What Rubs Off on Us There is an old saying that if you sit in a fish market long enough, sooner or later you are going to smell like fish. Sit in a perfume shop, and chances are some of that sweet fragrance will follow you out the door. I have come to understand that
The Company We Keep Leaves a Scent Read More »
The Chair Can Become Too Comfortable The older I get, the more I understand that the body was made to move, even when life gives us plenty of reasons to sit still. We sit while watching television, using the computer, reading, driving, eating, talking, and sometimes simply because getting comfortable feels good. There is nothing
When Sitting Too Long Starts Talking Back to the Body Read More »
The Promise of Finding What Was Taken For Black Americans, ancestry is not simply a matter of curiosity about an old family tree. Slavery separated families, changed names, disrupted languages, and made it difficult for many descendants to trace an unbroken line back to particular African communities. That is why modern DNA testing can feel
When DNA Meets the Stories We Tell About Our African Roots Read More »
Everybody Wants Better Until Better Gets Expensive I have heard people complain about struggling neighborhoods most of my life. We want the abandoned houses repaired, the streets cleaned, the schools strengthened, the businesses reopened, and somebody to finally invest in the place. We want grocery stores instead of empty buildings and safe parks instead of
When the Neighborhood Gets Better, Who Gets to Stay? Read More »
When God Keeps Saying Wait There have been seasons in my life when I felt ready for something, yet nothing seemed to move. I prayed for the opportunity, believed I was prepared, and wondered why the answer kept looking like “wait.” That waiting can wear on you because eventually you start wondering whether God heard
Sometimes the Waiting Is Preparing Us Read More »
The Difference Between a Word and What It Carries The older I get, the more I understand that words do not travel through life empty. A dictionary can give me a definition, but a human being gives that word history, memory, emotion, and context. Two people can hear the same word and feel completely different
Words Mean More Than the Dictionary Says Read More »
Every Piece of Writing Has a Reason One thing I have learned about writing is that nobody truly writes into an empty space for no reason at all. Something usually happened before the first sentence appeared on the page. Somebody made a claim, asked a question, created a problem, challenged an idea, or left something
What Was the Reason? Teaching Writing Through Exigence Read More »
I Never Knew There Were Names for All of This The older I get, the more I realize that the way people talk carries a whole history that most of us never stop to examine. I used to think an accent was simply an accent and a dialect was just another way of pronouncing words.
The Language We Carry With Us Read More »
What the Buss Family Taught Me About Wealth Whenever I hear people talk about generational wealth, the conversation usually begins with making enough money to leave something behind. That sounds simple enough until I look at families that actually accomplished it. The late Jerry Buss bought the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979 as part of
The Hardest Part of Generational Wealth Is Keeping It Together Read More »
The Feelings We Learn to Hide Throughout my life, I have learned that feelings do not always arrive when it is convenient for me to deal with them. Pain can show up when I have responsibilities waiting, anger can rise when I need to remain composed, and grief can appear when everybody expects me to
When We Stop Running From What We Feel Read More »