When we first encountered COVID, most of us expected it wouldn’t affect us. When we realized it would, we hoped for a brief pause in our daily activities. Instead, COVD became an enduring threat to us, our families, and our communities. We thought the disruption might extend for months, then put our hopes in vaccines…
Often, the new year is seen as a chance for a new start: a chance to reset our habits, our attitudes, and our relationships. In some ways, this is healthy – we need to shift our daily routines, fashion a new outlook, reconnect with friends and family. Change is a constant of life, and we…
Why does light die? Light is the energy emitted by excited electrons falling back to their resting states. It is generated by the heated filament of a light bulb. By the chemical reaction in a firefly's abdomen. By the nuclear reactions in our local star. It is directed, transmitted, dissipated. According to science, it does…
Komm, Herr Jesu; sei du unser Gast; Und segne, was du uns bescheret hast. Whiteness is the bargain that all white people's ancestors accepted. It was simple: in exchange for being accepted into whiteness – a fellowship of basic social status and economic reward – they agreed to give up their ancestral cultures. My ancestors…
A father and son go to a pharmacy to get the child vaccinated against COVID. After administering the vaccine, the pharmacy employee offers a bin of small toys and the child picks one -- a tiny, squishable duck. On the way home, the child starts to complain that one of the duck’s eyes is smaller…
In my community of Oak Park, the high school just canceled extracurricular activities for the next two weeks, until winter break, due to a rise in COVID cases at the school. A number of students and parents in the community are frustrated about this cancellation, and some of them staged a protest this past weekend…
All people are concerned about their own safety and that of their families and friends. This is a basic human need and is the reason that communities fund police and fire services -- to protect the safety of their residents. Oak Park, the community where I live, is no different: 30% of our overall village…
On a national scale, Thanksgiving contains the legacy of Europeans pushing Native peoples off their lands, killing them, taking their lands. It contains the legacy of the collapse of Indigenous populations. It contains the legacy of how white people have used that land -- for slavery, for settler colonial capitalism. It contains the exploitation of…
The three men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery were found guilty today. It's not enough. It doesn't change what has happened before. It doesn't predict what will happen in the future. But on this one day, in this one case, for this one family, there was some measure of accountability. May we take what lessons we…
Kyle Rittenhouse was a child when he carried a rifle across state lines to role-play as a vigilante justice officer in the streets of Kenosha. He inserted himself, fully armed, into a space of civil unrest, shot and killed two people, and injured a third. He was charged with intentional homicide, reckless homicide, and attempted…
Entwining 