Set to become the year’s biggest blockbuster (and one of the highest-grossing films of all time), The Avengers: Age of Ultron has continued the world’s love affair with Marvel superheroes that began with Iron Man. “You want to protect the world, but you don’t want it to change. There’s only one path to peace . . . your extinction.” I watched the film in a full theatre and listened closely to the post-film comments made by the people in my vicinity. I heard not a single negative comment. People were thrilled; some even clapped. When I suggest that the masses are being […]

Most of my Another Way followers know of my book Whatever Happened to Dinner (Herald Press, 2010), which looks at the ways eating together regularly strengthens families and children. A number of you actually helped me write the book with your wonderful examples, stories, memories, and ideas about what keeping family meal time as often as possible did for your family. In groups where I’ve talked about this topic, audiences have no trouble coming up with ideas about what eating together as a family does: fosters togetherness, establishes traditions, and leans toward better nutrition, companionship, conversation, and camaraderie. In churches as in […]

Lost and Found: Buena Vista Social Club Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes Two recent musical releases dig into hidden gems and leftovers to create new albums. Lost and Found, from the Buena Vista Social Club, and Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. On Lost and Found you will experience a wonderful mix, from Manuel Guajiro Mirabel’s trumpet solos of “Habenero,” taken from the vaults when it didn’t make it onto a planned solo album in 2004, to the infectious live tune that starts the album, featuring Ibrahim Ferrer and more than a dozen other musicians. […]

Lost and Found: Buena Vista Social Club Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes Two recent musical releases dig into hidden gems and leftovers to create new albums—Lost and Found, from the Buena Vista Social Club, and Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. While these musicians are old by any standard and the music they play is thick with tradition, the sounds always make my body feel like moving. On Lost and Found you will experience a wonderful mix, from Manuel Guajiro Mirabel’s trumpet solos of “Habenero,” taken from the vaults when it didn’t make it onto […]

Last year I paid passing tribute to two of my daughters’ first Mother’s Day without going into detail. For those of us who are privileged to get to the place in life (and it is a great privilege that I hope I never take for granted—no one should) where we get to see our kids being parents, well, as they say, it is a very happy place. Mostly. When it’s time for me to go to bed and they’re visiting or I’m at their house, I can just go to bed and not worry about having to get up for them. […]

A ruler with absolute power. A rigid aristocracy with no avenues for advancement. And in the very lowest classes, a struggle to survive that borders on starvation. That might sound like 18th century France, but it also describes the world of the newest Disneynature documentary, Monkey Kingdom. Fellow Media Matters reviewer Matthew Kauffman Smith beat me to it by consulting with his young daughters, so be sure to check out his review for an accurate take on how kids will absorb this film. Unlike Matthew and his daughters, I came into Monkey Kingdom with no prior experience with Disneynature. I hope […]

In 2000, the Clinton administration enacted Plan Colombia, the $1.3 billion aid package to help Colombia in efforts to reduce drug production. Profits from the drug trade have fueled various actors in Colombia’s ongoing guerilla warfare, which began in 1964. In the first ten years of Plan Colombia alone, the U.S. provided more than $8 billion with nearly 80 percent of funding going towards military and police assistance, according to Amnesty International. This militaristic approach continued well past the Plan’s ten year anniversary as the U.S. continues to pour money into Colombian military and police forces and ineffective aerial fumigation […]

Editor’s Note: Michelle Sinclair is the daughter of columnist Melodie Davis; she is married and works in Washington, D.C. She and her husband have a toddler son. It was a long, bitterly cold winter where we live. Every night, we fell asleep to the sound of our furnace humming to life. Next, we’d hear the gas jets ignite, and then, a few seconds later, the blower pushing heat through the vents of our home to keep us warm. In spite of the ensuing hassles—staying with friends and family for nearly two weeks while our home warranty company took its sweet time […]