I found this recent video produced by Disney interesting, even encouraging. It invites us – and particularly our daughters – to redefine what we mean by the term “princess.” Rather than have our daughters – and, for that matter, our sons as well! – see the ideal girl as a damsel in distress waiting for someone to rescue her, Disney invites them to imagine princesses as real girls, as strong girls, as, quite frankly, real strong girls. There’s an irony here, of course, as few corporations or story-tellers have done more to promote – or profit by – the traditional image of the princess than Disney. Yet in recent movies like...

The weather took a turn this week, dropping from near eighty degrees on Wednesday to a high in the low forties on Thursday and Friday. I know it will likely warm up, at least a bit, but it sure feels like we’ve turned the corner and cannot count on seeing the warm sunny days we’ve enjoyed of late for another six months. And it’s been windy. The kind of wind that blows leaves in swirls and makes it nearly impossible to rake. All of which put me in mind of A. A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day,” which isn’t a poem, or even a book, of course, but Disney’s animated movie based on several A. A. Milne’s Pooh...