As I drove home from the office Saturday I picked up the Standard Journal (Nov 5) and was saddened to see the cover story about the young boy who took his own life, and his mother’s efforts to find some meaning in the loss and...
“Ice Bucket Challenge” fever swept the nation this year. Time magazine reports that Americans donated 115 million dollars to the ALS foundation to fight a disease most had never really thought about before. So why the big response? It seems we want, even need, to be...
I am writing this week’s column from exotic Richfield, Utah where Ruth and I have spent a couple of days with Trevor and Miranda—our oldest son and his wife—and their 3.4 kids. (Child number 4 is due in April.) We brought our six-year old granddaughter,...
In 1990 I sat in my office with five or six young men, aged 16 to 18. We had been talking about the gang activity that led to their being sentenced to the residential treatment program where I worked, and where they lived. A little...
Over the years I have taught parenting classes to an assortment of groups and in a variety of venues. But the most memorable has to be the series of classes i taught to “a captive audience” in Lompoc Federal Penitentiary. I learned a great deal in...
Evidence has been piling up for years: animals can have great therapeutic effects of people of all ages. While scanning the web for research I saw that the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine held an entire conference on “animal assisted interventions in adolescent mental...