The Documented Life | NYTimes.Com These days, when people are alone, or feel a moment of boredom, they tend to reach for a device. In a movie theater, at a stop sign, at the checkout line at a supermarket and, yes, at a memorial service, reaching for a device becomes so natural that we start to forget that there is a reason, a good reason, to sit still with our thoughts: It does honor to what we are thinking about. It does honor to ourselves. God May Not Have A Wonderful Plan For Your Life | . . .

This Is My Brain On Hugs.| Jamie The Very Worst Missionary My hugs are mentally ill. Super White Jesus makes it look so natural. Sort of. As soon as I saw my son’s friend’s dad, my arms began to rise like a hungry zombie, “We are going to hug you, Semi-familiar-Dude-in-the-grocery-store!”, and my brain was like, “WHAT IS HAPPENING?!”. So my arms were indicating they wanted a hug but my face was implying that a hug was a really bad idea. That poor guy. I’m just so confusing, with my arms that . . .

The Fluidity | Neither/Both At the same time, I don’t want to live in fear. I don’t want to walk out in the world with a closed and suspicious heart because I’m more aware of and feeling the reality of the Black experience of racism. It’s like in the past I used to feel like I had to acknowledge racism out of a sense of forced loyalty, and primarily from a White or Mixed perspective. It’s not that I never saw racism before, and I certainly had my own racism to work through. But I definitely saw . . .

Are Private Schools Worth It? | The Atlantic We already know that scores for students in private schools tend to be higher. The question is, is that because they’re from more affluent families…or is that because the schools are doing better? If you go back for a generation the research suggests that there is a private school effect, that even when you control for background factors, private schools seem to be more effective, particularly for certain populations, at boosting their achievement. . . .

Five Reasons Why Urban Farming Is The Most Important Movement Of Our Time | GOOD Local neighbor-to-neighbor commerce generally doesn’t happen in our communities. Residential areas almost never include common spaces where community exchanges might happen. Likewise, because selling homemade bread to your neighbors is illegal in most areas, the law discourages community commerce, and instead encourages you to purchase from the supermarket chain. In my own community, the urban farming movement has . . .

Would Jesus Be Cool With Keeping Poor Kids In Orphanages? | Jamie The Very Worst Missionary: So for the next three years a child with a family that loved her sat in an orphanage. She became one of many children cared for by multiple caregivers a day that came and went and picked up their paychecks at the end of the month. She got three nutritious meals a day and toys donated from America to play with and the occasional trip to town for ice cream, but she lacked a child’s greatest need- a family . . .

The Reading Log: The Quickest, Most Effective Method Of Killing A Love Of Reading | Hometown Homework Chronicles Here’s what reading logs actually do: they turn reading into a chore. They teach kids that time spent matters more than content or understanding of content. Reading logs tell kids that they are untrustworthy and must continually prove themselves. They send the message that kids cannot be independent learners – they must rely on Mom and Dad to back them up Why You Are Teaching . . .

Are Blacks Names ‘Weird,’ Or Are You Just Racist? | The Daily Beast It should be said that this has material consequences in the real world. Research has consistently found that job applicants with “black-sounding” names are more likely to be rejected, regardless of qualifications. If races are our castes, then this makes sense, since—in a caste system—your status is mostly a function of your position. “Latoya” could be well-qualified for the law firm she applies to, but there’s a fair . . .

Writing About Fashion Week Has Made Me Feel Like Shit About Myself I know women come in every shape and size, and it’s all good, but it is HARD to look exclusively at pictures of very thin women and not start to feel a little like shit. And not to open a whole ‘nother can of worms, but women of color have the added bonus of seeing the unrelenting whiteness on many of the runways, and that’s an even more depressing and infuriating issue. I get all the reasons the models are supposed to be . . .

What People Really Look Like (From The Point Of View Of A Massage Therapist) Let’s start here with what nobody looks like: nobody looks like the people in magazines or movies. Not even models. Nobody. Lean people have a kind of rawboned, unfinished look about them that is very appealing. But they don’t have plump round breasts and plump round asses. You have plump round breasts and a plump round ass, you have a plump round belly and plump round thighs as well. That’s how it works. (And that’s . . .