Archive for Month: November 2024

gray background

Hanging onto Hope

Our twin grandchildren just celebrated their 13th birthday as thriving and loving young adults full of potential and promise. Passing this milestone made me think back to the first 105 days of their lives which were spent in the NICU. Each day we hung onto the hope that we might be able to celebrate who they would become one day. When they turned one, I wrote a poem entitled the Sun has Come Out describing Read More

gray background

Homeless Solutions and Models

How communities address homelessness issues provides a great example of what happens when you chase symptoms instead of change the systems that are causing problems in the first place.  Finding solutions to help people experiencing homelessness presents the same kinds of challenges communities face in dealing with health, criminal justice, poverty, inflation, immigration, climate change, gun violence, etc.  The choice always involves investing in ways to improve the systems creating the problems vs. dealing with Read More

gray background

Arcs of Life, History, and the Universe

Well, it’s not quite like being hit by a meteor that destroys the earth, but it’s pretty close to it.  We just elected a cult leader who landed enough hateful and hegemonic messages to enough voters to win the electoral votes by 312-226. (Note: Trump’s margin was less than 2%, and he received less than 50% of the vote, llinois was the only blue state on the electoral map between the coasts, and the total Read More