In Person
You are here: Our lives with maps
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
You are here. Without maps, you would still be here, but you wouldn’t know where here is. Or there, or how to get from here to there. I don’t know when I first had this...
Reading Vonnegut in the playroom
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
Visiting the grandkids is always a special treat and we make the day-long drive as often as we can. As the years roll on, our visits change from participating in the routines...
The president and the poet
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
It had snowed heavily the night before, and the day dawned with a frigid wind and blinding sunlight that glinted off the blanket of white spread out in all directions where the...
Still hoping for the world we want
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
It was two in the morning when a chartered bus carrying 30 idealistic teenagers drove up to a hangar at New York’s Kennedy airport where a propeller-driven Iceland Airlines...
Remembering Jimmy Carter
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
There are worlds within worlds. Galaxies fill the cosmos. Stars fill the galaxies and planets spin around the stars. The earth, what we call our world, is just one of them, and...
O Christmas Tree
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
As I write these words in early December, what is left of our small Thanksgiving turkey sits in the fridge holding one more meal for two. Our Christmas tree, artificial this...
When we knew for certain
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
Remember when we knew for certain that the moon would always follow us if we kept looking at it through the side window of the car? “Keep looking,” Mom said, “and it will...
Along the path
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
There is a short time between the end of summer and the beginning of fall when the best of both seasons combines to create a perfect day. If you believed in heaven, it’s the...
Why Words Matter in Life and Politics
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
If ever there were any doubt that words matter, the July assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the killing of an innocent bystander as well as the shooter provide more...
When we learned to listen: The legacy of Elvin Semrad
By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.
Over more than three decades of writing this column, from time to time, I have quoted Dr. Elvin Semrad whom I briefly described as “the late Boston psychoanalyst.” I...