Things That Make You Go “Hmmm”

As I write this essay in February 2025, I am shocked to discover that the year 1991 is now thirty-four years in the past! How is that even possible? Now, you might be wondering why it is that I’m thinking specifically about the year 1991. As a Gen-Xer, I was a young working mother in … Continue reading

Please Don’t Revoke My Black Card

For those who are not aware of the intricacies of African American culture, you might be confused when you hear Black Americans talking about “revoking someone’s black card.” The “black card” is not to be confused with the “race card,” but instead represents a set of behaviors that are (often stereotypically) that can cement a … Continue reading

Do All Lives Really Matter?

For all of Facebook’s virtues and vices, there is one aspect of it which those of us of a certain age probably marvel at more than most. It provides a way to peek into the lives of friends and acquaintances from high school in a way that we otherwise would be unable to do. It … Continue reading

A Kinder Gentler Place

The nation said goodbye to former President Jimmy Carter last week, and as all of the living former Presidents and many of the former Vice-Presidents gathered to pay their respects it was impossible, for those of us old enough to have lived through each of their administrations to make comparisons among them. I was only … Continue reading

Too Much of a Gentleman

Here I am in 1976. I was 13 years old and in the eighth grade. From ages 9 to 12 I had been somewhat vaguely aware of the Watergate scandal, not because it was interesting (the long summer of the Watergate hearings made for very boring television), but because, from the adults all around me, … Continue reading

I Feel Like a Plain-Bellied Sneetch

While there are many reasons throughout my life for my feeling like the proverbial “fish out of water” one of the more interesting is the fact that I was born on the cusp of two wildly disparate generational cohorts. While I am technically a Baby Boomer, I only qualify by mere months. As a result, … Continue reading

The Power of We

Colossians 3:12-14 English Standard Version (ESV) 12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all … Continue reading

The Age of Aquarius – Really?

In 1970, I was seven years old, and a singing group called, (Huey, n.d.), was about the coolest thing that a little black girl from Terre Haute, Indiana could see on television. Back then, it was rare to see non-white Americans on TV (or just about anywhere else for that matter) so when a group … Continue reading