Author Archives: Bob Welbaum

Another View of Immigration

I recently ran across a more positive way to look at immigration.  Viewing this from the perspective of the individuals who are making the journey, many are girls and young women who are vulnerable to exploitation along the way. But there is an organization that’s trying to protect them.   The Tahirih Justice Center, named after

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Top Four Questions About Tornadoes

Spring is always a bad time for tornadoes in the Midwest.  I remember the devastating storm that hit Xenia, Ohio in the 1970s.  Which is why a feature in the May 19th edition of EarthSky News caught my eye.  I’m copying the basic information here.  The complete article can be found at http://earthsky.org/earth/4-basic-questions-about-tornadoes?  The photo

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Admirable Poems

Occasionally I post some original poetry.  I don’t write as much poetry as I once did, but I’m interested enough to subscribe to a “Poem of the Day” from The Poetry Foundation.  I’ll admit I’m something of a purist; poetry to me should rhyme, and a lot of what I see today is the freest

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Naming Your Fears

Last time I wrote about the origins of Friday the 13th.   This leads to another subject — fears, or phobias. Fear is actually a normal protection, to keep us from doing really dumb things.  The Psychology Today website puts it this way — Fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger—if we didn’t

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Happy Friday the 13th

I trust everyone has survived Friday the 13th?  I’ve never been very superstitious, but I’ve been wondering how we got to fear this particular day.  So I dug out the book An Uncommon History of Common Things (National Geographic, 2009, page 118).  As one might suspect, the answer isn’t very straightforward. First, the Friday component.

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Growing From Trauma

For the past several years, we’ve heard a lot about post-traumatic stress and how it has ruined many lives, especially service people who have been through combat.  But have you ever heard of post-traumatic growth (PTG)? Yes, there is such a thing.  Psychologists Richard G. Tedeschi and Lawrence G. Calhoun at the University of North

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Happy Birthday, Niccolò Machiavelli

Somehow in this political year it seems fitting to write about Machiavelli, famously the author of The Prince.  He was born in Florence, Italy, on May 3, 1469, into one of the prominent merchant families of this city-state.  However, the family was not wealthy, and financial worries would dog Niccolo throughout his life.  He became

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