Last summer we had an intern named Ana. She is the new york born niece of a good friend from Chapel Hill. When she first came by our office we were just starting a project for Newyork.com in which we were going to profile interesting and creative New Yorkers. Ana is a film student at NYU and she had made...
**** I have updated this several times. I kind of dashed it off originally, and wanted to expand it. **** For many people the idea that their emotions are causative in terms of their pain or illness is unfathomable. However to me it's crystal clear that this is the case. This is not to say that all pain is emotional pain. ...
update**** Letha passed away this evening Sept 24, at 9:05. I wrote this piece in July. I just sat down to write something about what an amazing person Letha is, and realized I'd already done it. **** There was a fundraiser planned for Letha in November in NY. I'm assuming it will now be a memorial, but should still be...
Declaring war on anything; a country, a concept, or a person, is a bad idea. This is not to say that we should not defend ourselves when attacked, but declaring war is a mistake. I have been thinking about this concept of war in regards to the 2011 decision by the Institute of medicine to declare pain a disease...
This morning, on the way to day camp, my daughter asked how many words there are in the world. I replied that there are millions of words and they're all in dictionaries. I offered to sit down with her and go through one. She asked why there are so many words and I explained that words help us get more specific...
One of the key elements of Dr. John E. Sarno’s work is an understanding of the basic context of Dr. Sigmund Freud’s work. In an early interview that we did with Dr. Sarno he pointed out that in the 19th century mental illness was seen as a disease of the brain. It was only when Freud came along, and postulated...
This morning after dropping off my daughter at day camp I heard a long story on the radio about the successful social media branding campaign that ISIS has carried out through the use of psychotically brutal videos of torture and execution. The news anchor was incredulous that anyone might see these things and say, “I want to be a part...
Growing up in Chapel Hill, I often came across a local magazine called "The Sun". As a kid interested in punk rock I was vaguely repelled by its intense hippie vibe. As a young photographer I was excited by the possibility of having some of my photos published in its pages. "The Sun" featured interviews with thinkers and healers, fiction,...
We're sitting around laughing about my dad. My wife is telling our friends that whenever our daughter asks where something is she says, "You know what Grandpa would say...
Next week the Municipal Arts Society is going to give their annual Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis Medal to Bruce Ratner and MaryAnne Gilmartin. This award was created to honor Ms. Onasis' preservation efforts. Giving it to Bruce Ratner makes as little sense as giving President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. The Historic Districts council feels the same way. “We claim no ownership...
Imagine for a moment that you move to a place where you don’t know the customs, or speak the language. It feels like you are living in a dream most of the time, and things don’t make sense in ways that you can’t put into words. While you can quietly observe what’s going on, when you try to speak or...
When I was in college I started a band with some friends. We played noisy chaotic music. When we were putting out our first 7 inch single we added the phrase “confusing the body to exploit the mind” to the cover art. The idea of getting lost in music to access some part of the mind that one was normally...