The spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down is toxic. According to Michael Pollan, “We are processed corn, walking.” Based on carbon-13 isotopes in our flesh and our hair, we North Americans “look like corn chips with legs.” Corn is the soylent yellow of our day; corn is people! The Franken-wheat we love […]
Ticker – On Losing Heart in Our Marriages and Finding it Again
Heart failure in marriage isn’t at all uncommon these days. Almost fifty percent of couples divorce. Plenty more—to twist Thoreau’s words a bit—live quiet marriages of desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. There is a very good chance that at some point, we married couples will fall out of […]
Summer-Loved and Lost
Friends we’ve lost: What about the ones we’ve fallen out of touch with, the ones we’ve let go? This conversation came up on Real Life Survival Guide’s Episode 52: “Redefining Friendship.” Some friends were particularly important, inspired us, listened, consoled, brought insight to our lives just when we needed awakening, stole our hearts, broke our […]
Mary Elliott: Naked and New – Re-thinking What We Deserve
Like any other Catholic baby, I was born with the proverbial millstone around my neck—the burden of Original Sin—but baptized and therefore saved in the chapel of the U.S.S. Vulcan, a naval ship docked in the Norfolk shipyards. It was a regular, low-key baptism documented with Polaroid photos—no champagne bottle cracked over my head just […]
Mary Elliott: S.O.S. from Camp Yawgoog
Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, Hello Real Life Survivahs, S.O.S. from Camp Yawgoog! Thanks to an unexpected twist of fate (my husband’s back twisted when he lifted an old lawnmower into our minivan)—I’ve been banished here to the Rhode Island wilderness to camp out with my son’s boy-scout troop. However, unlike Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, […]
Slow – Children at Play
How much time should we, as parents, put into our kids’ extracurricular activities? Gerry McGuire raised this question during Episode 49 of Real Life Survival Guide as he and fellow conversationalists savored the excellent estate-grown wines, panoramic Connecticut hills and unspoiled air atop Gouveia Vineyards. Moved to speak freely, perhaps, by the atmospheric openness and […]
Mary Elliott: Are You There? Narciss-stalkers, Echo-talkers and Love in the High-Tech Void
Looking for some straight stalk talk? Episode 48’s guest editors and hosts offered practical suggestions for setting boundaries when another’s desire to connect with you plunges into the pathological deep end: Don’t give out your number to creeps and weirdoes. Alert the gendarmes when obsessive texts persist. Hire my all-muscle and highly-employable college son as your bodyguard. Along […]
Mary Elliott: Photoshopping Eternity – Real Talk with Our Kids about Afterlife Survival
The conversation in Episode 47 took a more serious turn as our real-life survivors—guest editors who’d survived cancer, the loss of a spouse, the loss of young children in their church or schools—asked the big question: How to talk to our children about mortality—theirs and ours? “Tell the truth” surfaced as the consensus. “Be honest.” […]
Mary Elliott: Real Life Survival Guide and the Frenemization of American Culture
Guys, grab a prosecco, have a seat and let’s talk about your feelings. Studies on male versus female relationships prove you’ll live longer. This show is Real Life Survival Guide, after all, and if the information it provides listeners helps you add a few years to your life, all the better. Face it, survival these […]