Five years ago, I published a post, “Call Me White,” that describes how I came to use the adjective “white” to describe myself. If I use terms like Black and Brown to describe others but don’t apply a skin-deep descriptor to myself, I’m normalizing my own condition, when in fact, people with beige skin are a minority in this world.
Since then, in social conversation, online, and in print, I regularly refer to myself as a white guy. It’s not a group of humans I’m thrilled to be associated with, but as long as we continue to describe each other by race, it’s the apt label for me.
Recently, however, my ‘formal’ behavior has diverged considerably from my social convention. I no longer ‘x’ the box for ‘white’ on any form or data collection. I check ‘other’ or ‘N/A’ or, leave it blank.
I boycott the box.
Why? Because race and ethnicity are artificial constructs, created quite recently in human development, and historically used to misinform and divide, rather than unite us. Race checking keeps proliferating. I’ve been asked my race on government forms, health forms, financial forms, consumer surveys, and personal questionnaires. I imagine the form-makers justify their existence by proclaiming how a person’s race enhances the quality of data sought. Meanwhile, people who identify with a particular race may be keen to check their box, in the endless pursuit of fair counting. But why are we counting race in the first place? The truth is: race is an invented parameter; we can make it irrelevant.
I’m not agsint all box-checking; I still check any box that can matter. Whether I’m male, female, or transgender could be relevant on a health form. Socio-economic data is relevant for consumer research, as well as to the IRS. In fact, depending how severely the Supreme Court guts Affirmative Action, socio-economic data is likely to become the preferred—and more accurate—indicator of who we are in this society
Call me a white guy to my face I’m good with that. But don’t expect me to buy into the statistical game of racial pigeonholing. I boycott the box. I hope that you will start boycotting as well.
Race and Ethnicity Form: California Board of State and Community and Corrections
There was a time when I saw every Academy-Award nominated Best Film, Actor, Actress, and screenplay nominee before the awards presentation. But when Best Film nominees expanded from five to ten, what had been a game became a chore. I slacked off, and once I started to pick and choose, I started to be pickier, choosier. I wasn’t going to waste two hours on The Joker, no matter how many nominations it received.
The older I get, the more divergent my taste in films becomes vis-a-vis Oscar-bait. This year, I am particularly out of sync.
I tried—I truly tried—to watch Everything Everywhere All at Once, this year’s most nominated film (11). I give the movie credit for being properly titled, but having everything, everywhere all at once is not art. It is chaos. After half an hour of hyperactivity, I turned away and let my blood pressure settle.
Next up: The Banshees of Inisherin (9 nominations). I figured I’d love it. I’m Irish; it stars Colin Farrell. We set aside Christmas night to watch with great expectation. I managed to sit through the entire thing, albeit puzzled. The black humor, the irony, the deep meanings eluded me. Doesn’t filmmaking 101 teach that before you depict the deterioration of a relationship, you show its healthy bloom, so the audience knows what’s being lost? Does anyone believe these two oddballs were actually friends before they started setting fires and cutting off fingers? Does anyone care? I couldn’t see it, and definitely did not care. With the essential premise soured, what remained was simply dull horror.
I love Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, which practically invented the genre of critiquing war from within. So I was wary whether I would appreciate another nine-nomination film. I had nothing to fear. The opening sequence sucked me right in; the awe and the futility. Throughout the film, the cinematography is gorgeous, the gore revolting, the youthful fervor foreboding, the brutal end of youth agonizing. Director Edward Berger has taken liberties with the novel, all of which I thought enriched the story’s translation from one medium to another. The woes of lowly privates in trenches is condensed in time, and counterpointed by the affairs of generals and diplomats crafting the brutal terms of armistice, November 11, 1918.
All Quiet on the Western Front will likely not win Best Picture, though I believe it should. Regardless, the film catapults to the top of any list of Greatest War Movies Ever Made. And I am appreciative of Netflix for bringing it into my home.
Series of Opening Stills zoom into Horizon of Death: All Quiet on the Western Front
_ _ _ _ _
Feeling lucky, another evening I simply surfed Netflix, and was rewarded with another terrific film. Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song is an inspiring documentary that couches the life and career of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen within the song that’s come to define him. “Hallelujah” boiled for years, through hundreds of verses, until Leonard Cohen recorded it on an album that was never even released in the United States. How, then, the song was discovered, covered, and blossomed into a phenomenon makes for a gripping framework in which to tell Leonard Cohen’s own biography.
Leonard Cohen at one of his final concerts in Tel Aviv
“Hallelujah…” confirms the ability of music to bind and to salve. But if you watch, linger through the end credits, which include this remarkable coda:
You look around and see a world that is impenetrable.
Comedy is the most precarious of arts. One person’s joke is another’s insult. And yet, comedians enjoy wide latitude in our culture because, let’s face it, we’re a screwed-up society, and gifted comedians tap into the humor of our dissonant truths. The best of them reveal actual truth through humor.
Leslie Jones on The Daily Show
A friend sent me the link to The Daily Show with Leslie Jones’ take on the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Boston Common. I clicked play. I listened. I even laughed, uncomfortably, at the disgust Ms. Jones’ displays. Yet before the segment played out, my levity turned sour. I wondered why a comedian granted the huge platform of The Daily Show chose to use it so disparagingly.
Ms. Jones starts with a warning: “Even though I am about to go straight on this statue, I got to talk to the white people for a second. White people. You don’t need to be saying shit about this statue, you understand? Black hands only. You need to sit your ass in the back of the bus for this one, okay? You need to honor this statue. This is our civil rights icon.”
Sometimes I chose to sit in the back of the bus. But the point of the civil rights movement—refusing to sit in the back of the bus—was not to transfer second-class status from Black people to others. The point was to allow each individual to sit on any available seat, wherever they like. And so the moment anyone tells me where I have to sit, is the moment my hackles rise.
I continued to listen as Ms. Jones proceeds to describe how The Embrace, modelled on a photograph of Dr. King and his wife upon learning that he won the Nobel Peace Prize, looks like cunnilingus. “Martin Luther King going down on his wife. I can’t unsee it. I can’t unsee it. It is what it is.” I do not see what Leslie Jones cannot unsee. Then again, we tend to see what we want to see, in life, and particularly in art.
Fellow comedian Dulce Sloan joins in. Dulce sees a different sexual act: a pair of hands on a giant penis. Given my personal proclivities, that might be a more plausible thing for me to see. But I don’t see that either. Ms. Sloan goes on to praise right-wing zealots: “They know how to make a statue. It’s a white dude on a horse. It’s always a white due on a horse. That’s what the liberals need to do. Make a statue of MLK, in his suit, on a horse.” She then concedes that she does not know if MLK ever rode a horse.
By this point I’m wondering how these two Black female comedians, who might mine excellent material from the challenges of creating a more equitable world, choose to reiterate supremacist tropes. Why do they turn a discussion about a memorial to Martin Luther King into an informercial for the Great Replacement Theory?
A child within The Embrace
On a warmish January day, I did something that I doubt either Ms. Jones or Ms. Sloan did: I went to see The Embrace.
First off, it is beautiful. Seamless, glistening, elegant in scale and form. Second, it’s popular. Dozens and dozens of people milling around, photographing the sculpture, photographing each other. Talking among their companions and with the strangers. No one even paused at the statues of white guys on horses. Third, it is not a statue. It is a sculpture; it is a memorial. It is evocative of what Dr. King stood for. It invites you within, it boosts you up, it elicits community, it represents love.
I understand why Leslie Jones chooses to disparage what she could have elevated. Disdain plays for laughs better than honor, and cheap pokes have yielded her millions.
Standing before the sculpture, among dozens of people who looked like a full cross section of our nation, I did not see cunnilingus. I did not see a giant penis. I saw what Dr. Martin Luther King stood for. I saw the human potential to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice.
I am saddened that two women who have benefited greatly from Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy are unable to see the same thing.
Got your beer and chips and dips and wings on hand?
Are you psyched for the hype, the commercials…and Rihanna!
Oh, and by the way, there’ll be a football game.
Generald Wilson sings our National Anthem at AFC Championship Game
By some weird equilibrium of the metaverse, the older I get, the more politically I engage, the more radical my ideas become, the more I love professional football. Don’t seek the logic: there isn’t any. Chalk it up to my endless fascination with the dichotomies of America: all of which the NFL manages to champion.
I grew up wedged between New York and Philly; the Giants and the Jets and the Eagles. I cannot forget that brutally cold winter day, shivering in the concrete recesses of Franklin Field, watching little men in dark uniforms run around on the field below me. I didn’t understand a single thing going on, and didn’t care.
That didn’t stop me from joining freshman football; a feeble attempt to save face before my athletic brothers. I was chunky, uncoordinated, and therefore assigned to play guard. Field practice was gruesome. Blackboard sessions even more debilitating. I was supposed to be this academic whiz kid: why couldn’t I make any sense of the X’s and O’s, curved lines and arrows? Two weeks into the season—physically exhausted and mentally numb—my brother said, “You know there’s some cool kids in the band.” I quit football the next day, and spent happy high school years parading my Sousaphone up and down the field.
As an adult, I indulged in just enough football for Monday morning office water cooler chat. Until I had a son, who immediately and absolutely loved football. I wanted to be a good dad, I wanted to bond with my children, and so my eight-year-old tutored me on first downs and two-point conversions. Over time, I learned the difference between a shotgun and a wishbone, though I’m still kinda loose about slot receivers, wide receivers, corner safeties, and tight ends.
Dissected flag at AFC Championship Game
Being a New England Patriot’s fan in the early Aught’s was easy: they always won. My football season extended as long as the Pats were in the playoffs, as I had no interest in any other team.
I became enchanted with football as America’s premier cultural phenomenon—and our nation’s accurate mirror. The teams were virtually all owned and coached and quarterbacked by white guys. Yet a disproportionate number of Black men did the heavy lifting as our 21st century version of Roman Gladiators. I didn’t care for the militaristic patriotism the NFL promoted: field covered flags with fighter jets overhead; too many commercials to join the US Army. The NFL highlighted our bellicose tendencies. And yet, there was obvious comradery among teammates. And over time there were Black referees, female referees, whose word was law. Maybe there was more going on here than sonic booms.
As the Patriots have descended into the ranks of the mediocre, my football watching has actually increased. I still suffer through every Pats game, but also follow their better rivals: Buffalo; Cincinnati; Kansas City.
I also appreciate the equalitarianism creeping into the upper echelons of the league. What Colin Kaepernick endured would likely not play out today, when 11 of 32 starting quarterbacks are Black. There are also three Black coaches, though Brian Flores trials illustrate they still operate under separate and not equal rules. Team owners are still mostly a white man’s club, yet Kim Pegola (co-owner of Buffalo Bills) Shadid Khan (Jacksonville Jaguars), and Lewis Hamilton (co-owner of Denver Broncos) are making inroads there as well. Perhaps we will one day get to the point where we don’t feel compelled to enumerate QB’s, coaches, and owners by their native origin or skin color. After all, we are all Americans.
Which brings me to the most fascinating aspect of the NFL: how it balances its fundamental militarism with messages of social justice. Many players sport, “End Hate,” “Choose Love,” and “Black Lives Matter” on the back of their helmets. Helmets they then use to bash their fellow man. Goal posts are wrapped in the message, “End Racism.” And ends zones are lettered, “Inspire Change.”
“Inspire Change” is NFL’s official Social Justice initiative, complete with a cool logo and a Changemaker Award. At first I was turned off by the milquetoast slogan that can mean pretty much anything to anybody. We are all fans of change, in theory, but rarely fans of specific change, especially if it directly affects us.
But the more “Inspire Change” gets drilled into me, game after game, the more I realize it’s a perfect exemplar of the NFL as our national mirror. Anyone, of any political persuasion, can watch any NFL game and see what they want to see, hear the message they want to hear. From awesome fighter jets to love, every perspective is represented, all at the same time. We are tough and we are compassionate. And of course, each message comes with corresponding apparel available through NFL.com.
And so this Sunday I will watch the Super Bowl. I will be awed by the remarkable athleticism. I will be revolted by the aggression. I will be amused by the commercials. I will be uplifted by the noble slogans. I will be horrified by the blatant militarism. Nevertheless, I will watch. As this paradigm of our national values, in full regalia, unfolds.
I discovered this quotation, attributed to the Greek Poet Euboulos, 4th century BCE, beneath the display of a humongous drinking vessel at the Harvard Art Museum. It is too pithy, too exact, not to have its own dedicated blog post:
“Three bowls of wine only do I mix for the sensible: one is dedicated to health (and they drink first), the second to love and pleasure, the third to sleep—when this is drunk up wise guests go home.
“The fourth krater is ours no longer but belongs to hybris (outrage), the fifth to arguments, the sixth to drunken revel, the seventh to black eyes, the eight to the bailiff’s, the ninth belongs to bitter anger, and the tenth to madness that makes people throw things.”
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” – Genesis 1:26, New King James Version
I’ve always considered it the height of vanity to think that god made us in its image, and an utter lack of imagination to think that god looks like us. But then, I suppose the essence of all religion is the juxtaposition of hubris and ignorance. Creators of religions make authoritative pronouncements about where we come from, why we are here, and where we’re going based on fable and fictions, and then coerce their followers into venerating their vision as sacred truth.
Thus we wind up with passages like Genesis 1:26, proclaiming man’s dominion over the entire earth. By 2023, this impudence is leading directly to man pretty much destroying the gift we’ve been given, under the pretext that we have a god-given right to dominate this place, even if it destroys us.
Back up a few months to a quotation in The New York Times Morning Newsletter, November 22, 2022 about rejuvenated efforts to take us—once again—to the moon:
“If there is water on the moon, you can split off hydrogen from oxygen and make rocket fuel. Such a prospect would be transformative because the moon could be used as a base for deep-space missions without the cost and burden of lifting heavy rocket fuel off the Earth, which has six times the gravity of the moon. “Scientifically, that’s a cool possibility…and so people started getting interested in the moon again.””
In other words, when we’ve exhausted our capacity to inhabit this planet, we’ll move on to the next, extract what we can, and so on and so on. When does it stop?
The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t stop. And, even as I strive to make the smallest possible footprint upon the planet that nourishes us—not to mention the moons and the planets we’d like to deplete—I realize that it’s virtually impossible to live in balance with nature. The fundamental systems of our existence are based on extraction: taking from mother earth; taking from our fellow man.
And yet, although I strive, I don’t give in to despair. Because when our time is up, and man does himself in on this earth, and we follow the course of the dinosaurs before us, we will have had a good run. Once we’re gone, the earth will be able to repair, new forms of life will emerge. Maybe they’ll be more successful than us because they’ll find a way to live in balance. Unshackled by Genesis’ hollow proclamation of dominance, or even The New York Times promoting unsustainable follies into space.
When the city revamped Huron Avenue, they sunk granite curbs level with the pavement to define the crosswalks, an expensive yet elegant bit of urban dressing. On my meditative walks home from the gym, I often find myself tracking the granite as if I were an Olympic gymnast, one foot in front of the other. A simple bit of balance with no risk, as there is no place to fall.
The Olympic analogy is short-lived; I can’t pretend to be an Olympian for even a few moments. So my mind spins to other feats of folly. I recall the child actor Matthew Garber, who played Michael Banks in Mary Poppins. In a movie-instant that few probably recall, as Mary, Jane, and Michael depart 17 Cherry Tree Lane for adventure, Michael snakes around the porch column, rather than simply trod down the front steps. The image of that round-faced boy in his shorts suit and cap pivoting off that column stuck with me for years. I credit it as the inspiration for the Master’s thesis I wrote almost twenty years later: Architecture that Affords Play.
I savored that time: studying the psychology of play; analyzing how people interact with the built environment in unanticipated ways; creating over two hundred free-hand drawings back in the pre-Photoshop days of cut and paste.
Then my mind turns a dark shadow as I flinch at a more recent memory. The director I’m collaborating with on a new play chastised my working process. “Loosen up, play with it!” I explained to him that, as a person of engineering temperament, I know how to play like an adult— manipulating something I’ve already mastered—but find it wicked difficult to play like a child—who seeks mastery through open-ended exploration. Even when I was a child, I don’t recall playing like one. I don’t know if he ‘hears’ me, or believes me, but his words sting deep because I know all too well how my creative impulses are stymied by a rigid constitution that simply won’t things fly.
By now I’m approaching the next crosswalk. A dozen steps ahead, I see a woman pursuing my own indulgence: balancing herself along the granite strip of crosswalk. She’s older than me, but simply from the way her body jostles as she steps, I can tell she’s jolly.
I Mary-Lou-Retton my way across the street and greet my fellow gymnast on the far side. “I’ve never seen anyone else left-right-left across the street on the granite strip.” “I do it all the time; it’s good for my balance.” We laugh with each other and move on. Grateful to live in a city that can afford the indulgence of granite curbs where none are required. Thankful that we can still toe the line.
Ten years ago this month I completed the first great adventure of my life: designing and supervising the construction of two buildings in Grand Goave, Haiti following the 2010 earthquake that devastated that country. My work on the Mission of Hope School and Be Like Brit orphanage were the epitome of my architectural career, fusing built form and community need in a more potent way than in any previous projects. My time in Haiti brought me a fresh, humbled, view of our reason for existing on this earth, slowed me down, and created important connections that remain dear to me today.
Me, in Haiti 2012
No matter how we might otherwise prefer, when we reach out to fellow humans in distress, the person who can extend themselves almost always benefits more than the person they try to lift up. Perhaps this is because the challenges of the needy are more complex than we suppose. Perhaps it’s because economics and politics are so complicated. Perhaps it’s because despite best intentions, the gratification of giving exceeds the humility of receiving. That the giver so often falls short of alleviating the plight of the receiver does not mean that we should not attend to fellows in distress. Rather it means we should accept that the fruits of our labor may be less, sometimes much less, than we desire.
After the Haiti earthquake, the world showered the impoverished nation with attention, relief supplies, and money. Billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance. My own contributions created two sturdy reinforced concrete buildings in a community that had none. The school is a place where hundreds of children learn; the orphanage a place where dozens of children live; and each provide community-wide refuges from the tropical storms that so often batter Haiti. However, any objective analysis of the hundreds of thousands of dollars these two projects consumed would show that money could have better addressed more fundamental Haitian needs like safe drinking water or sanitation. Alas, it is much easier to raise money for an orphanage and a school than a septic system.
The hope of Haiti, 2012
Ten years on I can reflect how my time in Haiti changed my life, positively, forever. Unfortunately, I can’t report that the decade produced similar positive change there. Recent articles in The New York Times (11/27/2022: Link) and The Boston Globe (12/23/2022: Link) report a country racked by political instability, gang violence, economic deprivation, and rampant disease. Today, Haiti is more unstable than at any time since the earth rumbled, yet this time round, there is little international will to intervene. In fact, the international community is pretty much washing our hands of the mess.
What that means for Mission of Hope is that the lifeblood of their operation is gone; Haiti is too dangerous to bring in missionaries. Mission of Hope continues to provide basic services and education in Grand Goave, but their direction of growth is actually in the Dominican Republic, where a flood of Haitian emigree’s has created refugee ghettos in need of services in a place where Mission of Hope can safely bring volunteers.
Meanwhile, some of Be Like Brit’s orphans are nearly grown, yet despite having many educational and health advantages, they have no place to graduate to, in a country with virtually no economic promise.
I am still in touch with several people affiliated with Mission of Hope; I still work with Renee and Lex and Gama and other central characters from Architecture by Moonlight on projects that maybe, someday, will become reality. I refuse to despair about Haiti, because one thing I learned from The Magic Island is the persistence of hope. Hope conquers all. And so I am happy to report that Dieurie, one of the boys I have sponsored for all of these years, is still making his way through school, and should actually graduate in two years’ time. Meanwhile, his younger brother, the mischievous Dieunison, who conquered my heart as a six-year-old, has been in and out of all kinds of trouble but at this moment is reunited with his brother and hopefully seeking a solid path to manhood.
Dieunison & Dieurie, 2022
I can’t say that Dieunison or Dieurie or Haiti as a whole are where I hoped they would be when I left ten years ago. But it’s not my position to pass judgment on any individual or nation. I must be content in believing that I made the place a little bit better, even if it seems I was the one who came out with the better deal.
Today Maura Healey is being sworn in as Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and I am officially living in a one-party state. Nationally, I am represented by a Democratic President, two Democratic Senators (Warren and Markey), and a Democratic a Congressperson (Clark). At the state level we now have a Democratic Governor to work with our overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. Both my State Senator and State Representative are Democrats. Locally, Cambridge City Councilors don’t run with party affiliation, but every elected official in the People’s Republic is a Democrat, except for those who fly further left on the political spectrum.
Although I am registered Independent, my politics more closely align with Democrats than Republicans. So, I should be happy, right? I am…and I’m not.
I was weaned in a New Deal loving household under the mystique of JFK and bluster of LBJ. Of course we hated Nixon, but only because we always knew he was a crook. I didn’t truly appreciate Jimmy Carter until I lived in rural West Texas and saw him through the eyes of fellow farmers. Today, Jimmy’s the best ex-President we’ve ever had, and an important role model for me.
My real political education began during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, when I learned: beware of an ideologue at the helm. If they’re not your ideologue, you’re better off with a mere administrator. And if their ideology does align with yours, they will be sure to disappoint.
Massachusetts has a long progressive history. We also have a penchant for moderate Republican governors, who often serve as a kind of palate cleanser to our regular diet of Democratic largesse. Most recently, Charlie Baker, who served as governor for eight years, botched up the T and sold out on the prison moratorium, but he also notched up housing opportunities, kept his nose clean, and did an all-around credible job. Baker was consistently rated the most popular governor in America, and if he’d wanted a third term, he would most likely have won. But Charlie Baker was just as disenchanted with the direction of the Republican Party as those of us who have nothing into do with it, so he retired. The GOP nominated a Trump-clone who was rounded defeated. Thus, our state has no viable Republican voices; perhaps not even any moderate ones.
These days, Massachusetts is a great place for many, but not all. The economy is sound, mostly because our economic engine—brainpower—is in constant demand. The booms and bust of extraction, agriculture, or even defense spending hardly affect us. We are the best educated state by numerous metrics, yet we continually import more grey matter. People come here from all over the world to study, and many stay. I’m an example of that myself.
So, with all these progressive politicians, and this flush economy, we must be implementing all sorts of social changes, right? Livable wages, affordable housing, early education, racial accord, climate resistance, enlightened social programs. If only…
Although I am glad I live in Massachusetts over any other state, I am not ignorant of the blinders that constrict our potential. Yes, we have a $15 minimum wage, but that hardly matters in a place where the most basic apartment rents for $2000+ per month. Yes, we have great career opportunities, but we also have a hard underbelly of folks who cannot function in our job market. Yes, we have a tighter social net than most any other state, but we also have an expanding homeless crisis. Riding my bike through Mass & Cass reminds me of Port-au-Prince after the Haiti earthquake. No state that harbors such deprivation can call itself civilized, yet alone progressive.
After living in Massachusetts for over forty years I recognize that the most significant public policy advances have occurred under split administrations: where a Republican governor and the Democratic legislature had to hammer out hard stuff. That’s how Ed King managed to bend back the moniker, ‘Taxachusetts.’ It’s how Mitt Romney created the blueprint for affordable healthcare that eventually went viral. It’s how Charlie Baker crafted the first real change in zoning density in my lifetime, with actual teeth that are beginning to chomp down on cities and towns that don’t hop on the increased density bandwagon.
In theory, Governor Healey and her team will be able to work with the legislature to accomplish more. After all, they’re at the same party. Yet I fear that the Dems’ penchant for intra-party bickering, and the fat-and-happy idlement that comes with enjoying a supermajority, will actually yield fewer accomplishments then when we engage in opposing, yet civil discourse.
The opportunity for Governor Healy to make Massachusetts a more equitable place is tremendous. Yet every single-party state in the world—regardless of its ideological bent—must brace against the proclivity to stop listening, grow overconfident, and dance with tyranny.
Here’s hoping our new Governor flies above those temptations and turns the rhetoric of progress into meaningful change.
I want to live in a world where every baby is wanted.
I want to live in a world where every child is nurtured with love, self-control, and self-respect.
I want to live in a world where a parent who wishes, can stay home to rise their young child.
I want to live in a world where every child receives whatever they need to thrive.
I want to live in a world where children can just go outside and play.
I want to live in a world where the sound of ‘pop’ elicits wonder rather than fear.
I want to live in a world where every child attends a good, public school.
I want to live in a world where teenage imbroglios are addressed conscientiously in the moment and forgiven in the future.
I want to live in a world where gender expression and sexual expression are celebrated.
I want to live in a world where scholars are feted as athletes.
I want to live in a world that provides food and shelter, education and exercise, light and air to all.
I want to live in a world where opinions are voiced yet facts prevail.
I want to live in a world where every citizen votes.
I want to live in a world where human rights are universal, and individual rights require responsibility.
I want to live in a world where every young adult serves their nation in service.
I want to live in a world with universal basic income.
I want to live in a world in balance with nature, where we replenish whatever we extract.
I want to live in a world with more buses than cars; more trains than planes.
I want to live in a world with more bike lanes than motor lanes.
I want to live in a world in which building a family, a career, and a nest egg is spread out over longer, less frantic decades.
I want to live in a world where freedom of speech is coupled with responsibility for truth.
I want to live in a world where it’s easier to get nourishing food than debilitating drugs.
I want to live in a world where everyone can pursue the religion of their choice, or none at all.
I want to live in a world with an impenetrable wall between church and state.
I want to live in a world that promotes wellness rather than monetizes disease.
I want to live in a world that passes the mantle of power through generations, in peace.
I want to live in a world that engages its elders.
I want to live in a world that cherishes the memory of seven generations gone, and prepares for seven generations to come.
I will not live in that world in 2023, or 2323, or 23,023. Humans are the only species capable of shaping their own world, yet humans are also too selfish, short-sighted, and violent to ever create a truly just, equity and sustainable world.
Still, we must strive toward that vision. For though we may never achieve the world we want, we have the capability—and the responsibility—to improve the one we have.
The Awkward Pose 