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Six months after Sandy Hook Elementary. Where's the outrage?

On the morning of December 14th, 2012, 20 year old Adam Lanza fatally shot his 53 year old mother at their home in Newtown, Connecticut and then drove to the nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School armed with 10 30-round magazines for his semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 caliber rifle, two handguns and a shotgun. At about 9:30am, the peace and safety of the elementary school was shattered as Lanza shot his way through a locked glass door at the front of the school and proceeded to gun down 26 people in less than 5-minutes. 20 of them were schoolchildren ages 6 and 7.

A day at the White House

I have to admit I was pretty excited when I received an invitation to be at the White House on Monday for President Obama's National Conference on Mental Health. At NICD, we have been working for months preparing for the White House announcement and our role as a convener of community conversations on mental health issues which will take place around the country over the next year.

Maybe it's simply the words we use

David Brooks wrote a very thought provoking piece for the New York Times this week about how different word usage in our language over the last 50 years reflect a significant shift in our culture. Brooks cites a number of studies which show that certain words like "community," "united," and "common good" are used less often and that words like "personalized," "self," and "I come first" are used more frequently.

Summer has arrived in our nation's Capitol

The annual blooming of the cherry blossoms in our nation's capitol is now over as spring begins to give way to summer in Washington, D.C. And summertime inside the beltway means heat and humidity for all, but for those in the political world, summertime means scandal and it seems that this summer will be no different. The traditional Washington summertime scandals come in many forms. Some involve congress, some involve the White House, some involve sexual mis-conduct and some involve political wrong doings.

People Think Differently, Live With It

I didn't intend to take such a long break between posts but now that the spring semester is over and finals are done, I finally have time to blog again! And what I want to blog about is something that I came across while studying for my finals.

In a book chapter written by Claude Steele and David Sherman, they talk about "afforded psychologies." What they mean by this is that "because of life context differences between people, not all features of human psychology - particular traits, states, and processes - are equally accessible to all people" and, therefore, some people, because of their context, are afforded different ways of thinking and understanding the world. Now, Steele and Sherman go on to explain all of this in much more detail and back it up with psychological research but we don't have to wade through all the psychological jargon to take an important message from this idea.

In the end, pleas from grieving parents were not enough

I was listening to the memorial service in Boston this morning as faith leader after faith leader spoke of the courage and kindness displayed by the ordinary citizens of Boston as they rushed into the bloody, smokey chaos and terror after two bombs exploded and shattered the excitement at the marathon finish line this past Monday to help the innocent victims and their pleas for help.  It brought me immediately back to Wednesday's vote in the U.S.

Be Careful About The Labels You Use

I read recently that the Associated Press is making some changes to its upcoming stylebook. Specifically, they tell us that “The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.” But this blog post is not about illegal immigration. Instead, I want to talk about labels.

Amazing what can happen when they talk to each other

In recent weeks, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have been coming together to come up with bipartisan efforts on some major but thorny issues facing our country. These issues: gun control, immigration and the deficit are all making headlines across the country as your representatives close in on sweeping immigration reform, a breaktrhough agreement on gun control that would expand background checks to all commerical gun sales and now word of a bipartisan effort to reach a grand bargain on the nation's deficit with President Barak Obama.

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