Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Last Monday, I posted a clip from a talk that I gave at Northwestern as part of a workshop on work/life challenges. Hosted at a place of employment, I set out to talk about these issues through the lens of how we can make our work environment fit into the rest of our life. On …
For people who follow sports, lately there’s been a wave of conversation about locker-room bullying and what it means. A player for the Miami Dolphins, Jonathan Martin, outed another player, Richie Incognito, as a bully. Threatening and insulting (racial slurs) voicemails were uncovered. In the initial wave, many critiqued Martin, the person bullied, for defying …
I’m at a convention and in a hotel with the whole family. Leaving home with the kids is exhausting so I’ll be brief today. But while in the restaurant with my children, I had this thought (again. I’ve had it before): When you see children acting terribly in public, do not judge. It’s not that …
I didn’t set out for this to be Disney-week on thismess.net, but here we are. Sunday I discussed an art project to critique Disney via applying the princess lens to our heroines (and the ways that people read that art project so differently). Tuesday turned to the “History Princesses” and a critique of the Daily …
I’m always very skeptical of the story “boy/girl with special needs allowed to do normal sports thing” stories. And if you don’t know what I mean, you don’t obsessively follow mainstream news about kids with disabilities! This might be a good thing for you. I just feel that often these events become tokens of inclusion, …
About a month ago, I discussed a story about more than reasonable accommodation in Heathrow airport for a young man with autism. The article reads, in part: The 21-year-old has severe autism and obsessive compulsive disorder, but has to negotiate the hectic bustle of Heathrow airport to attend Boston Higashi High School in the US. …
Last week the Daily Mail, not my favorite U.K. paper, published a piece called “The History Girls.” Let me say up front that I respect the work of the scholars in question and I understand why they cooperated with the newspaper and its photographers (and hair/makeup artists). But here’s how I see the resulting piece …
Last week I was privileged to be the keynote speaker at two workshops on “Work/Life Challenges – It’s Not Just for Women Anymore.” I spoke for about a half an hour on my experiences, the challenges my wife and I encounter, some of the strategies we use to meet those challenges, and the broader issues …
Over the past few days, quite a number of my friends have shared this now well-traveled link. In it, the artist renders a number of true heroines – Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Malala, Anne Frank, and others – as if they were Disney princesses. The diverging responses have been remarkable and I have tried …
Later today, I’m going to talk about Disney and what I think functions as a kind of Rorschach test. It’s been fascinating if, admittedly, infuriating, to see people not see the world exactly as I see it! Such moments are usually good moments for introspection. More on that this afternoon. For now, here’s the roundup …