SHORT ESSAY ON HOW TO SURVIVE A LONG JOURNEY
Most of us can fairly easily be divided between sprinters and marathoners. Perhaps more accurately, we can be placed on a continuum between sprinters and marathoners. Sprinters have a particular set of muscles – they’re wound up tight and when they spring into action they just become a blur. Sprinters in disasters are terrific. They […]
Faith and Hard Work in an Era of Upheaval
(part of a series from the “Shipwrecked Project”)There are many definitions of a hard childhood. By any definition Mario had a hard childhood. A childhood shaped by deprivation and struggle. Mario did not have a complete understanding of the reasons his father abandoned his children and his wife. Though his father at one time served […]
Pandemi-Lost and Found
I’ve been so incredibly pandemi-lonely. Some days I was just paralyzed. Unable to move. Trapped in this social connection VACUUM created by Covid-19 containment measures. (Look, if you haven’t felt this way, just keep scrolling. This post isn’t for you.) And today I realized I’m not paralyzed now. I’m not staring into the abyss, worried […]
MY SPIN
There are days when I wish that life was a bit more like Wheel of Fortune. If your spin landed on global pandemic, it couldn’t also land on fire, cancer, racism, bankruptcy, … And we’d just take hurricane season off the board altogether. Life is fraught. This ain’t Heaven, it’s Earth. And we are all vulnerable […]
Upheaval
Yesterday I wrapped up another class about disaster and displacement. Lessons learned by those whose lives have been washed/bombed/burned away. One of the deepest realities: we’re all vulnerable creatures on a common journey. Upheaval is a part of the journey. War or weather. Loss of health or wealth. This ain’t heaven. It’s earth. We’re all […]
My appeal to Mayor Sylvester Turner and Judge Lina Hidalgo
Dear Mayor Sylvester Turner and Judge Lina Hidalgo: Let me be frank. If you step up and lead — call upon sector leaders to join you in navigating this unthinkable twin disaster — you will win the resources and support needed to have a more effective and orderly recovery. If you don’t do this, you will find […]
Louisiana On My Mind —
I am thinking of some of my most treasured relationships. People in Louisiana. Friends and family. Many Louisiana friends are “storm friends”. We came to know one another in the aftermath of Katrina. We’ve seen horrible stuff. We’ve hugged in a street surrounded by wreckage, when everything was gray dust covered, with the smell of […]
The Oath Takers
Some of us are in professions that require the taking of an oath. We ask it of doctors, of soldiers, of public servants. Of those we elect to represent us. Of people we entrust with power. Our doctors swear to ”respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk… and apply […]
ENOUGH TODAY
I slept badly and woke up with a sense of dread. A few moments during which I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what. And then I remembered. #COVID-19 I am filled with dread because we have been told that it will get much worse before it gets better. Much much worse. Italian […]
FERAL HOGS: In Disasters
Anti-fragility We woke up today to a story about the people we elected using their knowledge of what was coming — a potential pandemic — to enrich themselves. In every disaster there is the “betrayal stage”. That’s the moment when the realization comes that some part of this suffering could have been avoided. And that […]