The author of "Angela's Ashes" makes a command appearance at Town Booksellers in Basalt.
In comment #9, Post blogger Cari Shurman tells how she pioneered Tai Chi to to train teachers to help kids calm down and concentrate better. "I have ben a teacher for over 30 years. When I decided to offer Tai Chi in the schools I wanted to train teachers so that they can use the movements in the classroom before tests to calm the kids down and get oxygen flowing to their brains to concentrate better. I also wanted them to be able to use it to help ADD and ADHD kids, to give focus to a discussion on bullying, to calm kids down who are feeling hyper. So I decided I needed to simplify Tai Chi so a teacher could learn it quickly and use it easily in the classroom."
New Post blogger Cari Shurman's passion for children and Tai Chi comes through in her Aspen Post debut.
Posts filed under 'Family'
Each fall teachers spend a lot of time reviewing what was taught last spring. It can take as much as six weeks or more. This is because of the “summer slide”. We all need a break from our “regular work”. Sports and recreational activities are wonderful. But our minds don’t have to become dormant over the summer. Ron Fairchild, the executive director of the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University, suggests there are many ways to try to reduce the recovery time. Suggestions include visits to museums, the local library, educational trips, less time on computer games and TV, encouraging reading and math problems.
Continue Reading August 16th, 2008
In a small town in the Rockies where the teachers are happy for the kids to call them by their first names, where the green mountains are filled with magnificent wild flowers in tones of orange, pink, blue, yellow and purple, things are a bit different. I received a call from the policeman who was in charge of school security asking me to participate in a Wellness trip with a group of high school students. The students could choose from fifteen itineraries, including bike trips, hiking, college visit, Habitat for Humanity and others. This Wellness trip involved a week on a houseboat on a beautiful lake, eleven hours away by school bus. We were going to practice Tai Chi every day and do organic cooking. Of course my answer was yes.
Continue Reading July 24th, 2008
Just today, I heard somewhere on one of the news channels that doctors are advocating that kids as young as 7 start taking cholesterol-reducing meds and that parents should start getting their kid's cholesterol levels checked by the age of 2!
I took care of my disabled mom during the last 10 years of her life. Her main problems were arthritis and heart disease. While doing my duty as a caretaker, I did a lot of research on how to help her. I found the "Life Extension Foundation" to be my most valuable resource on different nutritional remedies and the latest research on various illnesses and/or longevity. I/we were using things like shark cartilage, melatonin and glucosamine long before the general public even knew such things existed.
Continue Reading July 7th, 2008
When the historians look under the covers on civil rights, they are all but assured to see John McCain’s appearance on the “The Ellen Degeneres Show” as one of the great seminal (sic) moments in the history of gay emancipation.
Ellen—the woman who came out famously on her late sit-com as a gay woman—asked the putative Republican Presidential nominee if he would not be willing to talk about “the elephant in the room” on her syndicated talk show. McCain, the blind man touching the rump of said pachyderm, walked right in the door of daytime television and came out with a snoutful.
And thereby hangs a tale.
Continue Reading May 26th, 2008
My mom was born in a tent (some accounts I’ve heard say it was a cabin) near Estes Park, Colorado on an August night in 1936. My grandfather was a laborer during what must have been the construction of Trail Ridge Road from the Alpine Visitor Center to Grand Lake. It is one of the cruel realities of surviving your elders that you come up with questions you can never have answered.
When I was a much younger man, in that netherworld between high school and life, I went to work in the coal mines. Yes, back in the day, there were coal mines, and some of them were in Pitkin County. But I digress.
Continue Reading May 11th, 2008
It’s all action-focused, forcefulness. I’ve changed a lot since then. There are so many different ways to go about being fulfilled. I grew up in a home with very competitive athletes. My sister is a professional windsurfer, my brother is on the U.S. Sailing team, an Olympic athlete. I didn’t perform at that level. So that’s all I knew. How to go about it all the way.
Continue Reading May 5th, 2008
One of the people at the newspaper who hired me when I came to Aspen five years ago told me about “the tractor beam effect.”
That’s a poetic way of saying that once people leave Aspen they always come back, inexorably drawn to the mountains, the valley, the rivers, and certain ineffable things that have no name.
True enough: all of that speaks to why we’re so lucky to be here. But it’s also another way of saying people leave—they leave all the time—and that we’ve experienced this directly and personally. At least three key people, great friends, will no longer live here full-time come 2009.
Continue Reading April 24th, 2008
An old joke I used to tell often in my younger days is this: "Why do Mexican women swim the river and come here to have their babies?" The answer is : "Cuz Dr. Pepper costs 50 cents."
Sure, that was a silly, insensitive, perhaps politically incorrect joke to tell, but rooted in my rural West Texas upbringing, it was a funny joke to tell while processing cattle or throwing down some beers at a honky-tonk.
Yet, perhaps, in reality, it is very true.
Continue Reading April 14th, 2008
I also bagged groceries, ran a check-out stand, stocked shelves, carried groceries to the little ol' ladies cars, and worked produce at the local grocery store when I wasn't in school, playing ball games or training horses or working cattle. One of my regular customers, Mr. Merritt, hooked me up with a six month paid internship with Congressman Charles Stenholm, D-Stamford, TX. in the United States Congress. I used to ride pick up as a kid and then later tried to calf-rope in the Stamford July 4th Rodeo. I wasn't much of a roper. I could rope the heck out of the dummies, but catching a speedy calf from atop a speedy quarter horse was a different story. Stenholm was quite a person, a hero to me to this day, and he was always at that 4th celebration.
Continue Reading April 6th, 2008
I’ve had this easy chair since about 1995.
I have no particular fondness for this chair. It’s comfortable. It’s warm. It’s proven durable. But it’s a freaking chair.
It’s leather, with low back, and an ottoman. It used to be brown, but now it’s more of a beige. It’s got two holes in it, one in the seat and one in the left arm—skier’s left, that is. My wife has wanted to replace this chair for months now. In itself, that is fine with me. What’s troubling is that my wife shared her desire to replace this piece of furniture with my mother.
You know the saying, “two heads are better than one”? This is Balderdash. Hooey. Piffle.
Continue Reading April 5th, 2008
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