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The company was convivial, the food delicious, the candlelight and music divine. Then one guest, just making conversation, began to inventory recent outrages from the powers-that-be: did we hear about fraud and callousness in this government program? About this attack on civil liberties? About this scandal in high places? Air began to leak out of …

When I was an unhappy girl, I tried complaining to my mother (may she rest in peace). I only tried a few times, enough to realize her answer would invariably be the same. “Happy, schmappy!” she’d shrug, “Who’s happy?” If you’re listening, Mom, I’ve got an answer.

Yesterday on NPR’s Fresh Air, culture critic John Powers offered his list of 2006′s defining cultural moments. What struck me about many of them was their similarity: deducing 2006′s essential character from Powers’ list, you’d have to say that stateside, it’s been a year of culture clash. Half of Powers’ dozen or so items comprised …

This week I dug out the light box I bought when we lived in Seattle, where darkness falls before 4 pm each day and persists till nearly 9 in the morning. The box generates an intense light that helps overcome the malaise some people experience in the season of darkness. For some reason, even though …

One of the best things about the busy, confusing time in which we live is that the more we learn through science, the more the truths of Spirit are revealed. Read on to learn how to join people around the world on Friday, December 22nd, Solstice Day, in celebrating this delightful convergence. The Global Consciousness …

There is a persistent story that people who stood up to fascism in the 1930s, before World War II took shape, were later condemned as “premature antifascists.” Some of the members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, volunteers who fought the fascists in Spain in 1936-39, described facing this opprobrium when they later attempted to join …

Since I wrote about Leonard Cohen last month, I have been thinking about an obsession we share, an addiction to beauty. We’ve been having one of those amazing California Decembers where the afternoon light is so intensely honeyed and clear that you feel you are living inside an immense topaz. This time of year, I …