www.guardian.co.uk:
'I felt that the only thing I was on earth to do was to write'A couple of months ago Mavis Gallant had a dream. A messenger came to the door carrying a cardboard box with a lid on it. On top was written "Mavis Gallant" in big letters – and underneath it "Bad Prose". "I was devastated. Devastated for days. I thought, they ar (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Society:
With five biological daughters, Anita Tedaldi was keen to adopt a little boy. But little did she ever imagine that it might not work outThe first time I considered giving up my baby, Dan, I was lying alone in bed. It was midnight, my children were asleep and my husband, a serviceman, was deployed away from home. I was so ta (Read More)
SF Gate:
Catherine Ashton: International woman of mystery Ashton is Europe's first foreign policy chief, the international representative of half a billion people, with a 7 billion euro ($10.5 billion) budget and a salary of more than $300,000 a year _ but in her... European Union - Catherine Ashton Baroness Ashton of Uphol (Read More)
The Guardian:
The Anglican church should no longer put the virtue of uniformity above the need to challenge prejudice and suffering"United we stand, divided we fall" is a common saying. Likewise there is a Japanese proverb "A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle."To stay united (or appear to be), members of families, re (Read More)
www.guardian.co.uk:
A book lover's guide to building a brilliant children's libraryNo 52 Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson (1948)Here we are at last, ensconced in the very last Book Corner (or at least, the last official Book Corner – a series of pleadings on my part have elicited permission to add an appendix-type affair next week to ga (Read More)
www.guardian.co.uk:
Clare Clark on a tangled family webMaya de Jong, an 18-year-old girl from small-town western Australia, moves to Melbourne. There she tentatively embraces her adult self, renting a room in the house of an experimental film-maker and embarking on an affair with her boss. She cannot imagine what her backwoods parents will mak (Read More)
washingtonpost.com - Letters to the Editor:
I don't often agree with Charles Krauthammer, but his Nov. 13 op-ed column, "Medicalizing mass murder," was right-on. Maj. Nidal Hasan's "shooting up a room of American soldiers" at Fort Hood was clearly an act of Islamist fanaticism, and it is crazy to blame it on "compassion fatigue." That those responsible for detecting (Read More)
Huffington Post:
It turns out that one of the most basic things we all learned aschildren — treat others how you’d like to be treated, the Golden Rule —is the most powerful idea in the world.The idea is so important,says scholar of religion and author Karen Armstrong, that it forms thecore of every religion and is among the deepest values o (Read More)
Huffington Post:
Recently I blogged about Karen Armstrong's Charter for Compassion, an attempt to rally both the interfaith and secular communities around a unifying concept. Today I want to talk about an extraordinary book that builds on the same concept and links it to generosity in action. The book is Being Generous, by Ted Malloch.Ma (Read More)
The Blog:
With the smugness of someone in the winner's circle, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski churlishly chastised women for not having babies while also having careers. Her commentary lacked any compassion for the many women who desperately wanted husbands and children, but fate -- not desire -- worked against them. As she recently wrote, (Read More)
Boing Boing:
Bonnoe says: "The folks at the TED Prize have been working with partners around the world to fulfill the wish of best-selling author and former nun, Karen Armstrong – the Charter for Compassion. The Charter is a document collaboratively written with contributions from thousands of people from more than 100 countries. With a (Read More)
guardian.co.uk Sport:
Rafael Nadal talks about the personal and physical problems that have disrupted his season as he prepares to head to London for the ATP Tour World FinalsIn a discreet corner of an elegant hotel in Paris, Rafael Nadal remembers his part in one of the most public displays of sporting pain this year. On 1 February, in Melbourn (Read More)