The Water Cooler

July 9th, 2010

This Week’s Topics…

Overcoming Hardship
In his recent column in the Washington Post, Michael Gerson reviews the powerful new…
Health & Fitness
How do you spend family time? Sitting down? USA Today is sponsoring a summer-long Family…
Wisdom
Are we as a nation less empathetic than ever? Does this decline have something to do…
Grammar police
One thing that really bothers me is when signs use quotation marks around words that…
Sports
What's in a name? For college basketball player God’s Gift Achiuwa, it may be a sign.…

Overcoming Hardship

One Name, Two Very Different Lives

In his recent column in the Washington Post, Michael Gerson reviews the powerful new book, "The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates." It's the true story of two unrelated kids who happen to share a name raised by single mothers in difficult environments. One becomes a Rhodes scholar, while the other one ends up in jail on a murder charge.

Gerson's review shows the book to be valuable, but one of the gems is Gerson's own thought at the end, which speaks to all of us adults. While you can't control the kind of privilege you are born into, "there is one decisive form of privilege that many of us can control and confer to others -- the tenacious, demanding love of a parent or mentor."

The Family That Exercises Together

by John Kingston

How do you spend family time? Sitting down? USA Today is sponsoring a summer-long Family Fitness Challenge (see http://dietchallenge.usatoday.com), and has a lot of great ways for your family to have active fun together.

Read it all...

Wisdom

Think of Something Stupid to Say (and Then Don't Say It)

by Jean Yih Kingston

Are we as a nation less empathetic than ever? Does this decline have something to do with social media and our decreasing face-to-face interactions? Was General McChrystal spending too much time on Facebook before his Rolling Stone Interview?? Perhaps as a nation, we need to hold our tongues and exercise more verbal self control.

A "Great" Idea for a Blog

by Nancy French

One thing that really bothers me is when signs use quotation marks around words that really don’t need them. One guy devoted a whole website to the phenom — snooty, English major’s indulgence probably. But fun, nonetheless!

Read it "all."

Sports