September 2017

Sheila Procella joined the Air Force in 1974 to “see the Earth,” she said. She enlisted at the tail end of the Vietnam War, shortly after graduating from high school. Although she never left her home state of Texas during eight years of service, her office job proved to be its own battlefield. “Some of us actually went to war, some of us had war right here in the states, going to work every day knowing we are going to be harassed,” said Procella, now 62 and living in Plano. At the time,...

Psychological distress can take a toll on more than just health. It can also significantly damage nest eggs, according to a new study by a Cornell financial economist and her co-author. Mental health problems can have a large negative effect on retirement savings, the study found. Three factors make the research even more meaningful, the authors say: People increasingly are living longer, dealing with more psychological distress, and shouldering the burden of saving for retirement without...

You yearn to be productive, to blast through your to-do list every single day. You experiment with all sorts of hacks to attain the ultimate efficiency. If you have kids, you take advantage of their nap time, folding, preparing, putting things back, emailing, writing, working, running. There’s so much running. No wonder you often end your day feeling out of breath (and out of it). You yearn to have a tidy house, where every item has a home, and there aren’t piles of unpaid bills on the...

I'd like to offer you two models of human development. The first is what you might call The Surrender Yourself model of development. According to this model, the lowest kind of happiness is having your basic food and health needs met. Then there is achievement-- the pleasure we get from earned and recognized success. Then there is generativity, the pleasure we get from creative expression and having a large positive impact on the world. Finally, the highest and most noble kind of happiness...

If someone finishes a prison sentence for a violent sexual crime, but might still be dangerous, should he be released? How do you know if he’s dangerous? And when does it violate his rights to hold him? On Monday, the Supreme Court is considering whether to hear a case that stems from these questions, a challenge to a Minnesota “civil commitment” program that holds people convicted of sexual crimes long after their sentences, ostensibly for treatment. Roughly 20 programs have arisen around...

As urban areas across the nation experience renewal and transformation, Camden, N.J., is at the beginning of its renaissance. The city — once known as America’s most dangerous — has been experiencing dramatic decreases in gun crime and violence, namely an 80 percent reduction in homicides during the first three months of 2017. That’s good news for Camden, which has also become a testing ground for tech nonprofits that want to help beleaguered youth find their way out of neighborhoods riddled...

Carey talks with Nancy Lemon, Esq. , a John and Elizabeth Boalt Lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law. She created the first comprehensive domestic violence law course and its accompanying text book in 1980s; she is still teaching this course now. Nancy is also the legal director of the Family Violence Appellate project which she co-founded.

On average, nearly 34,000 people are killed in the U.S. each year due to gun homicide, suicide or accidents, with another 81,000 who are shot but survive. But zeroing in on the causes of gun violence, in order to thwart them, is no easy task. It’s not just about a glut of available firearms or how easy it is to obtain one. As the Center for American Progress pointed out in its 2016 Progress Index , there is a connected web of social and economic issues that can impact rates of violence in a...

Early in the 2016-17 school year, DeMarcus*—a fifth-grader in Montgomery, Alabama—had his first encounter with bullying. His grandmother, Erma Freeman, knew DeMarcus as a strong-willed kid and initially did not worry much about the incident. She told DeMarcus to either brush it off or to stand up to the bullies. But within a matter of weeks, Freeman found herself bribing DeMarcus to go to school, scheduling counseling appointments for him and making frequent trips to the school and the...

“When cynicism becomes the default language, playfulness and invention become impossible. Cynicism scours through a culture like bleach, wiping out millions of small, seedling ideas.” “There is nothing quite so tragic as a young cynic, because it means the person has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing,”Maya Angelou wrote in contemplating courage in the face of evil . In the decades since, cynicism has become a cultural currency as deadly as blood diamonds, as vacant of integrity...

According to the 2010 U.S. Census , Montana ranks 5th in the nation for the percentage of population living in a rural area (44.1%), eclipsed only by Mississippi, West Virginia, Vermont, and Maine. And as you may know, Montana is the 4th largest state in the nation! There are so many great things about being such a rural state — the charm of small towns, the beauty of farms and ranches, the wide-open spaces, our majestic mountains, rivers, streams, and creeks; and of course, let’s not forget...

College is supposedly the great leveler. But race still affects average pay for graduates, indicating that discrimination is a major cause. [For more on this story by the New York Times Editorial Board, go to https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/opinion/college-racial-income-gap.html ]