blog

My photo of a memorial in Coffeewalk Cemetery: dawn light is the backdrop for a statue of a seated woman with her chin on her hand, looking down in sadness.

Owner of a broken heart

“To be alive right now is to have a moral injury.” That phrase keeps coming up for me on coffeewalks lately. Looping in my brain. Or maybe it's my heart... or my soul, if such a thing exists? I think the phrase is mine, but the concept isn’t. Moral injury ...
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Photo of a framed US flag, except that instead of white stars on a blue field, the upper left area of the flag contains the word THINK in white all-caps on a blue field.

New kid, old block

William Copley, "Imaginary Flag for USA," 1972, as photographed by me at Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/9/25. SCENE: A few days ago. Low on sleep, feeling raw because I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t stop fretting about the safety of my loved ones, the ...
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The Progress Pride flag, featuring horizontal rainbow stripes with triangular white, pink, light blue, brown, and black stripes at left.

Whenever, wherever

"Can I ask you... if they come for me... where do you think they'll take me?" This f*cking heartbreaking question. Today, from my wonderful beloved young trans friend, whose eyes are suddenly about to spill tears in the middle of a discussion that was about politics. But the political is ...
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Photograph of a very cold scene: you are standing on a bridge over a small river, which is entirely covered in ice and snow.

Never say goodbye

This is not the post I was going to write today. It's been a rough week, hasn't it? Waking up every day to a renewed deluge of cruelties. Knowing this is only the beginning. This morning, it all hit me hard. Suddenly I was nearly crying on my coffeewalk. My ...
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An old, creased, company memorandum form from 1940, with all identifying details removed.

To Whom It May Concern

MEMORANDUM TO: White people and everyone with relatively greater privilegeFROM: Your fellow privileged white personRE: Efforts to outlaw DEIDATE: Today and every day——————————————Just a reminder: We look at the world around us to assess *how* to continue advancing justice. We do not assess *whether* to continue advancing justice. Yes, we ...
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Photograph of a snowy graveyard on a sunny day. We are looking at a granite gravestone with many generation of names engraved on it.

Hopscotch

Today. MLK Day. Inauguration day, which I won’t capitalize. Sometimes, as I coffeewalk through the cemetery part of my loop, I think about the aphorism “The days are long, but the years are short.” People say it about parenting, but I think it’s true in a broader sense too. I’m ...
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Elvis Presley's black and white Army enlistment photo, with the contrasts and shadows amped up so details are lost and Elvis is very, very white.

Why can’t you see

I saw Elvis a couple of weeks ago. It did not go well. Everything started off fine. M and I had gotten tickets to take my mom and stepdad to a tribute band at a winery in nearby New Hampshire. Just a fun little holiday outing, especially for my mother ...
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Who’s at risk when we play it safe?

Right after the election, I got to speak on The Redress Movement's panel about Building Racial Redress Into Housing Justice. They invited me on behalf of my client organization's homeownership initiative that provides down-payment assistance specifically for first-time buyers who identify as Black and/or Latino... which begs the question, why ...
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A screenshot from the website of seedthevote.org. White text on a black background says "SEED THE VOTE" with red text underneath saying "WIN ELECTIONS. BUILD OUR MOVEMENTS". Under that, in smaller white text, it says, "We are committed to supporting the work of grassroots groups who are leading the way on key federal election fights and growing our movements for the long-term. We recruit, train and support volunteers to knock doors and make calls with these organizations."

Not holding out for a hero

"We're spending so much energy talking about how bad things are, it can start to feel like THAT's our activism. Instead of just talking with our friends and family about what's bad, let's talk about what we can DO about this election." That's what the awesome friend-of-a-friend seasoned organizer said ...
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/ Nonprofit and philanthropy, Personal philosophy,
A beautiful beach landscape with white sand, green seagrass, and a blue channel of water under a partly sunny sky.

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

Hi, white friends! Can I invite myself to your dinner table for a minute? You know, the one where you're having the same conversation that my family's been having since the debate last Thursday, at our little dinner table in the tiny cottage here on the Beach of My Heart ...
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A silvery log of driftwood sits on a sandy white beach. There's a line of green, green seagrass behind it, and a blue blue sky beyond that.

Captain’s log

This morning, back on Beach of My Heart. I smiled at the memory of the driftwood log. Then blinked, and laughed out loud because I realized it was real. Time doubles back on itself in odd and beautiful patterns here. Always so much the same. New joys adding bright threads ...
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/ Personal philosophy
An expanse of deeply blue river under deeply blue sky, interrupted only by a couple of tiny rocky islands poking up between the viewer and a thin line of land that's the faraway opposite riverbank.

Get lost, kid

Yesterday I got myself well and truly lost in an area with no cell service. It’s okay. That was more or less the point. I started the morning by exploring around Lake Placid, scouting locations to view the next day’s eclipse. Then I went a little further afield, checking out ...
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/ Personal philosophy