Elizabeth Tashjian, age 94, just died.

Elizabeth was an expert.

She was an expert on nuts.

The headline of her obituary in The Sunday New York Times read:Elizabeth Tashjian, 94, An Expert on Nuts, Dies.

I laughed out loud when I read that headline, laughed with happiness for this woman whom I had never heard of who had focused her life on something she was absolutely crazy about studying: nuts. (more…)

When I did the research for my book, Tough Transitions, I enjoyed learning about all the investigations that are going on to try to determine how people can increase their experience of happiness.

There’s a lot of information to read on this subject, and all of it is fascinating.

One thing that some researchers have suggested is that each of us has an individual “happiness thermostat” and that each person’s thermostat is stuck at that person’s basic setting. What this means is that when both good or bad things happen in an individual’s life, the individual will eventually adapt to both kinds of events and return to the same basic happiness thermostat setting that the person is accustomed to.

But some studies disagree with this assertion. These studies suggest that we can get our personal happiness thermostat unstuck by thinking particular ways and doing specific things. We can increase our experience of happiness by the thoughts we focus on and the actions we take. (more…)

This photograph brought back wonderful memories to me of my trip to Xinjiang a few years ago where I first learned about and met the beautiful Uighur people. (Uighur was pronounced “Wigger” by the Uighurs I met.) As you can see from the photo of me by the lake, this part of Central Asia is beautiful. Even the dusty city of Kashgar, where I was privileged to eat in a Uighur home and talk with Uighurs about their culture, religion, and history, has a beauty that is haunting in my memory. In the picture of the Uighur father and son, you can see the lovely meal my friends and I were served in this family’s home. (more…)

It was in the early 80s that I happened upon my first tailgating. At the time I was a professor in the English Department at Texas A&M University. That particular year I was also serving as Assistant to the President of the university, representing the faculty in the President’s office. One of my duties—if you can call it a “duty”—was to attend the A&M home football games, helping the president and his wife extend hospitality to visitors in the president’s box, high above the stadium. The day of the game, however, always began with a walkabout in the parking lot where fans were tailgating. You could find all kinds of food being served from the backdoor panel of the fans’ pickup trucks and SUVs: bar-b-que, fried chicken, hotdogs and hamburgers, poppy seed kolaches, pecan pie. It was fun to roam from group to group, saying hello and trying to say “no” graciously to all the offers of food. (more…)

A couple of weeks ago I, in the company of my sister, Barbara, traveled to Laity Lodge, a retreat center generously supported by the Howard Butt Foundation, located in the Texas Hill country outside Kerrville. On this almost two thousand acre ranch are numerous camps which have provided summer experiences for thousands of underprivileged children for more than fifty years, camps used by church and civic groups, and the adult Laity Lodge, which has provided programs, hospitality, and the opportunity for powerful personal sacred experiences for decades. My husband and I have been privileged to be at Laity Lodge many times over the past fifteen or so years, and I took my mother there while she was alive and my sister has now gone with me twice. (You might want to check out their website www.laitylodge.org.)

On the last visit to Laity, I also got to see again dozens of women with whom I have been deeply connected in our commitment to quiet time and prayer for many years. Our retreat together brought back wonderful memories and enlivened our relationships.

As always, I found the place itself—the canyon, the Frio River, the cliffs, the limestone, the gravelly roads, the stubby trees, the dips and rises—as familiar as a person, and as welcoming.

How is it that we connect with a place—and we all have those places—so deeply? What speaks to us that makes a certain location one of “our places?” (more…)