Back on the beach of my heart, where so much is the same as when my family first brought me here nearly 50 summers ago. One thing is missing, though: the wreck of the SS James Longstreet, perched decoratively on the horizon during the day, a fiery blaze every sunset, until it finally rusted away […]
Honoring Juneteenth with another step on my lifelong learning journey: I didn’t know that the belated news of freedom wasn’t really being proclaimed to enslaved people in Texas on June 19, 1865. It was actually a warning from the Union Army “directed toward recalcitrant slaveholders,” as Isabel Wilkerson and others report. That is, the enslavers […]
How. How!? How could I have mostly forgotten the time that I was with a carload of teen boys in upstate NY and we got pulled over and the driver got arrested for reckless driving and put in cuffs in the back of the cop car and we were all “asked” to follow them back […]
Our country ’tis of thee… that we tell a complicated tale this Memorial Day. Here are my Papa and Nana on their wedding day, Feb. 27th 1943. Technically, the “right” day to honor Papa’s service would be Veterans Day, since he trained as a pilot but never saw combat and lived to a happy old […]
Reflecting on LAPD clearing the Echo Park encampment of people living in tents: This strikes me as a perfect example of the idea that the function of a system is *what it does.* It’s not that our systems are broken. That would imply we can just fix up what we’ve got, in specific instances where […]
Yesterday, March 26, was #StopAsianHate Day. To my White friends in particular, I offer two things I’m reflecting on: 1/ This article in which, among other Asian-American voices, my trusted college friend Sumalee Montano shared her experience: “In her Los Angeles neighborhood a few weeks ago, an unmasked woman breathed in Montano’s face, then leaned […]
Lately my neighbors’ tumbling mass of super sweet jasmine stops me in my tracks on my morning coffeewalks and reminds me of a children’s story that made a big impression on Small Me: There’s a very poor old man living in a very small village. He’s so poor, he can only afford one very small […]
Today I want to give my time and care to honor the dead, and the living. I have an offering for each. Whether you read this for learning, or for the affirmation of feeling seen, here’s my offering: For the dead: Say their names I join in mourning with the families and communities of the […]
Y’all, I am feeling pretty darned adulty over here and going to celebrate for a second. Last night I had a wave of anxiety about a Thing That Might Happen Tomorrow (TTMHT). Started telling myself a story in which a few random recent nothings were signs that a big scary disaster was brewing. Instead of […]
On my mind this Monday morning, a story from my grandfather about the meaning of work: Grampa spent his career at GE back when that was a thing. He was an inventor with an insatiably restless mind. At one point, GE was building a huge new factory. Grampa was one of the earliest to move […]