Malinda's Table

A few nights ago, I cried over sportswriter Dave Kindred's account of his grandson Jared's short and tragic life. Dave admits to not being available to his only child, Jeff. "I was a newspaper reporter and columnist," he writes of the years when Jeff was growing up, "home only when I couldn't find a story, always writing or thinking about writing, ...

Today, March 12th marks the anniversary of the first day of the pandemic lockdown. I was sipping tea at A Taste of Britain with my friend Lea when I got a text informing me that the college was closing and my job was moving off-campus to my home office. My students and I could handly know what a hard year was coming. I got them through it and got m...

A brilliant writer for Vanity Fair, John Homans recently died at 62 from colon cancer. He wrote What's A Dog For?, my favorite book of the year. As Homans points out, interaction with a dog increases the level of oxytocin in humans. Oxytocin is a hormonal stress reliever, and it lowers anxiety. You are more likely to survive a heart attack if you h...

If you are stuck in the house until Dr. Fauci says it's safe to come out, read The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah. You'll want to take off to the Pacific Northwest territories immediately after you get a coronavirus vaccine. 

Whenever I consider complaining about being in my house for the past ten weeks, I remember that the Dalai Lama was forced into exile in India in 1959 from his home in Tibet, and Desmond Tutu was in prison in South Africa for twenty-seven years.  If they can write a book about joy, anybody can be happy. I'm reading their Book of Joy today and am somewhat surprised by the Dalai Llama's contention that "the purpose of life is to find happiness."  This is an enlightening concept given the misery in the world, and the cruelty and violence I'm seeing on TV this very moment in Minnesota.  It is a book about friendship and love between two men who have suffered greatly in life but have come to the realization that three factors have the greatest influence on increasing happiness: our ability to reframe our situation more positively, our ability to experience gratitude, and the choice to be kind and generous.  I love this from the book: "Wherever you have friends that's your country, and whenever you receive love, that's your home." 

One day I was teaching a class of thirty-seven on the subject of childhood identity.  The next I was home emailing my students to say they would never see me again, except by Zoom or Facetime.  The coronavirus had come to town, in this case, Philadelphia.  This brings home the influence of randomness in our lives, the subject of a book I'm reading by Leonard Mlodinow. The title comes from a mathematical term describing random motion, such as the paths molecules follow as they fly through the air colliding with other molecules.  This is similar to how virus molecules spread from person to person as we talk and cough while strolling around Whole Foods if we unknowingly have the virus and don't wear a mask.