The other day in a gas station, I experienced an uncomfortably familiar deflation of hope and happiness upon reading the array of headlines at the newspaper stand. As is often the current events case, the distressing sense of the surreal was second only to the distressing sense that this is all starting to meet expectations,…
Tag: America
Education should not be seen as frightening in a truly free society.
This is a day that I feel proud to be an American. Deepest gratitude and respect to all the students who walked out of school today, and the adults who support them. Demonstrations of civic consciousness are fundamental to our democracy, and we are all responsible for one another’s “general welfare.” Beyond the shores of America,…
There is no good plan for this country, aside from that which arises out of unity.
My mind seizes upon finding solutions, to even the thorniest of problems. In that spirit, I’ve been trying to envision a path toward unification as our country descends into a maelstrom of divisiveness. It is a tall order, but as is true of essentially all the most vexing problems of modernity, we technically possess everything…
Written words are useless until the closing of the inspiration loop.
In L.A. on Skid Row, a project called Street Symphony, composed of homeless musicians alongside professional players, has developed a tradition of playing Handel’s Messiah around the holidays. In the article I read (New Yorker, Jan 1 issue), the author muses about how the language surrounding spiritual epiphany and redemption can so often sound corny…
Treacherous
My husband’s grandmother recently gave him taped recordings of his grandfather speaking about the Holocaust, of which they are both survivors. She is living still, whereas he walked on 5 years ago at the age of 90. It is searing to hear him recount riding three weeks in the cattle cars, and being dropped at…
bootstraps
What, I wonder, are we all waiting for? Those of us who wish for peace and a real change in these systems of living that seem so resistant to the value of the world and people as they exist unattached to monetary profit? My own ironic answer is, I think I’ve been waiting to…
tuned out
In just a few days, it will be three weeks since I cut myself off from reading the news feeds. I am glad to say that though I remain functionally up-to-date on current events, to the extent that my outrage is fully righteous and regularly conveyed by phone and email to the office workers of…
Patriotism
For a person interested in gaining a measure of the wisdom in the world, it seems a natural thing to start with a close reckoning of familiar details and people. This tendency to contemplate the familiar in part explains the attention I paid as a scholar to Native and African-American experiences in the Early American…
Columbus Day
500 plus years since a particular arrival. The eversame choice remains: exploit perceived weakness for the sake of power and profit, or, offer generosity and welcome in deference to the shared smallness of our human space in creation? The wrong choice remains daily made, affixed to our everyday ways. Such heroics when hope remains, to choose…
Headlines
It is all together strange to be an American these days, with a news cycle unendingly replete in the details of events suggestively indicative of a rapid decline in our collective fortunes and safety. How can we most sensibly respond to such onslaughts of bad news, with no room to take a breath and find…
Insight/Outfit of the Day 