Where I'm published
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Why life is better without Facebook
“The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, and demagoguery.” ~ Franklin Foer This year I’m celebrating nine happy years of Facebook sobriety. Once I quit, my emotional wellbeing, social life, family relationships, and productivity all improved. I started reading more, writing more, spending more time with friends and neighbors, and enjoying the simple pleasures I had overlooked while I was scrolling for social media updates. Though I wrote this Oakland Press column a couple of…
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Summer memories: “The Art of Collecting Beach Stones”
“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.” ~Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty Summer is in full swing. Some of you will be heading for the beach or hitting the highway for a road trip. With that in mind, I’ll revisit a previously published post while I take a short break from Life Lines. Here’s a favorite essay I wrote for Michigan Blue magazine on the art of collecting beach stones. To read it online, please click here. Wherever you live, I hope the sun is shining! ~CL
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Social Skills 101
“Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.” ~Dale Carnegie Years before Oprah made “life coach” a household term, my father followed the work of Dale Carnegie, one of America’s most prolific authors of self-improvement guides. Dad kept a well-thumbed copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People next to the wingback chair where he read nightly. Today, I believe Carnegie’s advice on how to be a great conversationalist and a thoughtful friend is among the best I’ve found. To read a column I wrote about this topic for The Oakland Press, please click here. Photo by Cindy La Ferle for MediaNews Group
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Lessons of a skin cancer scar
“Scars can be a little ugly on the outside, but scars show that you’re a survivor, that you made it through something, and not only did you make it through, but now you’re stronger and wiser and more educated because of that tough time that you went through.” ~Kyle Carpenter Unprotected sunbathing was a common indiscretion for teenagers when I was growing up. Going for the burn, we’d spend endless summer days on the beach — happily oblivious to the fact that we’d pay a high price someday. We didn’t know that sun damage is cumulative, appearing much later in the form of saggy skin, wrinkles and, worse yet, skin…
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Goodbye to Mom’s house
“No matter how far we’ve come, our parents are always in us.” ~ Brad Meltzer Even after we’ve grown up and moved on, the homes of our parents still hold many of our family artifacts, memories, and stories. After your last parent dies, selling their home — and everything they accumulated — is a difficult part of the grieving process. Yet it can be therapeutic, too. As we begin to empty my mother-in-law’s home, I’m reminded of a column I wrote for The Sunday Oakland Press after reflecting on the memory of selling my mother’s home. You can read it online here. ~CL
