Author Archive for admin

LAUSD needs a pit bull PTA mom - Sandra Tsing Loh

The LA Times op-ed page this week rocks with yesterday’s piece on MOCA by Heather Dundas and today’s on PTA moms by Sandra Tsing Loh.

PTA moms are the very opposite of the $500,000-golden-parachute bureaucrats Brewer has come to represent. PTA moms draw no salary. We work nights, weekends, holidays. We bring our kids’ schools new resources every day — whatever we can load into our minivans. (Binders, colored pencils, toilet paper, snacks, basketball hoops and musical instruments are but some of the items I’ve seen moms deliver.) We know not just how to make a dollar stretch but how to make no dollars stretch. (Look how handy we are with scrip, Chuck E. Cheese fundraisers, Vons give-back-to-school cards.) So thrifty are we, it shocks us when our snickerdoodle-baking world meets the LAUSD money-hosing world.

Life and art at MOCA - Heather Dundas

Heather Dundas from the LA Times op-ed page today:

I wanted my children to experience that connection between art and life, so I continued to take them to exhibitions. We saw the enormous photographs of Thomas Struth in 2002. (Teo’s reaction: “So what?” Adena’s: “Scary families.”) In 2004, we went to see Doug Wheeler’s unearthly bright neon wall, which we all loved, and in 2005, we saw the monumental paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which gave me a chance to tell the kids what it was like to live in New York City in 1980. Going to the museum had become a habit with us, and Teo had begun to forget that he hated art.

Rachel Resnick’s Love Junkie Book Party

One of WashPo’s Best Books of 2008! Way to go Seth

From Jonathan Yardley’s Picks of the Best Books of 2008 in the Washington Post:

I’m not going to make any cosmic claims for Shining City, by Seth Greenland, but it had me laughing out loud over and over again. It concerns a rather hapless Los Angeles middle-management guy who falls into a wholly unexpected bonanza: His sleazy older brother dies of a splendidly stage-managed heart attack and leaves him a dry-cleaning business that turns out to be a front for a prostitution ring. I’d never before heard of Greenland, but Shining City sent me to his first novel, The Bones, and the two put me squarely in his fan club.

Out of sight not out of mind

For Mindful Moms with kids away at college, here’s an easy way to help them get an Absentee Ballot, for what could be the most important election in their lifetimes.

Amy Ephron from One for the Table has built an online tool to help college kids get an Absentee Ballot. The deadline in some states for receiving the application is October 15th, so get on it!

Click Here to Get Started

PeaceJam - Brett Engle

This year on September 11-13th, we’re doing another PeaceJam International Youth Conference, this time in Los Angeles with 7 Nobel Peace Laureates. 3,000 Jammers from around the world are flying, driving, and busing in to take on The Global Call to Action, a plan to address the 10 core issues which the Nobel’s feel threaten the world over this next decade, by implementing 1 BILLION service projects.

InnerKids on TV! Whoo hoo!

A half hour news television program about InnerKids and teaching mindfulness to children will be broadcast this weekend as part of the Profiles in Caring television series funded by Equitable Life Insurance.

Hard Questions — Liz Dubelman

Liz Dubelman answers her 4 year old daughter’s tough questions about sex in this hilarious Well-Told Tale podcast from VidLit.

Mindful mom is mortified that there was a techno-glitch with this podcast earlier today. If you tried to listen before and heard an exceedingly boring public radio interview, I urge you to listen again to this very funny podcast by VidLit

Building Emotional Intelligence and Fostering Resilience in Children — Linda Lantieri

What are some of your hopes for the important children in your life? Whether they will be successful at realizing those hopes is dependent on whether we, the adults in their lives, have equipped them with the inner strength they will need to approach their day-to-day challenges as well as the big challenges life may throw them.

Changing the world one pillow at a time — Danielle Sobol

While working at a pediatric cardiology clinic in Israel last year with Zanzibari children, grad student Danielle Sobol became fascinated with their culture. She went to Zanzibar and met a group of truly amazing women and discovered that while her basic computer skills were very helpful to them, they were making a difference themselves with their not-so-basic skills making pillows.

A walk on the not-so-wild side.

Novelist Diana Wagman published an op-ed piece in last weekend’s LA Times about unlikely connections that can be made while walking in her eclectic neighborhood.

Way to go, Sue!

Sue Smalley’s article Reframing ADHD in the Genomic Era, is published in the latest issue of Psychiatric Times. For those of us interested in the investigation of non-pharmaceutical forms of support for children with ADD/ADHD, Sue voiced encouragement in this mainstream psychiatric journal.

True Mom Confession: I’m saying NO to YES. Romy Lassally

I confess, I started off the summer with a commitment to myself (and unbeknownst to them…my family) that I would loosen up and try to say YES more often than I did during the school year. It worked for a few weeks . . .

Consciousness, the field and the new age

On Intent Blog Deepok Chopra has been posting some interesting video blogs on interconnection and the concept of self. Can’t help but think of Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, where Alice cries:

Curiouser and curiouser!’ . . .

Anti-Chick Lit Author Rachel Resnick interviews Anti-Dick Lit Author Seth Greenland

The only tip I can give writers about writing and selling comes down to this: find your voice. That is the only thing you have that no one else can offer. By the way, this is not easy, and may take years. If there is anything else you think you might like doing, by all means do that.

Way to go Seth!

Seth’s novel Shining City comes out tomorrow and over the weekend both the Washington Post Book Review and the LA Times Book Review gave it high marks.

Not so fit - Lisa Dinsmore

What keeps me going back for more? I can’t stand “losing” to a machine. I realize this is a competition only in my mind, but since it’s keeping track of my fitness “progress” I’m compelled to make it change its’ tune and am scared every time I step on the board. I guess anything that gets the heart rate up is a good thing, right?

NY Times Article on Mindfulness and Therapy

The NY Times published a well-balanced article by Benedict Carey in today’s newspaper entitled Lotus Therapy about the integration of mindfulness meditation into psychology. For those interested in the area it is worth a look.

InnerKids and the Schwaggin Wagon

Ever hear of the scwaggin wagon? We hadn’t until they called us and offered to donate tons of promotional swag - the type of stuff kids would die for - to InnerKids. So we checked them out and learned:

Women, guns, butterfat and blogging. Jeep

This was in an email I got from a friend this morning:

I approach shooting as a form of yoga, concentrating on the breathing, with sensitivity to even the pulsing of my heart. Focus. Be here now. I can do this on the range. I do not shoot or dream of shooting living things. Just printed-paper targets.

Way to go Janet!

Rising expectations for the future of film distribution paved the way for a pair of important industry moves within the independent movie industry today. . .

Message from the Dalai Lama to Friends of Tibet

“I want to urge my fellow Tibetans who live in freedom outside Tibet to be extra vigilant as they voice their feelings on the developments in Tibet. . .”