Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash Shawshank Redemption beckons us; the Big Book gives us a path “And if you’ve come this far, maybe you’re willing to come a little further.” That one line Andy writes to Red at the end of Shawshank has a lot of resonance for me, right now, as a white person. […]
Tag: Social Change
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If We Can Agree on One Thing: We’re Tired
Photo by Jodi Barnes Shaming and blaming are draining. They only gain us wider divides. Pretend we could put politics aside. (I know, just stay with me here.) Is it possible that Americans agree on anything? I think so. Even in a country that agrees we are living in an era of extreme political polarization, so extreme […]
Photo by Frank McKenna on Unsplash Vonnegut gave us poor Billy Pilgrim for a reason We know a lot of stuff. And there’s so much more stuff, continuously generated, some of it brilliant, some of it noise. We’re living in a zettabyte era (a zettabyte equals 1 sextillion bytes or 1000 exabytes; an exabyte is 1 billion […]
Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash Ellen’s coming out about George started something worth wrestling with The word friend has become really fuzzy. Way before Ellen’s video about being friends with George W. Bush. Yet, strangely, all the social media backlash has brought two questions into focus: What is a friend versus being friendly? Must we […]
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Lorde Help Us
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash Brandt Jean’s call for forgiveness set off a few alarms. We should listen. Consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit.” — Audre Lorde Brandt Jean, brother of 26-year-old Botham Jean who was shot dead in his own apartment, extended nothing less than amazing grace to […]
Jodi Barnes 