There are a lot of reasons I miss having a dog. Election season is one. Tuki used to come with me when I voted. She was also my candidate of choice on more than one occasion. I voted for Tuki when it was clear that, compared to the humans on a ballot, she would represent … Continue reading My Write-in Candidate is Dead and Reductive Disrespecters Want Your Brain: An Election Season Guide for the Perplexed
Category: opinion
I will confess to not being terribly distressed to slam the door on 2015. Between the job layoff, sending my best non-human friend Tuki to the Rabbit Field in the Sky and my mother on a slow cruise to Dementia Island, it’s been – and continues to be – interesting times. Still, there have been … Continue reading New Business, Writer’s Block and Preventing Newborn Ignorance, One Baby at a Time
The first time I heard the term “Cultural Intelligence” was in a church basement. The topic under discussion was an update on the redesign of Milwaukee County’s Behavioral Health division; the person updating us was describing an all-too-familiar and depressing reality: The group doing the redesign work is comprised of mostly white, upper middle class, suburban people … Continue reading The Art of Knowing What You Don’t Know: Cultural Intelligence, Tamir Rice and Hope for a More Enlightened 2016
Donald J. Trump is a man his supporters would avoid like gay pride parades if he were saying the things he says while unshaven and pushing all his worldly possessions in a shopping cart. But he wears bespoke suits and lives and works in buildings with his name on them. So instead of being called … Continue reading Up from the grave to denounce a naked emperor
By now, everyone is probably experiencing what it is they experience after a major tragic event that ripples out from wherever it happened and into their daily routine. The day after ISIL/Daesh shared its latest commentary on modern civilization, one of my friends posted this story. It’s dense, but worthwhile for anyone who wants a … Continue reading Muslims, Jews, History, Cities: A Dispatch from Refugee Heaven
Last summer, I gave myself a gift. My friend Judy was offering a four-week writing workshop. I went on-line and registered. She’s one of the Writer’s lunch writers, owner of Redbird Writing Studio and the author of “Shut Up & Write.” It was everything I hoped for and then some. You can draw a straight … Continue reading Just me, at a writer’s retreat weekend, or “Three seismic paragraphs and a sandhill crane”
I sure wish I were as good at my own life as I am at other people’s. I am not kidding. I am terrific at other people's lives. Most of us are, at the very least, better at other people’s lives than we are at our own, and for the simplest of reasons. We are not … Continue reading How to be terrific at other people’s lives, featuring a vintage bee veil and a $10 ukulele
Who says you can’t still learn stuff from your high school teachers decades after graduation? On March 1, Bob Barone, who was the theater director and also, I think, occasionally taught English where my sister and I attended high school, posted this update on our Facebook Revolution reunion group page: “This Thursday, March 5, is the … Continue reading Crispus Attucks, American history and a small serving of Jewish ‘potato/potahto’
This past weekend Tuki and I walked with R & Bailey again. We talked about her TV spot. She’s a city forester and was interviewed by a local station about damage to the trunks of her city’s streetside trees because of the extreme cold. She was pretty pleased with it but wished the reporter had included … Continue reading Trees on TV and a review of Judith Claire Mitchell’s “A Reunion of Ghosts”
If I ever get pulled over for “fitting the description,” the description will be “garden-variety middle-aged white lady.” It’s been an accurate description for most of my life (with the exception of the age part, which is following the conventional trajectory and means that if I live long enough, I'll be a garden-variety old white … Continue reading Pan-African Nationalism basics, plutocratic cookie pigs and Rabbi Hillel
the sentence factory 