The Racecar Report
What I just learned about race here in my car while listening to The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward Baptist: slave-grown cotton in Massachusetts and the truth about zombies.
THIS. IS. NOT. HISTORY.
This. Is. Not. History. Most people running our country and policing our streets were either growing up when this happened, or were brought up by people who lived through this. This moment – which itself was not unique or isolated and was a product of the centuries that came before it – formed the moment […]
The Half Has Never Been Told
Absolutely chilling. As in I’m literally shivering while I listen to this audiobook methodically examine the historical truths of how enslavement powered the economic and geographic expansion of our country. Gasps just from today’s drive: 1. Yeah sure we all learned “the invention of the cotton gin revolutionized cotton production.” But did any of us […]
Hysterical? It’s not even funny
When you call someone “hysterical” for protesting, say, Brett Kavanaugh‘s Supreme Court nomination or unfair umpires or workplace sexual harassment: There is a reason this is a gendered insult and it’s not just because oh, we traditionally associate over-emotionalism with women. “Hysterical” comes from the Greek “hustera” which literally means “womb.” Do I think people […]
This is not a story to pass on
Still feeling the echoes of finishing Toni Morrison’s Beloved this week. And the echoes of having been so wrong about how it would end. (Semi-spoiler ahead if you haven’t read it – and if you haven’t YOU SHOULD.) I listened to it slowly as an audiobook, read by Toni Morrison herself. Caught up in a […]
Truth.
I want to thank the troll who gave me an epiphany in an argument about affirmative action last weekend. Nah, not the one he was trying for, about how much fairer it would be to have a “purely meritocratic” system for college admissions. But in thinking about who gets in despite not really having shown […]
It’s summertime summertime sum sum summertime
Summer Picnic team retreat! Borrowed our office’s fake trees for dressing up conference stages, draped the tables and chairs in “wood,” and loaded up the side table with fruit, cold cuts, potato chips, pies, and old-fashioned sodas. Everyone got a dollar-store flower pen and notebook re-covered in woodgrain shelf paper. Plus plastic bugs on the […]
Was blind but now I see
This is my copy of Gone with the Wind. I remember writing a book report on it in sixth grade, so I must have gotten it when I was at most ten years old. As you can see, I literally read it to tatters as a kid. Honestly, that’s partly because of my OCD-related pulling […]
Living in the past
Time is doubling back on itself oddly in this place that echoes deeply for me, in this moment that echoes deeply for our country. Every summer of my childhood, the top floor of the middle cottage was ours for 2 glorious weeks. It was time out of the world, with no phone or TV or […]
My 2 cents on sustainable funding
Today I had the privilege of joining a panel of philanthropy leaders on “Sustainability: Insights from the Experts.” We were invited to share our thoughts on sustainable fundraising with a roomful of small and medium-sized nonprofit grantees of a large national organization. The national org invited us to their annual convening because of course they aren’t […]