Last fall, I started a class in neon glass at Milwaukee Makerspace. Our instructor Brett took only a few minutes to do brief introductions to one another and his co-instructor, Rosie, before he led us into a meeting room to view a presentation on neon. He didn’t tell us how we would need to work.…
In early-February, I stopped at my local public library to see if there was a copy of Nothing Personal by Richard Avedon and James Baldwin available. There I learned that a single copy was in the stacks of the Central Library, but only for viewing on site. A week later, I went with my buddy…
He was thin – too thin – for any weather, but on the morning of New Year’s Eve Day, he shook under a Red Cross blanket, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, soggy socks, his feet pushed into yellow slides so small that the last three inches of his feet hung behind their soles. He had…
From a recent podcast, I learned about a phenomenon known as whalefall. When a large whale dies and sinks to the depths of the ocean – rather than being beached, becoming a terrible event to witness and worry over – the falls, or carcasses, quietly provide immediate, intermediate, and long-term benefits to an entire ecosystem.…
In 1967 or 1968, I started to become aware of the work of Alfred Adler and Rudolph Dreikurs, theory that would influence my work for decades to come. I learned about Parent Effectiveness Training and Teacher Effectiveness Training in small classrooms in Holton, Garland, Mitchell, and Pearse Halls. One of these classes positioned Adlerian theory…
In 2000, I argued that condensing our understanding of voting patterns into two teams, red or blue, was a big mistake. After watching election results that year, I worried aloud that reductionist approaches would only further the political schism in the U.S. Our electoral decisions, after all, are not football scores. I recall asking you…
While coming out as gay man 56 years ago is associated with lots of crap that happened back then and regularly since, coming out has never been the source of the crap itself. Coming out actually launched a world of good for me. At age 16, I got honest with my parents in ways that…
Blue, green, or brown were okay on Thursdays. But not yellow, red, or orange. Those were fruit colors and spoke volumes about you if you wore them on the wrong day. The thing is, when these rules dominated parts of my life in fourth and fifth grade, there was no one to tell how important…
In the past couple years, I have noticed a shift among some friends when talking about the births of their babies — actually about babies they call theirs, like I call William mine, even though he is Patrick and Jason’s son. These babies are, as often as not, community babies, young people in whom many…
While shoveling snow from my driveway today, I had plenty of opportunity to reflect. The drive is long and wide and, even though I get it plowed by a service, getting it right can take me an extra hour. When I was about eight years old, I started shoveling snow for neighbors. By that point…
Creating Community for Everyone 