Author of Sheila Says We're Weird and Defenders of Dirt. Promoting creativity, craft, cooperatives, and communities of care. I believe ideas can inform and inspire positive actions.
This week I'm writing early, then taking a short break to attend a family wedding in Northern Ireland. Today's post is a gathering of a different kind—of letters, maps, and memorials—documenting a contested past that lives on in the present. In the spring of
What common threads link Route 66; a recently-constructed airport exit; a nature preserve near an industrialized port; and a quaint village in the Berkshires? Read on to find out! I'm pulling on several strands this week, hoping to weave them together here into a tableau of sorts.
Picture a classroom at a Big Ten university in the early 1980s. It's Spanish class, and the professor has just asked a question about Native Americans. The exact question is lost to my memory, but a student's response is not: "They're all gone.
"I'm not asking you to bear the weight of all your ancestors' indiscretions and negative occurrences. What I am asking is that you advocate for those truths to be brought to the surface, and for you to share that we recognize that these occurrences have happened.
"Today we're just operating in what must be a smidgen of all of the time that ever existed." Dr. Kyle Powys White Unless we're in a bubble or in deep denial, most of us are aware that we're being subjected to an
Have you heard someone say, or perhaps said yourself, lately, "I'm struggling to read books or longer articles anymore"? Often followed by, "I'm distracted . . . I'm just scrolling . . . I'm having trouble concentrating." There are many possible reasons for this.
Two weeks ago, I promised to put together a directory of topics for my Throughlines essays. But life happened, the red hat called to me, other deadlines intervened. Last week's post about the Norwegian resistance hats did serve as a chance to offer a roundup of all the
Unless, of course, we do so in order to create something entirely new. I meant (and failed) to keep it short and sweet this week so I could get back to finishing up the Norwegian resistance hat I'm knitting. Maybe you've heard about them? Traditionally associated
The big dipper and Orion's belt are the only two constellations I can reliably locate without help. I'm also pretty directionally-challenged. In pre-smartphone times in unfamiliar cities I have more than once headed off in the exact opposite direction of my destination. I'
"Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it" attributed to Gandhi This was not the essay I'd planned to write today. But it demanded that I sit down and work it out. It's runs long, because I
The devastation seems to intensify with each succeeding week. From the streets of U.S. cities to the leadership of other countries, people are rushing to put out the fires started by this president and the other arsonists responsible for Project 2025. The decision about what to focus on for
"The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out." James Baldwin, Nothing Personal I've been slow-reading Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care ever since