Sometimes I get dancing feet.
I’ll hear a song
and can’t help but want to move
to its rhythm,
to its beat. [Read more…]
Play Ball!
Opening week is upon us and the Padres ownership debacle has already done a lot to dampen the spirits of local baseball fans even before the first pitch has been thrown. With Jeff Moorad unlikely to ever take over the majority share of the team from John Moores, many fans rightly feel they have been bamboozled once again–left to sit in a park that their tax dollars built and pay through the nose for bad baseball and overpriced beer while the swooning friars stumble uncertainly around the bases toward yet another losing season. If you watch the Vegas line, the Padres are picked to finish last in the National League West with only 70 wins. Oh, the horror!
But, of course, that is the destiny of the Padres fan: losing. As I only half-jokingly tell my friends, I have taught my son to love baseball and love the Padres so he knows from a young age the first noble truth: life is suffering. [Read more…]
A Hopeful Youth Town Hall Meeting at Jacob Center in Lincoln Park
This old dude was so tired that evening but there was no way I was going to miss a Town Hall Meeting with such a compelling theme as “Silence is Worse than Violence” – especially considering that a number of youth leaders decided that such a gathering was needed to begin a conversation for solutions to the problem. I love it when our children take the lead.
The night was kicked off with a bumping rap about how, “We got to rise up above it” followed by a spoken word piece about love and respect and honoring our ancestries and histories. Amen.
That set a tone that was soothing to my aging bones and the featured speaker and moderator of the evening, Kevin Powell, a prominent voice in the hip hop generation, jumped right in without missing a beat with anecdotes about the rough edges of his youth and how he turned it all around and has devoted his life to positive hopeful causes like ending violence, in keeping with why we were all gathered at the Joe & Vi Jacobs Center. [Read more…]
How About Telling Our Children the Truth?
Thoughts Stemming from 9-11 My radio alarm woke me up with someone summarizing a study that found that a significant number of schools have not done much as far as engaging students in learning experiences involving 9-11. Because it’s too “controversial.” Is that not sad? That reminds me of a man on TV, not too […]
What Are We Going to Do to End the Silence?
On April 15th there will be a “National Day of Silence” during which hundreds of thousands of students nationwide will take a vow of silence to bring attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in their schools. Isn’t it sad, though, that there has to be such a day and even sadder that our gay […]
Sharing a Note I Once Wrote to a Very Artsy Guy
Recently I sat and wrote and chatted with some of the coolest people alive. No jive. Most of them happen to be gay or lesbian but among us there were straight allies like me. Man, I’ll be glad when our gay brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts and cousins and […]
Life Flying By
I pause with a picture to just look at my face, the wrinkles, the gray in my beard, the few strands of black in my hair slowly fading away to mere memories of yesterday. Hey, there are no complaints from me, by the way, considering “It’s better than the alternative” as people are wont to […]
