The Roland Allen Post

A New York Times article said, Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked...

Spontaneity is not my gift, I like options, so making a decision takes away options, because I've decided on a path. However, in keeping options open, I miss opportunities. This sounds like a no-brainer when I put it in writing: loosen up and take some risks. I wish it were that easy. I did, however, do two and a half spontaneous things yesterday and I didn't wake up today feeling like my life is a disaster. One: I joined the Bowers Museum. I bought and online membership and visited the museum with a friend yesterday afternoon. Two: I signed up for an online writing course with Gotham Writing Workshop. I'll begin a six-week course starting next Tuesday. One-half: I have a reservation on hold to go to Paris next month using frequent flyer miles. I was able to get a reservation on non-stop flights at a reasonable mileage rate. I'll also be able to add on a hotel room, using points, just steps from Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées. This is where the rub

Two articles caught my attention this afternoon. The first addresses how Americans do not take vacations. It seems that we work all the time. It was on CNN.com. Why is America the "no vacation nation"? One man speaks about the culture in his office: "The running joke at Brock's company is that a vacation just means you work from somewhere else." The article points out that this isn't the case in other countries where people actually take vacations and they leave their work behind. One of the findings of a study is that Americans get more satisfaction from work than they do from taking vacations. Yet, doing so, says another study cited in the article, doesn't make our economy more competitive than countries where workers take lots of time off for vacation, such as in Sweden, which mandates that workers take five weeks of vacation each year.  The second article was also reported on CNN.com, Little people, lots of pills: Experts debate medicating ki

Friends from the UK were in California last week. They connected the 4-day Easter holiday and the Royal Wedding holiday with a few vacation days and took a 10-day spring vacation. I shared with them my post about ethical eating and lamented how difficult it is to find ethically raised food in the United States. I also complained about the difficulty in knowing how the food I buy is raised. Their comment was, simply, all the beef in the UK is grass-fed. That’s the norm. I was left trying to figure out how those of us in the United States gave away decisions on how food is raised to corporations and government food programs. It doesn’t make sense to me. It makes even less sense when I think about the health crisis in the United States and health care costs. Isn’t anyone connecting this to how our food is raised? I went to Henry’s Market yesterday. Henry’s is part of Whole Foods, the “healthy” alternative to the grocery market. Henry’s had one very small section of the meat

It may have started when my friend Nicole Leimbach encouraged me to buy cage-free eggs. Prior to that I hadn't thought much about which eggs I purchased. One thing led to another and I've begun to look more seriously into ethical issues surrounding the foods I buy. I’m following CNN’s Freedom Project this year, which details modern day slavery, a practice that fuels some food-producing industries. Just before Valentine's Day 60 Minutes ran a segment on unpaid child labor in the production of cocoa, the raw product that goes into making chocolate. I’m taking more time reading labels at the grocery store in an attempt to understand where the food I buy comes from. However, it’s difficult to get that information. As an example, finding free range meats is almost impossible in most neighborhood grocery stores. And, as a chocolate-lover, it’s hard determining which chocolates are fair trade or ethical trade. I’ve also found that I can’t assume that chains like Trade

CNN posted a powerful and challenging video that highlights a man who didn't become numb when seeing suffering surrounding him. Here's a link to the video: Feeding the hungry, nourishing the soul .

I have a lot of “favorite” Flannery O’Connor short stories . Flannery O’Connor’s   short story, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," is included in   The Complete Stories . This story is somewhat haunting, possibly because O'Connor freely borrows key images from a number of her other stories. For example, the image of the car as a vehicle of freedom and justification is used in   Wise Blood   (with its main character   Hazel Motes   noting that a man with a good car doesn't need salvation); and the notion of Catholicism as a dismissible un-advanced and "old" religion by a character who hasn't the patience to think deeply about spiritual things is used in   The Displaced Person  and other places. And, as is common, the story includes a widowed woman  with an invalid adult daughter who is unmarried. (It's interesting how often O'Connor uses this image since she was a physically afflicted, unmarried adult daughter living with a widowed mother. It&#

I thought I'd share a bit of my every day life in southern Orange County, California  since I spend quite a bit of time at the beach, particularly at the end of the work day. This video is in Dana Point , just behind Ocean Institute. View Larger Map

I haven't read Andrew Ferguson's Crazy U , but I did read his article "How to get your kid into the Ivy League," which was published in the March 18, 2011 issue of The Week . Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College I read stuff like this all the time because "getting kids into the Ivy League" is what I do for a living. Or, at least that was people think/hope I do. Actually, I'm a former admissions officer who worked at two hyper-selective and desirable universities. I'll post more on that later. My take-away from Ferguson's article is at the end when he says that the highly competitive admissions process forces kids to eschew being Lisa Simpson. Rather, in applying to college, applicants become charmers, like the character Eddie Haskell in Leave It to Beaver . I see it all the time and my heart sinks when a bright student comes into my office to discuss his college essays. He'll read the essay prompt and as