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…
Reading in our culture has become so attenuated that all reading is now considered “good.” Children are admonished to read in general, as if all books are equal, but a brain bloated with truisms and clichés, with formulaic stories and simple answers to badly asked questions is hardly what we should aspire to. For the…
The worst injury is feeling you don’t belong so much to you – – Claudia Rankine, Citizen, An American Lyric Several times this week, I heard friends and colleagues say that I looked calm and content. One added: “You seem really in the moment.” Given that I am getting through a bout of bronchitis, I…
Very few establishments welcomed openly gay people in the 1950s and 1960s. Those that did were often bars, although bar owners and managers were rarely gay. At the time, the Stonewall Inn was owned by the Mafia. It catered to an assortment of patrons and was known to be popular among the poorest and most marginalized people…
This February marked the 50th anniversary of my coming out as a gay man. I was 16 at the time. Stonewall was several years away. The word gay was not in common use. At 16, there was not much of a community in which to be welcomed. I didn’t so much exit a closet as…
A noiseless patient spider, I marked where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. – Walt Whitman This poem gives me pause. When did I learn to stop or slow my casting…
Creating Community for Everyone 