“Mommy, I wish I was never born,” my 4-year-old said to me last week. Crushed, I tried to keep from grimacing as I asked him why. “Because then, I would never die,” he replied.
My son often blurts out these types of thoughtful yet pessimistic musings. On Friday, I offered to take him to see his first movie at the cinema, and his initial reaction was concern that it might be too loud. Before a hike last weekend, he warned my husband and me that we’d better not forget to check everyone for ticks afterward. He’s a delightful kid who loves to let loose and have fun, but he sure knows how to worry.
Apparently, my son isn’t alone. Over the past few months, I’ve stumbled across a handful of articles and blog posts claiming that there is an epidemic of anxiety among youth today. Kids are stressed and worried about oh so many things, I’ve read, because they are over-tested, under-recessed, helicopter-parented, and spending too much time online. It seems 2016 is giving every American kid an anxiety disorder.
Pune, known as Poona until 1978 is the second-largest metropolitan city in the Indian state of Maharashtra and the eighth-most populous city in India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million as of 2020. It has been ranked as “the most livable city in India” several times. Along with the municipal corporation limits of PCMC and the three cantonment towns of Camp, Khadki, and Dehu Road, Pune forms the urban core of the eponymous Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR). According to the 2011 census the urban area had a combined population of 5.05 million whilst the population of the metropolitan region was estimated at 7.4 million. Situated 560 meters (1,837 feet) above sea level on the Deccan plateau on the right bank of the Mutha river, Pune is also the administrative headquarters of its namesake district.
In the 18th century, the city was the seat of the Peshwas, the prime ministers of the Maratha Empire, and one of the most important political centers on the Indian subcontinent. The city was also ruled by the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, the Mughals, and the Adil Shahi dynasty. Historical landmarks include Lal Mahal, the Kasba Ganapati temple, and Shaniwar Wada. Major historical events involving the city include the Mughal–Maratha Wars and the Anglo-Maratha Wars. Wikipedia
Manuel and Geiszel Godoy are military veterans, and they believe deeply in social justice. But above all, they are entrepreneurs who saw an underdeveloped sector in their industry and dove in.
“We have to show that we can pull a Tyler Perry as a community,” Manuel Godoy, president of Black Sands Entertainment, says in a recent video interview. “The idea is that the bigger the company gets, the better the IP does, the more everybody wins, and we can fund our projects ourselves because we have the experience, the expertise to do it.”
The Godoys’ niche is a growing one: indie comics by Black artists, written for Black families about Black people, with a focus on tales of Africa before slavery. Among their projects are an upcoming animated series and the Black Sands Publishing app, which will offer free access to 26 original comic books when it launches May 1, Free Comic Book Day. ’
“If we get this done,” Godoy says, “we’ve proven that you no longer have to walk through the gate they built in order to get to the main stage.”
Black Sands isn’t the first through the gate. It joins a growing hive of Black creators who’ve carved space in a format that for decades was steeped in racism and exclusion.
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John Jennings is a comic book illustrator and professor of media and cultural studies at UC Riverside.
“I’m afraid of losing my partner because he wants kids, and I don’t know what I want. I think I don’t want them.”
“I’m afraid of losing my identity, freedom, and comfort if I have children. Afraid of regretting it if I don’t.”
“I’ve always wanted to have a baby, but is it even ethical, knowing the environmental and political climate?”
“I need some peace and clarity from the torture of sitting on the fence for too long.”
This is just a sample of the questions, fears, and concerns I hear all the time from my clients. I’m a therapist who has dedicated my life to helping people figure out if they want to have children. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and have seen more clients than I can count of all stripes — men, women, single, married, and partnered people. People just out of a relationship and people just starting a relationship. People from ages 28 to 59. Our goal is to help people make possibly the biggest decision of their lives: whether or not they want to become a parent.
Most people who contact me say they feel like they’re the only one who can’t decide. I let them know immediately: They’re not the only one. Our society allows little room for ambivalence around this topic.
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia, and immediately south of the French island of Corsica.
It is one of the five Italian regions that have been granted some degree of domestic autonomy by special statute. Its official name is Regione Autonoma della Sardegna (Sardinian: Regione Autònoma de Sardigna; English: “Autonomous Region of Sardinia”). It is divided into four provinces and a metropolitan city. The capital of the region of Sardinia — and its largest city — is Cagliari. Sardinia’s indigenous language and the other minority languages spoken on the island (Sassarese, Gallurese, Algherese Catalan, and Ligurian Tabarchino) are officially recognized by the regional law as having “equal dignity” with Italian. Wikipedia
I have been with the same guy for six years, married for one. He has two sons from a previous marriage, and she is not in the picture.If it is relevant I’m a male too. My husband has asked me if I could accept his moving into his own apartment for a year because he has never been on his own. He says he doesn’t want us to break up, just live apart for a while. The boys would stay with me in our home, and he would take them to spend the night every so often. We would also have a weekly date night just to keep our relationship “on track.” He married his ex right out of high school, and they had children right away, so he really hasn’t ever been on his own. I have not given a response other than asking a few questions. Truthfully the idea makes me mad as hell and I just want to tell him to leave if you want and take your damn brats with you! Then I calm down and realize I can’t live without him and the boys. Or maybe I can. I feel this is unbelievably selfish of him, but I kind of understand. But the boys have already been abandoned by their mother, how would this plan affect them? I am so confused and hurt. Help!
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Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by FotoDuets/iStock / Getty Images Plus and FotoDuets/iStock/Getty Images Plus.
In 1990, not long after Jean-Marie Robine and Michel Allard began conducting a nationwide study of French centenarians, one of their software programs spat out an error message. An individual in the study was marked as 115 years old, a number outside the program’s range of acceptable age values. They called their collaborators in Arles, where the subject lived, and asked them to double-check the information they had provided, recalls Allard, who was then the director of the IPSEN Foundation, a nonprofit research organization. Perhaps they made a mistake when transcribing her birth date? Maybe this Jeanne Calment was actually born in 1885, not 1875? No, the collaborators said. We’ve seen her birth certificate. The data is correct.
Calment was already well known in her hometown. Over the next few years, as rumors of her longevity spread, she became a celebrity. Her birthdays, which had been local holidays for a while, inspired national and, eventually, international news stories. Journalists, doctors, and scientists began crowding her nursing home room, eager to meet la doyenne de l’humanité. Everyone wanted to know her story.
Calment lived her entire life in the sunburned clay-and-cobble city of Arles in the South of France, where she married a second cousin and moved into a spacious apartment above the store he owned. She never needed to work, instead of filling her days with leisurely pursuits: bicycling, painting, roller skating, and hunting. She enjoyed a glass of port, a cigarette, and some chocolate nearly every day. In town, she was known for her optimism, good humor, and wit. (“I’ve never had but one wrinkle,” she once said, “and I’m sitting on it.”)
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Photo illustration by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari
Portland is the largest and most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Multnomah County. It is a major port in the Willamette Valley region of the Pacific Northwest, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in Northwestern Oregon. As of 2019, Portland had an estimated population of 654,741, making it the 26th most populated city in the United States, the sixth-most populous on the West Coast, and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest after Seattle. Approximately 2.4 million people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area (MSA), making it the 25th most populous in the United States. Its combined statistical area (CSA) ranks 19th-largest with a population of around 3.2 million. Approximately 47% of Oregon’s population resides within the Portland metropolitan area.
Named after Portland, Maine, the Oregon settlement began to be populated in the 1830s near the end of the Oregon Trail. Its water access provided convenient transportation of goods, and the timber industry was a major force in the city’s early economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the city had a reputation as one of the most dangerous port cities in the world, a hub for organized crime and racketeering. After the city’s economy experienced an industrial boom during World War II, its hard-edged reputation began to dissipate. Beginning in the 1960s, Portland became noted for its growing progressive political values, earning it a reputation as a bastion of counterculture. Wikipedia
Over the last 15 years, I whittled down close to six figures of debt I acquired from living beyond my means. In that time, I alternated between ignoring it, agonizing over it, and finally, taking action; I became debt-free last year. Along the way, I read lots of books about money. Since April is National Financial Literacy Month, I wanted to share these nine books about personal finance that each taught me something valuable about managing my money.
The first few are more about the emotional aspects of money, which is where I faced my biggest financial stumbling blocks, while others get into the nitty-gritty of managing your money. I haven’t followed any single book to the letter, which would be impossible since some give contradictory advice. I also don’t necessarily agree with everything each of these authors writes. I have, however, gained the confidence and knowledge I’m using to keep my finances on an upward trajectory. I also learned what doesn’t work for me. I know reading any single book can’t make money simply appear in your bank account (though wouldn’t that be wonderful?), but diving into the topic helped me grapple with the ways I treated money that I wanted to change.
A child’s brain is not a miniature adult brain. It is a brain born under construction that wires itself to the world. And it’s up to parents to create a world — both physical and social — that is rich with wiring instructions.
Based on years of research in neuroscience and psychology, follwing are seven parenting rules to help your kid build a brain that is flexible and therefore resilient.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Illustrations by Natalie Matthews-Ramo.
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An image from Sardinia Italy
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James' World 2 