Halloween, 2015: Brought to you by…

A few days ago, Governor Kate Brown issued a proclamation designating November as National American Indian Heritage Month in Oregon.  With that proclamation, she urged citizens of Oregon to join in observances of the vast contributions of American Indian peoples to the well-being of the state and country. Essentially, this is a reminder.  Each state’s governor may issue state-specific proclamations related to designations of months to honor groups of people.  November has… Read More

Human Parades: A Sampling (…read to the bottom)

Last Saturday, Portland Oregon had a clustering of human processions.  Every year this time the Rose Festival hits its climax with the Grand Floral Parade — the second largest floral parade in the nation next to Pasadena’s Rose Parade on January 1.  Typical to Oregon’s modesty and as true to its chutzpah, the Rose Festival was established a mere 17 years after the first parade in Pasadena way back in the first… Read More

Succession – We’re in Great Hands

This week’s blog is a montage.  My qualification to put these images together here with my ideas about what I’ve seen and experienced of the Student Alliance Project arises only from the generosity with which the young adults of this thriving community organization have informed and befriended me as an ally. Last night I attended a celebration.  There were hundreds of people in a room that barely held them, sitting at circular… Read More

Amidst the Fuss about Mexican Immigration and Gay Marriage

Last night, I stood rinsing 50 plates, stacking in a small tower the ones that didn’t fit in the first run of the dishwasher.  Behind me a loosely coordinated team of cooks fussed over flan one woman had made. “I wasn’t expecting 50…!” she whispered.  “Loaves and fishes time,” said the mountainous man with the big hands and superb skill with savory and spice. These are other things I heard – “Is… Read More

Keeping Courage

I’ve just spent the past three days crossing the Southern tier states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama into Georgia.  I’ve spent precious time with relatives – kin by birth and kin by choice and community.  Along the slow roll of land falling toward and then rising up from the Mississippi River’s reliable flow I found story after story, learning after learning. In the three years since I last drove these Southern highways… Read More

Post-Florida-Primary Points of Note

Well today there’s the Susan G. Komen flip flop on their relationship with Planned Parenthood, there’s the unreliability in signs of economic recovery and there’s the hideous violence occurring in Syria and on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.  No doubt, the pundits who fancy themselves either political or entertainment, could be and are spinning these stories to fit their agendas. Last night I finally got off the road with the promise… Read More

Christmas Eve Roses from Art

Art Garcia holds one of many distinctions as Voice #2 in 100 VOICES — AMERICANS TALK ABOUT CHANGE.   Today I got a text message:  “Check your front porch.”  Then a second message followed “: )” — Both were from Art.  I wasn’t home at the time, so I called David, my world’s best ever next door neighbor and asked if he’d go see what Art had left.  “It’s flowers,”  David said…. Read More

Listening to the Military

It’s Labor Day.  Over the course of our country’s history, one place many people have found work has been in the military. I’m not a military person.  I know a few veterans and I like them but outside movies, newscasts and the anti-war protests I’ve been a part of over the years, I know almost nothing about military service. I hadn’t counted until now, but turns out six of the people who… Read More

Interdependence

Today is only a day.  It is Saturday, the 4th of July weekend, and like every other day it has filled with moments linking up into hours, holding people and motion – holding change. This is how it went.  Sun rays angled across the morning sky.  I woke with two friends on my mind – two friends who are too close to death. Tom, a remarkable and kind educational leader, is here… Read More

Seeing Privilege

It’s going to take a while.  I don’t want to speak for blacks, but from my perspective being a black man with what I have observed in my lifetime, I will feel as though I’m going to be shortchanged because of the history behind us.  I will feel that until I see some definite improvement.  If  they tell you that you can be equal, but you never make any gains, you’re going… Read More