Well, we have arrived at Week 4 of the To Tell the Truth Contest. How are you doing so far? Do you think you have correctly sussed out truth from fiction? Don’t forget to leave your True/False vote in the comment section below the authors’ biographies. After we compile all the responses, we will select the winner and announce his or her name and reveal the veracity of each of the ten entrants in December. Stay tuned for one more bonus episode this Thursday, but for now enjoy Marilyn Myerson’s The Haunting: Ghosts in my Life and Diane Henrikson Russel’s Pet Cards and To Tell the Truth. — Editor Read more
The Inventor and The Collector: Yin and Yang
Marilyn Myerson
What in the world might induce a man to invent an instrument of torture? Might it be the lure of riches? Fame for innovative ingenuity? Deeply abiding bloodlust? Or might it be based on some kind of principle?
We are officially in the "spooky season." Tonight, little ghosts and ghouls will wander your neighborhoods on the hunt for candy and other treats. But Halloween's traditional roots belong to the observance of All Soul's Day, a remembrance of all those who have lived and passed on. Most recently this cultural rite was enshrined in Coco, an animated Disney opus focused on the "dia de los muertos." Today's blog features two stories featuring the inner human spirit with an emphasis on the contrast between good and evil. — Editor
Why I Bought Shampoo for My Shrink’s Wife
Robert Strozier
Intro: Pyschotherapy takes many odd twists and turns, but even by those standards the author’s relationship with his therapist in India was—well—a bit wacky.
By shamelessly pulling a lot of strings in 1966, at age 26, I landed a trainee management job with a large philanthropic organization in New Delhi, India, for which I was totally unqualified. To add to my guilt, the job came with a house and four servants: a cook-bearer, a gardener, a sweeper, and a night watchman, who’d sit outside the front door all night guarding my precious, fraudulent being.
I was in over my head big time, not only at work but home as well. My elderly cook-bearer, Chand, usually out-maneuvered me in battles for control, once pointing out—with a wide grin—that I looked like one of the Beach Boys on an album cover. The message was clear: I was a Boy, not a real Sahib. (More…)
Luck, Skill, Fate and Attitude
We’ve recently received two posts that explored the question : “Which is more important? The way you deal with Life or the way Life deals with you?” Neither writer was aware of the other’s work. Rather than publish them in separate issues of OLLI Connects, we decided to run both of them at once. Enjoy!
Do you consider yourself an (un)lucky person? Are you a poker player? I used to be but decided that with my luck I may as well stay home. Oh, how about skill? Doesn’t poker require some skill like being able to count and remember the cards that have been played. Sure it does! But it didn’t matter in my case; I always lost—was unlucky, you might say. I suppose another way of putting this is to say that my “fate” was always—to lose (at poker). Neither luck nor skill mattered.
So how do you think about luck, skill, and fate in life? Are you a “what will be will be” person? Or do you believe that through skill and some luck, the future is yours to determine? I hope your answer is (More…)
Resilience
Lorraine Watson
There are many definitions of resilience, but simply put, resilience is “thriving despite adversity.” Unfortunately in today’s world, there have been many opportunities for behavioral scientists to study both adults and children who have experienced horrendous and traumatizing events in their lives: natural disasters, man-made disasters, and personal attacks resulting in physical and emotional injury. Psychologists and other social scientists have tried to understand why some people bounce back (or up) after adversity and others struggle to function in their daily lives.
Multiple research projects have shown that there are three basic traits that most resilient people have in common. (More…)
