Columnists, In Person

February 18th, 2024

Unplugged

By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.

I am writing today by the dim light filtering into the room from a troubled sky. The rain has been constant since yesterday and the trees, stripped of their leaves, sway with...

January 2nd, 2024

On growing old gracefully – or not

By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.

As I sit at my desk in a too quiet house, I am thinking about my wife who is spending the day with a friend on a senior citizens’ bus trip to view the New England countryside...

December 4th, 2023

Celebrating the holiday season…and yet

By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.

The holiday season is upon us. We are in the thick of it with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Diwali behind us and Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza looming ahead. Feasts of saints,...

November 10th, 2023

Whose story is it anyway?

By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.

Psychologists are story people, especially when we are trying to help people make more satisfying stories of their lives. Because I am a story person, I am still mulling over...

September 30th, 2023

Writing a spiritual autobiography

By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.

There will be eight of us, nine if you count me, the workshop leader, lighting up those little Zoom squares like stars blinking onto a twilight sky, one here, a cluster there,...

September 4th, 2023

How to elect a president

By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.

Four years go by fast, especially at my age. The last four have given us the COVID pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the emergence of artificial intelligence, record breaking heat...

August 5th, 2023

Whistler’s son

By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.

My father was a whistler. He whistled while he waited for the bus and for the family to get ready to go wherever we were going with him. And he whistled in his hospital bed...

July 1st, 2023

Sages & Seekers: Bridging the generation divide

By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.

Did you ever have a piece of art work displayed? Were you ever on TV? Were you ever arrested? Did you ever run away from home? Were you ever in a room with a famous person?...

June 4th, 2023

The joy of reading

By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested…” – Francis Bacon

Tasted, swallowed, and digested – I’ve done...

May 2nd, 2023

Finding the light

By Alan Bodnar Ph.D.

In March, I wrote about the challenge of walking in the dark, finding our way in life through a series of decisions guided in each case by unreliable and insufficient...