Conversation Starters

So there's this episode of  Lovett or Leave It , a podcast hosted by comedian/political pundit/former Obama speech writer, Jon Lovett, where  Lovett's first guest is a string theorist physicist.  As they settle into their banter in front of a live Portland, Maine audience, Lovett asks a question about dark matter and ghosts.  The physicist immediately scoffs, declaring that ghosts aren't real.  Ohhhhkay.  Moments later, Lovett made some kind of comment related to astrology and the physicist bristles once more.  "Please tell me we're not going to talk about astrology," she condescends.  "I thought this was a crowd that believed in  science ." I can't express how much that made me want to discount everything else she was going to say. And here's why:  I believe in science.  And I also know ghosts are real and that astrology is worthy of consideration.  Anyone who so blatantly discounts supernatural or metaphysical possibilities ...

I am terrible at math. You might (wrongly) assume that I'm being hyperbolic about this -- but when I tell you my addition-subtraction-multiplication-and-division skills are lost in a box in a subbasement of brain power somewhere -- I really mean it.  This morning I was watching an old episode of The Wire  where Bubbles, a heroin-addicted street hustler, presses his new teenage business partner (business partner?) to do the quick math of 5x4 plus 6x7 and shakes his head in disgust when the kid can't immediately spit out an answer. And it made me feel a certain way -- for I, too, couldn't do the math that fast. Bubbles would never want me working his cart with him. Say la vee. And while part of this is simply by virtue of being, oh, twenty-something years out of my last math class, part of it is how I've always been.  Math was always a challenging subject for me in school.  I struggled to see how the quadratic equation applied to my everyday life.  And I thought t...

I had a dream that I was in a doctor's office where one of my male friends was giving medically safe abortions.  For some reason, he had invited me to come hang out while was working and so I was in the room with these women as they came in for their procedures.  I have a very squeamish empathy that kicks in with anything that could be even remotely painful but in the dream, I did my best to put on a brave face and stay there to help ease these women through their procedures being administered by my friend.  He is not a medical profession IRL but he was more than competent in this dream-space and did an excellent job making these women feel comfortable, clearly explaining what he was doing while also idly chit-chatting with me. I woke up thinking  what a weird dream . That was the morning of Friday, June 24, 2022.  Roe vs Wade was overturned mere hours after my waking. Friday, June 24, 2022 is a frightening and grotesque day in the United States of America. I le...

Recently, I met up with a friend of mine from MSASS and had an incredible four hour lunch where we caught up on our lives and talked about what's teaching us these days.  Near the end of our time together, my friend was talking about how she sometimes falls into this "therapist" role with people to help them "solve their problems."  And I smiled at her and said, "Let me throw this at you and see how it sticks: what if, instead of the problem-solution model, you used Asset Based Community Development?  What if instead of deficits, you thought about strengths?" My friend grinned at me because she knows my affinity for ABCD, so she indulged me as I explained: "I think in my own life, I've struggled a lot with this idea that I should 'get over stuff.'  That there's a pressure to 'get over' a relationship or a traumatic event or really anything.  What does that even mean, 'get over it'?  Who does that language benefit?  ...