The Big Time
My college classmates group is all abuzz over the Cabinet confirmations of a couple of our alums, and it is triggering me right in the Shoulds, big time. Because that's what it seems like so many of my classmates are: Big Time. Now, it's a huge school, so I'm not ...
Year 48 in the rearview mirror
Welp, today is my birthday. Looking back, 48 was quite a year by the numbers: Left my office in L.A. on March 11 and never went backVoted twice (I mean the primary and the general, what'd you think I meant?)Beat one big scary bully with my brain and my ability ...
The best gift you could give me
Martin Luther King Jr. looks through the bars of a Burmingham, Alabama, cell in April 1963. Source: http://photos.state.gov/galleries/usinfo-photo/39/civil_rights_07/9.html Wanna do something nice for me on my birthday this MLK weekend? Give me one minute of your time to really read Dr. King's quote about "white moderates" below. Then give me ...
The Further Adventures of MAGA-Hat Neighbor
Season 1 recap: Back before the election, you may recall I posted asking for guidance on whether I had a duty to respond to my very elderly neighbor's habit of parading around wearing a MAGA hat. Y'all were wise and helpful in advising me not to waste time on a ...
“There goes the neighborhood”
Reflecting on how this week's nearly unrestrained White supremacist insurrection is landing differently, more heavily and yet more familiarly on my friends and colleagues of color, and a memory flashes back to me: I'm in the back seat of the wood-paneled station wagon with my sister, maybe 10 years old ...
How it started / How it’s going
It started officially here on April 28, 2016. Trump launched his presidential campaign in CA at the OC Fairgrounds, a mile from my house. We biked over to protest - but my voice is quiet and the crowd was loud, turning violent as the sun went down. There was another ...
“You don’t have the votes, you don’t have the votes”
Me at a protest in February 2019 Angry and disgusted. Not so much at Trump himself for blatantly and undeniably attempting to force Georgia Secretary of State Raffensberger to commit election fraud. Trump is nothing, has never been anything but a blustering bag empty of all except hate, selfishness, and ...
It’s been a good apocalypse
In the blur of stretched-out yet strangely compressed dayweekmonths that was 2020, one moment comes back to me now. Early March with the lockdown looming. I had stuffed my cart up and down seemingly every aisle of the grocery store except pet food, ending up in the back corner with ...
New Year’s Revolution
My friends, especially those of you in philanthropy: as the clock ticks down on this chaotic year, I've been reflecting on whether there's a New Year's Resolution that could help guide me forward into 2021. And I was considering maybe something like, "I will do everything in my power to ...
I’m nightmaring of a White Christmas
My dears, as much as I do sincerely wish you a merry Christmas, today I need to share a holiday memory that is twisting my heart with truth I didn’t see at the time. Forty-four years ago tonight was my very first Christmas, and it was a White Christmas indeed… ...
“Here comes the lady”
"Here comes the lady," I hear a voice say. I've just come through the gate into my beloved neighborhood park on my daily morning coffee walk, and the every-Sunday pickup basketball bunch is on the court. We always smile and wave -- yes, smile, because I'm sipping on my travel ...
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood
Thanksgiving reflections on this morning's coffee walk: 27 years ago, I was a very green college grad struggling in my first "real" job at a management consultancy in Silicon Valley. I just didn't fit in with my ladder-climbing, MBA-worshipping peers and it was making me miserable since I hadn't yet ...
