It has become incredibly easy for me not to decide on things over the past 15 years. If you go to any website that addresses issues related to multiple sclerosis, you have to go way down on the list of issues to find anything about this problem, if you find it there at all. When…
Taking trains to get places is very instructive. The traveler gets to see firsthand decisions that were made, are being made, or are yet to be made at a pace and from a perspective that one doesn’t get while driving or walking. At the wheel of a car, one must pay attention. From the train,…
Communities emerge when people participate in common practices, depend on one another, make decisions together… For the past two weeks I have been posting about some of our common practices and depending on one another. I have noticed along the way that more often than not I draft my posts beginning with the antithesis of…
Especially during election season, it seems the use of the phrase social contract gets a boost in frequency. It is like watching 1,400 sales of Prince’s albums in the day before his death soar to .75 million the day after. One party is much more likely to use the expression, the other preferring words like…
Yesterday I told Albert that I have been worried about him. Most Wednesdays I see him in Chicago on the bridge at Adams between Wacker and Canal at 2:45 PM. But for the past two weeks he has been absent. Last week I was a bit early for my train, so I hung out for…
One of the great benefits of writing daily is how the practice fosters memory, helps summarize and encode recent experiences, and challenges one to make sense out of the serendipity of life. Since late 2015, I have written 300 blog posts. Exactly. This writing stems from encouragement I got from an English professor in my…
Yesterday I counted on the train to show up, the clerk at the station to be on time to sell me some tea, and the traffic lights to work. I relied on the gates to be opened by the staff, the train to have been cleaned others, and my ticket to be scanned accurately. I…
Counting on one another is a critical feature of community. We count on each other to keep traffic moving at a reasonable pace, to stop at red lights, to wait as pedestrians cross. We count on each other to mow lawns, prune shrubs, and pick up litter. We count on each other to pay our…
A big part of our common activity in local, regional, ethnic, racial, national, and international community has become watching. We watch television, video, movies, concerts, plays, fights, presentations. We watch celebrities. We watch a 90-year old Queen and a 57-year old Prince. We watch Michael, Whitney, Diana, David, Janice, and…
Samuel Barber’s aching melody for James Agee’s prose poem, Knoxville: Summer 1915, brings me back to the fall of 1969, when I was a student teacher at Lincoln Junior and Senior High School near Downtown Milwaukee. Leontyne Price’s recording of the song captured for me how unanswerable was the question I could not quite bring…
Creating Community for Everyone 