The man who has no imagination has no wings. – Muhammad Ali The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month? – Muhammad Ali In June, it seems that gardening, graduation, marriage, and gay pride are what we are…
Coyote, raccoon, field mouse, sparrow, Each watching from darkness this man With the moon on a leash. – Ted Kooser, Winter Morning Walks For a few weeks I have been thinking about a shift in my thoughts and feelings about the death of my husband last December. The great sense of loss is abiding with little…
Thus, in sharing stories, we have the potential for forging new relationships…. – Dyson, A. H., & Genishi, C. (1994). The need for story: Cultural diversity in classroom and community. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. This week I have been contemplating the mediating power of words as I blog about community building. This exercise…
The storytelling self is a social self, who declares and shapes important relationships through the mediating power of words. – Dyson, A. H., & Genishi, C. (1994). The need for story: Cultural diversity in classroom and community. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. My parents were both inveterate storytellers. My dad, often the life of…
… in sharing stories, we have the potential for forging new relationships, including local, classroom “cultures” in which individuals are interconnected and new “we’s” formed. – Dyson, A. H., & Genishi, C. (1994). The need for story: Cultural diversity in classroom and community. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. When Paul and I moved from our…
The storytelling self is a social self, who declares and shapes important relationships through the mediating power of words. Thus, in sharing stories, we have the potential for forging new relationships, including local, classroom “cultures” in which individuals are interconnected and new “we’s” formed. – Dyson, A. H., & Genishi, C. (1994). The need for…
This week I started writing my daily blog posts with the premise that there is a lot of work to go around in developing robust, active, engaging communities where people really stick to each other. I sat down and quickly identified two dozen things people could be doing to build and sustain communities. (The full…
This week in a dressing room in a well-recognized Seattle department store, I had a major melt-down. It wasn’t the I-look-fat-in-these-jeans sort of experience when I am sure that the mirror is distorted and comes from a fun house. Nor was it the where-in-the-universe-are-jeans-actually-$200 hissy fit. No, this was a I-cannot-decide-on-a-purchase-because-my-husband-is-dead flat out bawl. Paul…
First this: On Saturday evening, a beautifully coiffed woman outside the Seattle Repertory Theater clutched her phone in what looked like a last minute call just before curtain. She wore what appeared to be a darn good knock off or a real Channel suit, that kind with the short jacket, narrow shoulders, and tweedy weave…
Having an adolescence was sort of a new thing when I was growing up. I know that my parents didn’t have an adolescence. They went from school to work. In fact, more accurately they did them both simultaneously. It is possible that other people, perhaps the middle class, had those teen years as depicted by…
Creating Community for Everyone 