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Boston Globe
an hour ago
- General
- Boston Globe
Being a beginner is a lot harder than it sounds
The teacher explained how the wheel worked. The spinning flat metal disk was controlled with a foot pedal; the splash pan would catch excess water and clay. Advertisement She sliced a chunk from a big block of clay, weighed it ('You want about 2 pounds'), kneaded it, rolled it into a ball, and slapped it onto the center of the wheel. With the wheel spinning, she demonstrated how to hold wet hands against the clay so that it would 'cone up' into a tall volcano shape, and then how to press it down until it looked like a hockey puck. Once the clay was centered, we would create a divot in the middle, widen and deepen it with our thumbs, stop the wheel, and check the depth of the hole using a needle tool. Start the wheel again and 'collar up,' using the fingers of one hand inside and one hand outside the spinning pot to gently cause the vessel's walls to rise and grow thinner. Advertisement 'And now you're ready to shape it,' the teacher said, demonstrating with fingers and tools how to make a bowl, a vase, a tall cylinder. I marveled at how mysteriously obedient the clay was; the centrifugal force of the wheel combined with the prompting of her fingers told it what to do, and that's what it did. After having us cut and knead our own pieces of clay, she patiently took us through the process again. At the end, we each had a stubby cylinder — wow, we made a pot! 'And now,' the teacher said, 'you can use the rest of the time to experiment and play on your own.' This was where I got into trouble. When I coned up, my volcano was a lopsided bumpy spiral, like a cone of soft-serve ice cream. Coned down again, coned up: same problem. The teacher showed me how to place my hands. I collared up, and for a moment I had a pretty nice cylinder, but then the top of it whirled off into my pressing-too-hard moving-too-fast hands. 'Cone down and start again,' the teacher advised. More soft-serve ice cream. The clay was becoming overworked; I needed to stop there, with a bizarre twisted little mess of a vase that the teacher diplomatically called 'kind of sweet and wonky.' Advertisement Things got worse with the next piece of clay. I couldn't remember the steps. I didn't want to monopolize the teacher or call attention to my bewildered fumbling. I used too much water and the wheel kept spinning, and I should have turned it off to think for a minute, but my slimy hands kept doing things to the slimy clay, which was now sliding and disintegrating all over the wheel. It was like the time at summer camp when I tried to learn to water ski, fell, forgot to let go of the bar, and was towed through the lake on my belly. Utter panic. In the end the teacher came over and kindly salvaged my pot. We cleaned off our tools and our wheels. I was feeling embarrassed and frustrated and shaken. It's one thing to muse about wanting to be a beginner at something and another to actually be that beginner, to know nothing and be humbled by a demure-looking piece of clay. 'Never again,' I said in the car on the way home. But later that evening, I was online watching introductory wheel-throwing videos and looking for openings in upcoming Mudflat workshops. Next time I would try to expect even less of myself and remember it takes time and humility to relax enough to truly begin learning. I was haunted by the clay. It would be willing to do what I asked of it, but first I would have to learn how to ask. Joan Wickersham's latest book is, 'No Ship Sets Out To Be A Shipwreck." Her column appears regularly in the Globe.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- General
- Boston Globe
Genius loci: A sense of place, to go
In earlier days, if I was on the phone I would be at my desk or the kitchen table. Now, by default, I often find myself in conversation when I am away from home and, often, outdoors. That shift in habit has made me aware of how place can be braided into human exchange. I remember a conversation I had with my son when he was just out of college and considering those ways in which his life was changing. A move to the West Coast? I had pulled over at a rest area that offered a view to the distant Catskills, among the oldest mountains in America. Stay or move? Come or go? The conversation around these variables, what is permanent and what is temporary, was framed by the silhouette of the ancient ridges and peaks. Both the place and the words have stayed in my mind. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up These incidental alignments of place and talk can enrich both. Sometimes I grab my phone before I take my morning walk. There was the morning after a heavy rainstorm, with branches downed, a creek bed flooded, but the fields and woodlands still glistening with the shine of rain. When the phone buzzed, it was a friend who had just started a second round of chemo. It was fatigue more than nausea that was knocking her over now, but it alternated with fear, nerve, humor. When I think of that conversation now, I know that the wild beauty of the suddenly disturbed earth was a full presence in the exchange. Advertisement Of course, not every conversation is momentous. The day to dayness of an ordinary chat with a neighbor was sometimes expanded as I drove up New York Route 22 in the early morning for a weekly teaching job in Vermont. I would catch up with news of the day — a bear at the bird feeder, a change in zoning proposed at the town board meeting — as the road unspooled behind me, the cornfields, the forests, and farms all seeming to ground the conversation in some larger sphere of rural life. Advertisement And more than once I have talked through something I am trying to write with an editor while walking along a streamside path in a park near our house. I know now why I do this: There is something in the energy, the continuity, the momentum of the flowing water that coincides with the way I am trying to think through the ideas. Water finds its way, and I am hoping to do the same. These landscapes are not just a backdrop for conversation; rather, they are full participants. It could be the afternoon light, the patterning of leaves, the sequined surface of water, a distant ridgeline, but as these become interwoven into human exchange, they also situate us in a profound way in a greater world. In doing so, they become a part of how we absorb ideas and experience. Places seep into us in different ways. The view to the Catskills always reminds me now of that conversation with my son and his decision to stay. But such are the unexpected associations and reciprocities offered us when we recognize that powerful partnership between the words we use and the places we inhabit. Advertisement
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Recent bad rap aside, the millionaires tax is making an impact
After reading Carine Hajjar's May 23 opinion piece, Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Just as learning never really ends, public policy can always grow and improve. While Hajjar identifies areas where such policy can be refined, it would be a disservice to overlook the amazing opportunities created by these dollars. Thank you, Massachusetts, for investing in residents like me. My classmates and I promise to make that investment worthwhile. Advertisement Mike McDougal Haverhill Fair Share funds have been a boon to public higher ed In response to Carine Hajjar's opinion piece regarding the Fair Share Amendment, it's important to also highlight the transformative impact this funding is having on public higher education in Massachusetts. The House's fiscal 2025 supplemental budget includes a $20 million investment in higher education, with $10 million allocated to the University of Massachusetts for its endowment matching program. This initiative provides a $1 state match for every $2 in private contributions to the school and has already created or supported 700 scholarship funds worth $135 million, which distribute $4.6 million in student aid annually. Advertisement The Senate's proposal of $125 million in capital support would provide much-needed state funding for deferred maintenance, and it aligns with Governor Maura Healey's visionary BRIGHT Act, which would modernize and improve sustainability on public campuses. A notable Senate earmark is the $10 million designated for a nursing simulation lab at UMass Amherst. This facility would double the enrollment capacity for the Amherst campus's nursing program, helping to address the statewide health care workforce shortage. The UMass system educates 73,000 students annually and is celebrating 19,000 new graduates entering the workforce, predominantly in Massachusetts. These strategic investments fulfill the promises made when voters approved the Fair Share Amendment and ensure a robust future for public higher education and the Commonwealth's economy. Christopher Dunn Associate vice chancellor for government relations UMass Amherst
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Tangled in Trump budget's weeds and pricked by its thorns
Meanwhile, communities all across the country currently enjoying the benefits of renewable energy investments — jobs, cleaner air, and a safer, more resilient grid — will watch those dreams go up in smoke. Advertisement The rocket is on the launch pad. Citizens need to speak up before it takes off. The only folks actually getting in the rocket are billionaires. The rest of us are in the blast zone. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up Mary Memmott Framingham Tucked in the bill's 1,000+ pages: a weakened judiciary Whenever you have a bill that's more than 1,000 pages, items will get snuck in that have little to do with the main thrust of the legislation. Amid the countless tax and spending cuts detailed in the House-passed budget bill, there's a section that Advertisement The intent of this onerous power grab is to prevent the administration from being hamstrung by rulings from the bench by eliminating the judges' ability to penalize government officials for defying court orders. If it passes, it would render courts impotent, allowing the government to break the law and violate the Constitution with impunity. William J. Santoro Winchester
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
A new study reveals a sharp decline in moms' mental health. Is overparenting part of the problem?
This week, a Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up There's so much in this world to justify our stress. But: Is overparenting burning us out on top of it all? I chatted with Elkins (in between reminding my eighth-grader to stay after school for homework help and clicking 'refresh' on my second-grader's soccer schedule) to find out. Advertisement Let's start with your thoughts about the study, and then we'll go into the overparenting stuff. Advertisement It's confirming what we're all seeing firsthand, which is that moms are really struggling. The focus is really timely, especially in light of last year's surgeon general I liked that they highlighted in the article that [more] research on maternal mental health centers around the perinatal period. … But what about moms whose babies are older than 6 months? We're in this for a while. Maternal mental health is suffering. We can't blame it all on COVID. Sign up for Parenting Unfiltered. Globe staff #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Subscribe * indicates required E-mail * Where do you feel it's coming from? Is the problem overparenting? We can't draw clear, direct conclusions between overparenting and declining mental health based on the study. That being said, I think the fact that the study highlighted a decline in maternal mental health across the sociodemographic spectrum suggests that there's more here than structural racism, access to resources, housing insecurity, and other [systemic] factors that are impacting well-being. It suggests, at the very least, that we need to discuss and hopefully study the cultural factors to which I think this generation of parents is exposed and how it influences beliefs and values, which ultimately translate into behaviors. This is where I actually think that overparenting is a timely construct. Are we all competing with each other? What are we doing? I'm an elder millennial. I think that, somewhere along the line, we became convinced that parenting is both really high stakes and also controllable. It's a perfect storm. We came of age during this boom in brain science and child development research, and a growing interest in attachment theory and the impact of adverse childhood experiences. At the same time, media was shifting, so these insights started making their way into headlines. We had this explosion of the science behind [parenting], but also the dissemination behind it. Advertisement Today's parents are often delaying parenthood. A lot of us are older, which often means that we're more highly educated, and that means that we've spent all these years in achievement-driven environments where hard work and problem-solving get results, and we're used to having agency. If something is broken, we fix it, and our boss says, 'Good job.' When it comes to parenting, we're bringing the same mind-set: We're analyzing and optimizing and deep-diving on the internet to figure out research. We're trying to manage every variable. What's the difference between overparenting and snowplow or intensive parenting? Overparenting is a more deeply held core belief. It's not just about hovering behaviors or snowplowing behaviors. I find that it's usually rooted in two beliefs. The first is that negative emotions are unsafe or somehow harmful, and they should be avoided. We feel that the normal emotions that we might all expect kids to be exposed to — shame and fear and sadness and boredom — are somehow bad. We need to protect our kids from them. The second belief is really fueled by the intensive parenting narrative, which is that it's a parent's job — almost their sacred responsibility — to shape every part of their child's life, including how they feel. The belief that whatever is uncomfortable is actually unsafe, then that belief is going to drive us into all sorts of overparenting behaviors because we feel that we're responsible and are going to condemn our kids to a lifetime of emotional floundering if we're not doing this right. Advertisement Is this just an upper-to-upper-middle-class phenomenon? You'd think that it's primarily an upper-middle-class phenomenon. There's some research to show that this might be more prominent among women with a higher educational background. I think the data is a little bit tricky on that, because most of the research is going to come from clinical populations, which tend to skew more white and upper-middle-class, because they're the ones who can access the care. But we do have data indicating that families across the sociodemographic spectrum value the things that intensive parenting values. It's not like they dismiss it; I think perhaps their opportunity to live it out in real time might be diluted. How does this manifest in real life? It's funny: While we were talking, I was mouthing to my eighth-grader to check in with his teacher about a grade as he walked out the door. I guess I'm guilty. What are some prominent examples from your practice? In the child anxiety world, [there is] what we call parental accommodation, the behavioral and clinical descriptor for how overparenting plays out. These are changes that parents make to our own behavior in an effort to decrease the distress of our kids. We see this in clinical populations: [about] 95 to 98 percent of parents of anxious kids accommodate. There's not a lot of research on the prevalence of accommodation in non-clinical populations, because most of this is studied in clinics like mine, but one study found that one in four parents of non-anxious kids report daily accommodation: That's 25 percent of parents changing their behavior daily in an attempt to minimize their kids' distress. … It's related to parents' own core beliefs around what is safe for our kids and what our responsibility is to our kids. Advertisement [We need] warmth with limits. But somewhere along the line, our social media feeds told us that setting limits around your kids' emotions is bad. One example is your kid gets cut from a sports team. Obviously, they feel really upset. Maybe, the overparenting response would be to call the coach and to complain, or to tell the child that they were treated unfairly: 'You were treated poorly, and I'm going to do something about it.' The aim is to protect the kid from feeling shame, rejection, and failure. A love-and-limits approach might be to acknowledge the disappointment, to express a belief in your child's ability to cope with that disappointment, and to put it back on them: 'What do you want to do next? Do you want to try another league? Do you want to do something else?' If your kid is anxious over a really tough homework assignment, the overparenting path might be getting highly involved, giving a lot of scaffolding around the assignment, and maybe ultimately doing the majority of the work. A love-and-limits approach might be validating the distress: 'This is a monster of an assignment,' suggesting one or two coping strategies, but then dropping the rope. It's validation of the distress, but with the narrative that: 'You can cope with this hard feeling, and I bet you can come up with a solution. I'm here if you need a suggestion or a hug.' Advertisement Overparenting becomes such a problem because with a parent's well-meaning intention of swooping in to cushion the distress, the kid gets the message: 'I can't handle this by myself.' Devil's advocate: Parents actually call coaches to complain that their kid got cut from a team? I find that mortifying. This is a thing that happens? Oh yeah. … It's this hyper-awareness of what a child must be feeling in this moment, and that if they feel rejection, they're going to crumple. But the problem is that, if kids haven't had the opportunity to experience normative negative emotions and recover because parents are jumping in, then they flail spectacularly when things get really hard. You know, you've got a kid who trends anxious. They express distress. A parent jumps in, which sort of sets the framework that a kid can't handle it on their own. It becomes a really vicious cycle, and this is all swimming in intensive parenting culture. But mental health is so precarious. Of course, we want to protect our kids, because we hear horror stories about what can happen if your kids are undergoing mental distress. It's hard to unlearn that. We parents have to acknowledge the waters in which we're swimming, to first notice this tendency and get curious about our own behaviors, and the beliefs that might be driving them: What do you notice about yourself when your kid is becoming distressed or anxious? What urges do you feel driven to do? Are there behaviors you're engaging in that you wouldn't ordinarily? Get curious: What's behind these behaviors? You can start challenging yourself to tolerate your own distress in the moment by resisting the urge to jump in. Maybe there's low-hanging fruit: Your kid says that they're stressed because they've got all of this homework and got home late from dance class. You notice the urge to take responsibilities off their plate: They don't have to bring their plate to the sink, and they don't have to walk the dog, even though those are their responsibilities. Do a little exposure: What happens if they're stressed and they still have expectations in place that they participate in family life. Does your kid crumble? They're probably [mad] at you, but can you handle that? What's so bad about your kid being mad at you? It's not a kid's job to make a parent feel good about parenting decisions. So many of the questions I get around this are: How do I explain my decision not to give them a phone? At the core of that question is: How do I make it so that my kid isn't mad about my decision not to give them the phone? Your kid doesn't have to be happy about every decision that you make. Basically, it's: How can you challenge yourself to tolerate your own distress at your kids' distress. This is a micro-exposure to build their resilience, and it builds your resilience, too. Interview was edited and condensed. Kara Baskin can be reached at
