My heart is heartbroken. My heart is heartbroken for George Floyd’s family. My heart is broken for my city, Minneapolis, the city I love. The city where I call home and where my dear friends and family live. This isn’t a usual post for me, but the images, the sounds, and the messages I have […]
We should carry
When the sun sets and the moon is flat, that beam across the sky is not meant for you or me singularly- it is meant for the world to see and the world to believe there is more than. Not in wanting but in the knowing. Where the grass beneath the earth has yet to […]
Goodness
This is a very difficult time in history and it isn’t even history yet. I submitted my last papers over this weekend and it always feels so good to do so. I struggled with this relatively short paper I had to write, 7-10 pages. I just got over onto the 8th page and I was […]
Pockets
I just finished Ordinary Hazards by Nikki Grimes – and it is one of my most favorite books. By the end, tears welled. It is a beautiful, riveting book that just fills your heart. I want to share a couple: “Course Correction” When the paper landed back on my desk, scarred with the letter B, I nearly […]
Here
There is a vastness you cannot encompass, you cannot imagine unless you are standing at the reference point. Dirt roads disappeared into corn fields and the reappeared into acres of greens and browns. The half dead and half awakened earth. The rough dirt and rocks throwing up dust from vehicles of weight and speed. Paying […]
BIG glorious baskets
Last week I had an interesting conversation with my doc in MN. We had a virtual appointment to check-in. She always asks me what I am learning in school. I picked up one of my books and started talking about disability myths and named a few of them. I spoke about ableism/disablism, and how ableism […]
Storytellers
How is everyone doing? How is everyone feeling? I have been struggling with what to write, what not to write, or if I should be writing my blog at all, at this time. I think you are supposed to keep doing what you are doing; keep doing what you have always done, and keep moving […]
Gathering
I have been doing a lot of gathering lately, collecting thoughts. And then there are long waves and short waves of anxiety and worry and sadness, then hopefulness. When I start to freeze within or around the edgings of the first three, I have to move my mind and my body. I have to be […]
She was light
When she laughed she would throw her head back, her deep vibrato voice would carry out the door and down the hallway. She had a bronze tone to her skin. Her arms had muscles long and firm that showed she worked out, protected her otherwise small frame. She had no hips and she would laugh […]
Health
“Rhetoricians focus on the uses of language to persuade or to change people’s actions and opinions.” Most people think of the word rhetoric in a negative sense – maybe it has something to do with the “r” – err. Rhetoric focuses on the positivity as well. How words and languages and meaning-making systems shape beliefs, […]