Greetings, friends! Books This month I finished the book The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. This episode in history was new to me, and the book captured the time period and its complexities in a thrilling narrative. As Italy was in the throes of turmoil, slowly breaking from papal rule and coming under greater European influence (read: enlightenment), … More Get Lit – Best of November 2025
Hi everyone. Hope you’re staying hydrated. In anticipation of the school year, I have been reading a lot of “kid lit”. The pervasive theme is maturity, or a variation of it. Often, characters embark on a journey (sometimes physical, sometimes emotional) that leads to change. They assume greater responsibility, make tough choices, and ultimately discover who … More Get Lit – Best of July 2024
The weather has been fun recently, hasn’t it? Books Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safan Foer was a quirky epistolary that captured the relationship between an American-Jewish tourist and the Ukrainian tour guide who was helping him discover/uncover his family roots. It was violent and vulgar and vulnerable. I enjoyed it immensely and can imagine Tarantino making it into a … More Get Lit – Best of April 2024
Let’s get lit! Books Seth Godin always impresses and his book This is Marketing is another game-changer. Godin asks probing questions and demands a reckoning of values. It’s not about the money, he argues. There’s a story behind everything. We have to figure out what story we are telling. And why. And who we are aligning ourselves … More Get Lit – Best of February 2024
In his book, This is Marketing, author and innovator Seth Godin writes, “When we find the empathy to say, ‘I’m sorry, this isn’t for you…’ then we also find the freedom to do work that matters,” (101). While some might try to discredit this statement as irrelevant for anyone other than marketers, I’d posit that … More Trade Schools: A Last Bastion of Hope
Books Haruki Murakami is a prolific writer of magical realism – which is not generally my thing. However, that did not stop me from devouring Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. Both were fantastic and included a myriad of musical references (Murakami owned a jazz club in Japan, so the soundtracks are an integral part of each story). I loved … More Get Lit – Best of January 2024
In her seminal treatise Reader, Come Home; The Reading Brain in a Digital World, writer and educator Maryann Wolf delineates the differences between book reading and screen reading. She describes “the perspective-taking dimension of deep reading,” and highlights the “capacity to be transported from whatever our present realities are to an internal place where we … More Walk a Mile in Her Shoes: Why Octavia Butler Matters in 2024
Hello again! New York is enjoying a change in weather. Hopefully you’re getting out an’ about, smelling the roses and all that. Let’s mix it up… Beats: I can’t stop listening to Elvis Presley’s last performance of Unchained Melody. In this video there are some heartbreaking moments when he stumbles over his words while joking … More Get Lit – Best of May 2023
Baby it’s COLD outside! So here’s a list of things to warm you up. Books The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame (which Disney converted into a movie) is a charming little book about a boy who discovers the true nature of dragons—they actually prefer composing sonnets to devouring damsels in distress. The boy decides to help his new … More Get Lit – December 2022
“An eye for an eye.” “Turn the other cheek.” Both essential wisdoms, yet they contradict. One critical aspect of education is understanding nuance. Context and circumstances often dictate a need for a particular response; hence, the need for ethics based education (not to be confused with politics or religious based education). By integrating the systems … More It All Adds Up…in the End…of Days
Find the balance. 