Moving from Archive to Action
The posters for special events tied to Black History Month start appearing several weeks ahead, and I mark my personal calendar. I try out multiple tactics for encouraging my students—most of them white—to attend. But I’m also seeking ways to support learning about Black history and culture at my predominantly white institution (or, in shorthand, …
Continue reading What Can White Teachers Do to Support Black History Month?
What appealed to me about Stage West’s current offering of Like a Billion Likes wasn’t only the production’s biting critique of social media’s troubling influence on teenagers’ lives today. Certainly, that dimension of Erik Forrest Jackson’s script is both engaging and timely. For me, however, what pushes this inventive production into more complex territory is …
Giving directions to two French tourists as they puzzled over English-only signs to a car rental center. Lifting bags off the luggage carrousel for a young mom, traveling alone with her baby. Giving up a seat on the airport monorail to an exhausted-looking fellow rider. Holding the elevator door open and calling out a jovial …
Continue reading December Journeys & a 2018 Resolution: Looking Out for Our Fellow Travelers
I’m listening to the Code Talkers. They tell a story about America that I want to hear. "My name is Peter MacDonald," said a righteously proud, now ninety-year-old leader of "the thirteen surviving Navajo Code Talkers" at the White House recently. In a ceremony that should have focused on the pivotal contributions of these Diné/Navajo …
Continue reading Listening to the Code Talkers: Whose Story-telling? Whose Artifacts? Whose Spaces?
Anxiety. That’s one of the main feelings emanating from DC this week and engulfing many of us, almost to the point of being too overwhelmed to imagine better days. We’re trying to process a growing surge of negative—even scary—news. North Korea’s nuclear weapons are increasingly capable of destructive force, the Pentagon tells us. We’re struggling …
The archive of stories about sexual assault and harassment endured (mainly) by women and girls is growing. Each day brings new accounts into public circulation—stories drawn from experiences that in many cases had been held back for decades. From Hollywood and the entertainment industry, the spotlight has shifted to the political arena.
Continue reading Archiving Abuse Stories to Embrace Activist Response
I happened to be in New York the weekend after yet another auto-as-weapon attack—this one on Halloween, timed by the (alleged) perpetrator with a pernicious goal of turning a date that youthful city-dwellers cultivate for playful-pretend horror into a gruesomely real day of death. I flew into the city the next day, November 1. Initial …
Continue reading Come from Away: Answering Moments of Terror with Artful Living
