Prepare to Obey
The cruelty isn’t the point. Terror is the point. So you learn to bow down. So you shut off your brain, stop trying to process the shouts and threats and just capitulate. So you prepare yourself in advance to obey unquestioningly any shouted order. No matter how confusing. You must fall to your knees in […]
Lemonade
There is no better smell than a ripe Meyer Lemon. It has taken a few years since Winter Storm Uri for my new trees to make some fruit. For my garden to heal. And for me to heal as well – from a different kind of storm. Some destructive forces in our lives can be […]
Terms and Conditions
Today’s challenging question: what’s the right disaster recovery coordinating structure in an arena that stretches across multiple counties and jurisdictions? I think as disasters grow in their destructive impact, it becomes increasingly hard to create any sort of balance between local input and/versus state and federal level involvement. The first stage is so necessarily […]
Disaster Belonging
Perhaps what drives me the most crazy in the current culture is the erosion of any overarching alignment, any sense of common good. We need more call to shared purpose. The absence of a sense of purpose leads to paying a kind of exquisite attention to one’s own SELF. Fostering the ludicrous notion that one’s […]
I Love Us. Still.
Waking to tragedy. Another day of epidemic of violence and destruction. This is our story. It’s not our only story, but as a species, we seem to have a lust for blood and destruction. Perpetual outbreaks. Another insane person weaponizing their personhood, tossing their soul on a pyre to take as many as possible with […]
Service and Survivors Guilt
I was recently in Buncombe County invited by those leaders and community members working hard on recovery from Helene. When your world has been turned upside down, this is an especially hard time of year. One woman in Swananoa talked about what it was like to have one of the few livable houses on her […]
Beyond Here There Be Dragons
Dear Social Sector Leaders, I have stopped calling you “nonprofit” leaders because what kind of nonsense category is that? I am going to “out” you right now. Not by name. But here’s what you say over the late night calls, or after a glass of wine, or when you are so worn out you can’t […]
Pulling One Another to Shore
Dear Social Sector Leaders, I have stopped calling you “nonprofit” leaders because what kind of nonsense category is that? I am going to “out” you right now. Not by name. But here’s what you say over the late night calls, or after a glass of wine, or when you are so worn out you can’t […]
Old and Hot
Dear Social Sector Leaders, I have stopped calling you “nonprofit” leaders because what kind of nonsense category is that? I am going to “out” you right now. Not by name. But here’s what you say over the late night calls, or after a glass of wine, or when you are so worn out you can’t […]
Serving Houston
Dear Social Sector Leaders, I have stopped calling you “nonprofit” leaders because what kind of nonsense category is that? I am going to “out” you right now. Not by name. But here’s what you say over the late night calls, or after a glass of wine, or when you are so worn out you can’t […]