, but even…

If you haven’t heard of the Daily Mile yet, your time has come. Now taking place in 3,600 primary schools each day in 35 countries around the world, it takes children outside during normal lesson time to run or walk laps of the playground for 15 minutes. The ones who run cover around a mile each day. The initiative has an endearing back story. It was developed six years ago by St. Ninian’s Primary School in Stirling in central Scotland after children and teachers felt the pupils needed to be in better physical condition. Other schools quickly realized the value, and it started to spread. It is now happening in…

Girl with balloons by Bansky on the Israeli West Bank wall at the Qalandiya checkpoint, north of Jerusalem, Sunday, Dec.,2016. Mick Tsikas/Press Association. All rights reserved. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recognised mental health as an essential component of health since 1946. Yet, around the world, mental wellbeing is an underfunded, under-resourced and largely misunderstood area of health provision. In extreme environments such as war, the detrimental impact on civilian’s mental health is one of the most significant consequences. Following recent events in Gaza and with the Israel-Palestine conflict now in its seventieth year, Palestinian’s need for adequate mental health services is a growing imperative. Over fifty years of…

Editor George Horace Lorimer accepted Sinclair Lewis’s short story “Nature, Inc.” from The Saturday Evening Post’s “slush pile” of manuscripts in 1915 and began a prolific relationship between the satirical author and the magazine. Lewis’s novel Babbitt (1922) brought this kinship to a screeching halt due to its critique of business and the middle class. Lorimer wrote an unkind review of the book, and Lewis was left out of the Post for years to come. Lewis’s story “The Shadowy Glass” observes family dynamics and working women through his signature lens of economic troubles and unfulfilled expectations. The trope of a meddling mother-in-law is surprisingly reversed in one of the author’s most poignant stories about love and money.…

Willie Nelson is an 85-year-old American music icon and he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. And why should he? He wrote this … and this … and spends a lot of time smoking this …   But Nelson is taking some heat from conservative country music fans in Texas who can’t understand why he is performing a fundraising concert for a Democrat. On September 29, Nelson is headlining an event in Austin to raise money for Beto O’Rourke’s senatorial campaign against incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz. A 2004 Gallup survey found nearly 60% of country fans identify more strongly with Republicans, compared with 11% who identify as liberal. Country music fans…

Daniel Ellsberg, whistleblower and peace activist. Wikicommons/Christopher Michel. Some rights reserved. After long and hard negotiations to form a new government following the September elections, it now seems that we will get a continued Social Democratic/Green government supported by the Left Party and, more importantly, now also supported by Liberal and Center parties which broke away from their former coalition with the Moderate/ Conservatives and Christian Democrats (in what was called the ‘Alliance’).  It has taken all this to isolate the xenophobe Swedish Democrats (who got 17 % of the votes) which with some success flirted both with the Conservatives and the Christian Democrats. This means that compromises were made on…

Less than two months ago, the Trump administration announced it would separate minor children from their parents at the border as part of its new “ zero tolerance” policy on undocumented immigration. This controversy has prompted such a public outcry that President Donald Trump walked back the family separation policy with an executive order. Since then, only around 500 families have been reunited. On Saturday, June 30, people protested in more than 600 marches against Trump’s family separation policy. The Washington, D.C., march featured “Orange Is the New Black” actress Diane Guerrero talking about being separated from her parents after they were deported to Colombia, and progressive congressional candidate Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez…

"Most Mira is the opposite of school." Image: Kemal Pervanic During the 1990s, I witnessed first-hand the horrific consequences of the rise of ethnic nationalism in my country, Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was born in Prijedor, one of the regions most severely affected during the Bosnian war and was among the thousands imprisoned in Omarska concentration camp. Since returning to the country in the years after the conflict, I’ve become keenly aware of the revival of scapegoating and demonisation of minorities; a political strategy that risks pushing young people into another conflict. Recognising this danger, I chose to dedicate myself to education, reconciliation and peace-building. In 2006, I started Most…

Well, and how do you like Spain?” the driver said, turning round to him at the stoplight, presenting his gray face with its wrinkles and scaly skin. Generations of hungry ancestors were involved in the production of that face; it had taken centuries to form. “Spain? I like it very much,” Simmons replied. “And so you should,” the driver said, “for after all, it is of your making.” Simmons made no attempt to understand this. He merely said, “It is true,” one of many Spanish phrases he had learned from a book for tourists, part of his quick refresher course. Simmons relaxed. Trying to understand a foreign language was such…

To those who don’t understand addiction, an addict is no more than a person who lacks self-control who’d rather walk around in a daze than deal with real life. They are someone to be judged instead of supported. Nothing is further from the truth. Research has show that there are a long list of issues that lead to addiction, none of which have anything to do with will power. Addicts are highly likely to have struggled with some form of childhood trauma, PTSD, sexual or physical abuse or a mental disorder. Genetics has also been shown to play a big role in perpetuating addiction. If we are going to overcome America’s devastating addiction problem,…