Crazy for Comfort  

During the last Great Depression, financially desperate people ended up entering convents, seminaries, prisons and mental hospitals, when homeless shelters had no room for them. If the goal was three “hots and a cot,” being admitted to an insane asylum allowed you to eat well, sleep off the streets, and get free medical care. And most of those admitted didn't have to feign their afflictions…being homeless remains an extremely stressful life…

It seems to me that you’d have to go out of your way to figure out a more confusing explanation of the dangers of radioactive exposure (RE).  Were I a paranoid person, I’d think that was on purpose.

The first thing I needed to recognize for myself is that the dangers of RE is measured by what is practical not what is possible.  This begs the question:  “Practical to whom?”

According to…

“Opposites Attract” has become a truism about marriage and intimate relationships. Why, then, are we, in Transition USA, so surprised to find that some of us, who see a dramatically different future looming, have partners who aren’t so sure? 

The pain and frustration I've heard from contributors to my…

Disasters

Fortunately, for most of us, we learn about disasters through movies or books and not direct experience. These renditions are dramatic snapshots of lives, events, and heroism, but rarely do they show us the long-term impact of disasters on wildlife, psychology, culture, environment or finance.

While much has been written in the field of psychology about resilience, the disaster environment provides an active and ongoing opportunity to reframe, reorganize and…

At the height of WWII, Abraham Maslow proposed a “hierarchy of human needs,” often depicted as a pyramid, where it was necessary for one need to be fulfilled in order to meet the next.  By the mid-1950′s he had written a book popularizing this same idea. The theory is that lower needs, like food and shelter, capture our attention until they are met.  Thereafter, “higher” needs, referred to as “self-actualization,” can then be attained.

Maslow’s notions became popular with…