by johnnoltner
I often describe A Peace of My Mind’s process and development as a walk down a foggy path…where you can see two steps ahead, but not much more. Look any farther, and the path disappears into a murky mist and the destination is uncertain. But, if you commit to walking those two steps, more of the path is revealed. Not much…but enough to keep going. All A Peace of My Mind’s early days, I knew I was on a good […]
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by johnnoltner
Last month I spent time at The Miami Valley School in Dayton, Ohio. They hosted our American Stories exhibit, I led school assemblies, visited classrooms, and we set up a studio in their greenhouse to ask the student body to reflect on what makes us human. It’s a complicated question…but one that drew thoughtful replies with an interesting range of perspectives in their pre-k through 12th grade student body. Sometimes we lose our ability to dream as we get older. […]
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by johnnoltner
You know the picture. It’s a grainy black and white from 1972 Vietnam. A 9-year-old girl runs, crying, from a village that has just been napalmed, the clothes burned from her body. Photographer Nick Ut won a Pulitzer for the image that so powerfully captured the human cost of war. I saw the photo just last month in Washington DC when I visited the Newseum, and got lost in their gallery of Pulitzer –winning photographs. As I stood in front […]
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by johnnoltner
I was a Marine. For six weeks. As a journalism student, I believed I should try to understand as many different perspectives as possible and I knew nothing about the military. So when I returned to my dorm room one afternoon and found a flier in my mailbox that said, “You could be a Marine,” I called the recruiter. At the time, their officer candidate program allowed you to dis-enroll at any time without a commitment. I read that fine […]
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by johnnoltner
I’m not a pacifist. I believe it’s vital to resist evil in the world, and sometimes force is required. But I also believe we use it poorly. Syria’s Assad has little legitimacy as a leader and the alleged use of chemical weapons in his country is indefensible. I would have preferred Obama to have acted early in the conflict to find a resolution before so much human suffering occurred. But I don’t believe our country’s missile strike early Friday will […]
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by johnnoltner
At the School Redesign in Action conference for the New England Secondary School Consortium, we asked participants, “How do you ensure equity and excellence for all learners?” Some of the responses can be found below…a full collection can be found in our Facebook gallery.
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by johnnoltner
This morning our friends Jen and Greg started hiking 8.8 miles uphill toward Amicalola Falls in Georgia. When they reach the falls, they’ll keep going. Another 2,181 miles. If things go according to plan, sometime in the middle of October they will stand on the summit of Mt. Katahdin in the middle of Maine’s Baxter State Park. If things go according to plan, they will hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail. Yesterday, Karen and I hiked a section […]
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by johnnoltner
In the summer of 2008 our family backpacked on an island off the coast of Maine. A small boat dropped us off, motored away, and retrieved us three days later. Our kids, Brenna and Jordan, were 10 and 13. We spent our days picking wild blueberries and wandering the rocky shoreline, imagining we were castaways, with really nice gear from REI. We watched the waves roll in and searched tide pools for signs of life. We weren’t quite alone. There […]
Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: backpack, crab, family, growth, island, maine, marine biology, molting, peace, shed, wilderness
by johnnoltner
At the end of our dinner presentation at the Center for Transforming Communities, we closed with one final exercise. After hearing many of the inspiring stories from A Peace of My Mind, people are ready to dream big. We ask everyone in the room to take a piece of paper and finish this phrase: I wish…. They can finish the phrase any way that they like…we encourage them to aim high, and they often do. Everyone in the room feels […]
Categories: Blog, Uncategorized • Tags: art, commitment, community, listen, memphis, peace, transformation, wish
by johnnoltner
Chuck Richter is a lobsterman from Orr’s Island, Maine. He says life on the water is hard, unpredictable, dangerous, and tiring, but there is nothing he would rather do. He appreciates living in a small community where “everybody’s got your back,” and speaks of the challenges when outsiders come in and try to change things they don’t understand. “I’ve learned through counseling that if something upsets you, you don’t count from 10 to 1 because 10 to 1 is countdown to liftoff. You count from […]
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