When the explanation makes things worse:
The obvious issues with banning Maus from schools are not what we need to be talking about. Decrying Nazis or censorship is easy since it does not require self-reflection. We know where we stand there. ...
In search of the perfect tagline.
The obvious issues with banning Maus from schools are not what we need to be talking about. Decrying Nazis or censorship is easy since it does not require self-reflection. We know where we stand there. ...
Dr. King’s day is coming up. In years past, I would post quotes of Dr. King, but I’m no longer interested in his legacy delivered in bite-sized pieces. As one of the great orators of ...
The Split Rock Lighthouse was built in 1910, in response to a 1905 storm that sank or damaged 29 ships on Lake Superior. the lens is a marvel of engineering. A third-order Fresnel, the complexity ...
This last month, I learned that you can’t go home again because home is not a place you can go to. Home is something you build with your loved ones. It’s a peace of mind, ...
Alaska is full of artifacts from our recent past, but few are so starkly absurd as the official name of No Name Creek. Of course, the creek has a name, has had one for a ...
The Lord has Risen! Every Easter reveals something new to me about my faith. This year, my thoughts keep going to Judas Iscariot. The role of Judas has always caused me some trouble. He had ...
I learned American History from a textbook, but I learned what really happened by word of mouth: At the Interpretive Center at Totem Park, I learned about the fights between the Russians and Tlingit, but ...
On this day, Alaska celebrates the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, passed before Statehood. I’m proud of this act and of the civil rights and protections enshrined in our Constitution more than ten years later. Lest ...
Every year when we close out our fair, we do so knowing that we will not see someone at our next opening. I did not imagine that person would be Ellen.
2020 was a rough year, but one that can give us hope for the years to come. We saw greater civic engagement and, amongst all the cynicism, a real feeling that government CAN be better in the new year, and in all that follow.
The decorations went up early, but the preparations took longer. Were I not looking at a calendar, I would not know tomorrow was Christmas. It’s sneaking up on me for the first time in my ...
COVID-19 has made Stan Rogers’s ‘First Christmas’ a song for us all. As a part of my own meditation on not making it home this year, I’ve written a verse: She’s always thinking of how ...
I’ve spent the most incredible moments of my life are surrounded by sound. At St. Olaf, I was a part of a 450 voice choir. At an Albanian wedding, an older group of men singing ...
Today I am thankful for our telecommunications network. Growing up, it would take 3 or 4 tries to get a circuit off the island for a call to loved ones who expected a call on ...
I really wanted to like this book. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a brilliant theologian and a hero, this book offered the opportunity to learn more of him as a person. The first part of this book ...
COVID has taken a second family elder. Two otherwise unrelated cases spread across different states, but they have given me an understanding of how the virus has changed the meaning of hospice. God willing, you’ll ...
There was always that guy in class with whom you’d never agree. Each brought their experiences (and sources) to the class texts. Each came up with different interpretations as to what the texts meant. Then, ...
I have traditionally used inline links for my citations within my blog. It’s a stylistic choice that I told myself I do for convenience, but I’ve recently read something that has made my question my ...
In the mid-80s, I joined my mother at Amnesty International meetings in the Centennial Building. Nelson Mandela was never one of the prisoners of conscience our group wrote letters for. He, and the South African ...
While there is a national debate on monuments and statues, it’s worth talking about more than just the Confederates. Sitka has a street named for Jeff Davis (the Union one, not the Confederate President) Davis ...
A statue tells four stories. First, there is the story of the person to be memorialized. Statues are not very good at this. For this story, read a book. The second is the story of ...
As Christians, we tend to celebrate Easter like it was Palm Sunday. We gather and say “he has risen” with the same enthusiasm the Palm Sunday crowds cheered “hosanna, ” not knowing what was to ...
In one of the seminal works on media analysis, Marshall McLuhan wrote that “the medium is the message.” The idea is that the medium has a symbiotic relationship with the message itself. TV gravitates to ...
When asked how I can remain positive about our future, I remember a past where we were ready and willing to nuke ourselves.
I’ve read a lot about the crisis on our Southern border. We see pictures of kids in cages, or of their bodies. We want to say that this is not us, not our values. We ...
Many people have asked me in the last few weeks how it feels to be a papa. I generally hedge, I deflect the question saying it’s too soon to tell or that it’s not really ...
To all of you who are a part of the Three Barons Fair: I think it’s sometimes easy for us to focus on just the part of the fair we participate in directly. We can ...
The following is an old piece of writing long thought lost. April first is a time of jest, when people test their wits and compare their pranks to decide which comes out best. The competition ...
I’m reading a lot of discussion about who “won” and who “lost” the government shutdown. Spoiler alert, we all lost. The arguments for both sides are, of course, compelling. The reality is that the House ...
I was flipping through some of my pictures when this one surfaced. It’s the sculpture Pantopol, by Ted Jonsson, at SeaTac international airport. I’ve always liked this sculpture. It’s one that appears to change from ...
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an amazing leader. Facing down institutional violence, he was able to talk about the long arc of history bending towards justice. He could see further ahead than the rest ...
I love this pole. It is a master of one art form memorializing a master of another. The figure at the base of the pole is the wildlife photographer Michio Hoshino. Even if you don’t ...
Today’s lesson in unintended consequences: King Mansa Musa of Mali was the wealthiest person the world has ever seen. Mali was a center of trade with abundant salt and gold, and being south of the ...
Today, in “women I wish we knew more about,” Fatima al-Fihri. Fatima bint Muhammad Al-Fihriya Al-Qurashiya was probably born around 810 AD in Kairouan, modern-day Tunisia. Her father was a wealthy merchant who ended up ...
Politicians and pundits really like Christmas, but then everyone likes a baby shower. You can show off your Christian bona fides in a nice safe manner, adoring the helpless baby before he has a chance ...
A week ago, Shannon and I were crawling through the remains of the U. S. whaling industry. At one point, the industry accounted for one fifth of the nation’s economy, and it really was no ...
This week, we have a stark example of one of the reasons I strongly oppose the death penalty. Ledell Lee’s trial was overseen by a judge who was having an affair with the assistant prosecutor. ...
This week, a man walked into a school where his estranged wife worked. He shot her, and two of her students, in front of a room full of children. I have yet to see anyone ...
What happens when you are having blood-work done in the morning which requires fasting? Well, if you are me you apparently dismember Sondheim. To the tune of Comedy Tonight… Bring Coffee Forthright! Something inviting, something ...
If I were a more patient person or a better communicator, I would be a high school civics instructor. There is a fundamental problem with the way we teach civics, we don’t give our students ...