Walking, talking and gorging on goodies

“I’ll have another Cinnabon,” she says, in that feathery voice that has always characterized Amy’s speaking style. My youngest sister is making her way back to the familiar terrain of her former life—the span of time before the day she took her wingless flight from Rembrandt’s powerful withers.

Two months have passed since the beautiful paint horse stilled Amy’s ability to simply move through her days, walk at will, drive to self-selected destinations, complete tasks and chores, garden and paint and perform her music, care for a multitude of feathered and furred beings.

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Compassionate teen avers that ‘Hope is Alive’

DAMASCUS, PA—You’ve seen the signs all over the River Valley that read: “Compassion: Think It! Live It!” Those signs, which are part of the Harmony Project’s homegrown initiative to inspire character development, cropped up this spring and now appear on people’s lawns and on buttons worn on their lapels (See The River Reporter June 26 for more details on the Harmony Project.)

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Fight fair

Ask any couple who have been through marriage counseling, and they’ll tell you a basic truth: success in marriage is not a question of whether you argue (you will) but how you argue. Disagreements are inevitable, but there are better and worse methods for dealing with them. The same thing is true in political discourse, and for peace and justice activists it’s a matter for serious concern.

Many commentators rightly bemoan the sorry state of “dialogue” in present-day America. This situation is nothing new. The arts of political name-calling and divisive rhetoric are at least as old as democracy itself, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some cave wall somewhere bears the scrawled Neolithic equivalent of “The chief is a fink.”

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Nomads of summer

Anything but homeless, we travel like nomads through the summer, living out of suitcases and minivans, from one paradise to another, with occasional forays into the steamy depths of Manhattan.

We are fortunate, I know, to have the ‘best of both worlds.’ A pair of Broadway show tickets awaits my return to the city later this week. That will mean a late dinner at Barrymore’s with my husband—a real date, without children, and some time to reconnect.

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