Sparkle & truth

01/19/2024

[ID: Green and black text with red underlines on sand-colored background. Text reads, “We will continue to speak out for Palestine, to educate ourselves, and to uplift Palestinian voices. Our queerness, and our humanity, demand that we do so. QueerArtistsForPalestine.org]

02/09/2022

Ahead of her time, shining like a funky star, she was vastly underappreciated by the industry but had an enormous cult following and inspired musicians like Prince, Janelle Monae, Madonna, and Erykah Badu. Incomparable, irreplaceable.

The ex-wife of jazz legend Miles Davis was years ahead of her time, only to disappear from the spotlight for decades

10/22/2021

a favorite of ours, interpreted so beautifully ...

Azora & Rosa Lee

09/25/2021

05/06/2021

03/04/2021

A Letter from a Trauma Worker on the Anniversary

"I’m sorry for every time you’ve needed help, consolation, relief, or empathy and did not receive it. For the injuries, injustices, and sorrow that may have compounded over time. For the ways that what you’ve been experiencing has resurfaced earlier traumas, put pressure on existing fissures, and even tapped into something intergenerational that you know to be achingly real, though hard to fully understand. For each time your brain was drawn to think the unthinkable, again and again, I am sorry.

I am sorry for all the feelings coursing through you so quickly you don’t know where to put them. You may feel like you are overflowing with sadness or disconnected with numbness. You may feel haunted by a sense that you can never do enough; a sense that runs so deep it’s as if you feel that you’ll never, again, be enough. You may feel paralyzed by helplessness or deeply disconnected with hopelessness. You may find your anger and rage unrecognizable. The persistence of your guilt may stun you and the cognitive quicksand you wade through may confound you. You may long for the creativity you used to be able to access. Perhaps you worry that you’ve forgotten how to laugh. Your inability to assume well about others may confuse you. You may feel exhausted in your body, spirit, and soul. The depths of how disheartened you feel may alarm you. The extent of your resentment and envy may feel like it knows no bounds. And you may have come to realize it is possible to feel depleted and yearning and avoidant and lonely all at the same time.

And you may feel afraid. Afraid of everything you’re going to try to forget and all that may continue to torment you. Afraid of what the future may bring. Of losses you can’t bear to conceive of."

02/22/2021

To further amplify Black voices within our Beloved Community, Oregon Food Bank is hosting a poetry hour in honor of Black History Month.

01/10/2021

01/06/2021

"At this age, a key message for tweens of all genders is that they are the experts on themselves and their own identities. Researcher j wallace skelton, a PhD candidate at University of Toronto and consultant on gender policies for organizations like the Special Olympics and Girl Guides, says middle school students are old enough to understand themselves well despite often being told they are too young to know anything yet. Support your children in their thinking about gender by asking lots of questions as they sort through their feelings and values—even if they say something you don’t agree with.

Hargreaves supports this and adds that young people in this age group often make statements to test for a reaction. So if your child says, “Jennifer says she’s going to play football, but that’s ridiculous; football is a boys’ sport,” you’re better off saying, “Interesting. Is that what you think or what someone else said?” or “How do you think Jennifer would feel to hear you say that?” This will reinforce the idea that you’re a good sounding board for their thoughts, which brings more chances to discuss your values about gender."

No matter your kid's age, it's not too early (or late!) to talk to them about gender. Here's how to start the discussion, and keep it going as they grow.

12/21/2020

"I cherish the notion of the gift economy, that we might back away from the grinding market economy that reduces everything to a commodity and leaves most of us bereft of what we really want: relationship and purpose and beauty and meaning, which can never be commoditized. I want to be part of a system in which wealth means having enough to share, and where the gratification of meeting your family needs is not poisoned by destroying that possibility for someone else. I want to live in a society where the currency of exchange is gratitude and the infinitely renewable resource of kindness, which multiplies every time it is shared rather than depreciating with use.

You might rightly observe that we no longer live in small, insular societies, where generosity and mutual esteem structure our relations. But we could. It is within our power to create such webs of interdependence, quite outside the market economy. Intentional communities of mutual self-reliance and reciprocity are the wave of the future, and their currency is sharing. The move toward a local food economy is not just about freshness and food miles and carbon footprints and soil organic matter. It is all of those things, but it’s also about the deeply human desire for connection, to be in reciprocity with the gifts that are given you.

The real human needs that such arrangements address are exactly what we long for yet cannot ever purchase: being valued for your own unique gifts, earning the regard of your neighbors for the quality of your character, not the quantity of your possessions; what you give, not what you have."

As Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy.

12/15/2020

"Today, many of us live in the most atomized societies in human history, which makes our lives less secure and undermines our ability to organize together to change unjust conditions on a large scale. We are put in competition with each other for survival, and we are forced to rely on hostile systems — like health care systems designed around profit, not keeping people healthy, or food and transportation systems that pollute the Earth and poison people — for the things we need. More and more people report that they have no one they can confide in. This means many of us do not get help with mental health, drug use, family violence or abuse until the police or courts are involved, which tends to escalate rather than resolve harm.

In this context of social isolation and forced dependency on hostile systems, mutual aid — where we choose to help each other out, share things, and put time and resources into caring for the most vulnerable — is a radical act."

Mutual aid is inherently anti-authoritarian, demonstrating how we can organize human activity without coercion.