Lana Maryé Morelli

Holy Hiatus! With Christmas and New Years falling on the weekend this year, I just couldn’t get my life together enough to sit down and blog… which I think is okay, because you readers probably couldn’t get your lives together to sit down and read either… We’re even! So during this hiatus, winter decided to rear its ugly head. Here in the Northeast we didn’t have a white Christmas, we had a white day-after Christmas. Whether you like snow or not, many Holiday/Christmas songs of a “ White Christmas, ” end up making most people long for it, even if they don’t particularly like snow. In short, had the storm arrived just 12 hours earlier, it could have arrived to open arms… but truthfully, instead, it was greeted with a groan. I guess at some point, snowstorms have had to stop being personally offended by the adult – hatred toward them. “We have to get to work”  “We have to reschedule everything now”  “I don’t want to shovel”  “Oh No, Look at the roads!”  ...

“Children should be seen and not heard” -----that’s the age-old saying. I think it’s supposed to imply that kids should observe, speak when spoken to, not talk back and give respect to their elders (that mean anyone older than them--so us 20 something’s fall into that category too!) I am a 20something. It isn’t THAT long ago that I was a kid. I remember hearing and being offended by this little cliché saying. I found it insulting and stifling. Now as an adult, I see the logic behind it. It’s not supposed to imply that children should not have a thought or an opinion or a voice. It means that children should observe, learn how to make appropriate comments and how to interact socially. I think somewhere along the line this idea became skewed. Children are not quieted to learn and observe, but are silenced by technology and lack of parenting. Let me explain… I walked into a restaurant the other night and I saw a little boy; he must have been 7 or 8, slumped over in a chair wit...

I ride the train to work and I noticed that in a train car full of people, you could hear a pin drop. At first I was surprised by this phenomenon, I expected that when so many people are crammed into a small space it would be noisy with lots of chatter. The exact opposite is true. The only noise is the “click clack” of the train along the tracks and hum of the electronic devices being accessed on the train. Palm Pilots, lap tops, iPods, blackberries, cell phones AND kindle/digital readers. People are... watching movies, checking Facebook, updating themselves on “breaking news” playing solitaire, listening to music AND reading books. The amount of information that we can hold in our hands is no longer constrained by the amount of weight we are willing to carry; but rather by the amount of memory space or speed of internet access on whatever electronic device we chose to operate. We are a generation of people who have perfected how to stay busy. This is where the downfall comes in. We we...