Parents may be challenged by their child’s homework frustration—“Why do I have to do these writing assignments? I don’t like to write! I’ll never be a writer, so why do I need to learn this?” How can we answer that? Talking about examples of how writing has always helped us, both long ago and today,…

Truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance (or in Chinese, zhen 真 shan 善 ren 忍), sound like the ideal principles for the world to follow, but in communist China, uttering those three words together stands to have you arrested. The ancient meditation and self-improvement system of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is a meditation practice based…

Like spices in our recipes, language can liven up our senses. In his blurb to Willard R. Espy’s “An Almanac of Words at Play,” writer and once longtime host of television’s “Masterpiece Theater” Alistair Cooke tells readers: “To Willard Espy, the English language is what football is to Joe Namath, a golf ball to Arnold…

Language is being altered, and as definitions are being changed, the narratives using this language have likewise become deceptive in their real meanings. With this, it’s becoming more important to understand the real meanings of words and to understand how language is being changed. To learn more about this, we sat down for an interview…