What Matters

  • Transcendence

    It was 1967, and women were not allowed to officially run in the Boston Marathon. That didn’t stop Kathrine Virginia Switzer. While attending Syracuse University, she was granted permission to train with the men’s cross-country team. Her coach, Arnie Briggs, thought...

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  • The Wonders of Plan B

    Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico in 1907. She was inflicted as a child with polio and planned on going to medical school. When she was 18, she was involved in a bus accident. The handrail in the bus went through her body like a sword. For months she was in a body cast....

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  • An Investment of Kindness

    Gus Thompson was born in slavery in Kentucky. As a young man, he and his wife left Kentucky to settle in Coronado, California on the San Diego Bay peninsula. He got a job working in a hotel and was able to buy property and build a house and barn. The year was 1895....

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  • A Reason for Being

    As a new year begins, it’s often a time for reflection on our lives. For some, that reflection may be a quick passing thought. For others, it may involve some deep introspection of where we are and where we A tool for doing that deep introspection thinking is one that...

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  • Aging Well

    In 1938, Clark Heath and Arlie Bock, two medical doctors at Harvard began what was the longest study of adult development ever conducted. They asked 268 male Harvard sophomores to agree to participate in a study that would continue for their entire lives. Harvard did...

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  • Then and Now

    Stashu was born in Donora Pennsylvania in 1920. He was the 5th child and first boy born to his parents. His father was a Polish immigrant, and his mother was a first-generation American. His father struggled to keep a job largely because of his alcohol use and anger...

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  • Neuroplasticity

    For much of our history, we believed that our brains were fully grown during childhood. But with the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we now know that the brain continues to grow, adapt, and change over time. It does this by creating new neurons...

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  • Two Deaths and Many Lives

    It was perhaps his oldest memory. Years ago, he sat on his grandfather’s bed holding his hand, knowing that his grandfather didn’t have long to live. At the time, he didn’t know what to make of what his grandfather had said to him. What he remembered was something...

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  • Thinking Creatively

    It was the first class in Professor Atkin’s class. After going over the syllabus, she asked the students to get out a sheet of paper for a quiz. Students were shocked. “This is a simple True/False quiz,” she began. “I’m going to give you five quotes and then ask you...

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  • Selling Time

    America had a problem. Clocks in use at the time were manually wound and imprecise. That had not been a problem until railroads began to cross the country. Train schedules needed to be precise, or train collisions would become a serious problem. Samuel Langley saw an...

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