And, while you’re at it, toss the Virgin Mary, demolish stain glass windows of their friends, and rampage, rip, and similarly destroy murals. Simply because the images of the religious figures depicted are white. Here, according to Wikipedia, is what activist, writer and supporter of the Black Lives Movement, Shaun King, said June 22, 2020 […]
Letter: Commencement – what is it really about?
We celebrate births and birthdays, weddings and anniversaries, ribbon-cuttings and building dedications. And graduations. What do they all have in common? Not so much what The Day itself means but for what brought it about. The Day is a marker, a memorial, a reason to recall the rigors that make the day possible. And what […]
Letter: Father's Day – the gift of time
I checked my watch to see if it was indeed time to wake up. I hoped it wasn’t, but light streaming through the window said otherwise. My watch, however, as to informing me of anything that was its job to do, had gone totally bonkers. Date and time were intermittently flashing, with both having returned […]
Letter: No more paper plates, now what? Thoughts on navigating through life
A couple friends went on a hunting trip out-of-state, arranging to meet another of their friends who, in turn, would secure the primitive area camp site none of whom had ever been to. Being a good distance, it was not until quite late that the supposed turn onto the somewhat obscure road began. Since cell […]
Letter: Maintain eye contact – a trailhead lesson for life
My wife and I were celebrating our 43rd anniversary – now five years ago – and had spent a delightful day at Pacific Beach on the Washington Coast where we built not one but two sea creatures; floated a drift-wood sailboat – complete with seagull feathers for spinnaker and main – down the stream emptying […]
Letter: June Tillicum meeting cancelled and a call to create
In the midst of the chaos, there can be, within the community, an opportunity. Change pace to place and you begin to understand. It’s the message by Simon and Garfunkel in “The 59th Street Bridge Song” expressed in the opening verse: “Slow down, you move too fast”. It might be your garden. Or building a […]
Letter: She’s a keeper
We met at the University of Washington, Seattle campus. It wasn’t the whole “I Saw Her Standing There” across-the-crowded-room thing of the Beatle’s era, but it was close. It wasn’t 1963 – the debut of the Beatles opening track in their album “Please Please Me” – rather it was 1968. She wasn’t seventeen and we […]
Letter: The crack in the sidewalk
One carefully avoided – although just in time – the crack in the sidewalk. The other, the younger of the two, being blissfully unaware of how huge a misstep stepping on a concrete expansion joint really is – second only to stepping on the other’s shadow (not polite) – toddled alongside. With time and practice […]
Letter: The little white picket fence
The little cottage on the corner is believed to be the only home in the community with a little white picket fence. Each of the 219 pickets cut from pallets. Free lumber. Eight-hundred and seventy-six nails, all hand-driven, not counting the ones that were bent, nor the nail on his finger which he had hit. […]