On Not Centering Ourselves in Antiracism Work
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about initially misreading a sign during our summer road trip. I used it as an illustration of the antiracism work I’ve been intentionally engaged with for the past three years—and how I’ve learned and grown through what I’ve gotten wrong...
The Weight of Responsibility
Many people leave southern Arizona during our hot summers—and this has been one of the hottest. As I’ve already noted, Henry and I took a four-week road trip earlier this summer. I also recently spent two weeks with my mom in the mountains of Colorado. On both...
Pondering the Importance of Apostrophe Placement
While on our month-long road trip this summer, on the back roads of Illinois, we passed the cemetery pictured above at a speed of about forty miles an hour. I asked Henry if we could turn around because my mind read “Blacks’ Cemetery,” and I couldn’t believe the...
Some Personal Reflections on Visiting the Whitney Plantation
Over the past few weeks, I’ve shared some of what Henry and I learned when visiting the Whitney Plantation while on a road trip this summer. My hope for our time there was to get a better sense of the life experience of the 10 million enslaved Africans and African...
The Cutting Season and the Wailing Season
As I noted in prior weeks, I’m sharing a series of reflections after visiting the Whitney Plantation (aka Habitation Haydel) during a four-week road trip this summer. On the late-June day we visited, the sun was hot, the humidity was high, and I couldn’t imagine being...
Understanding the Lay of the Land at the Whitney Plantation
As I mentioned last week, we visited the Whitney Plantation during our recent month-long road trip. This museum in southern Louisiana focuses extensively on the experience of enslaved people rather than glorifying the slave-owning “masters.” In this post, I want to...
Pondering Spaghetti Lots and Slavery
Have you encountered the term “spaghetti lots” before? It’s a phrase I heard growing up in the North Valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It doesn’t refer to an abundance of pasta, but to the shape of land plots along the Rio Grande River (shown above), which runs like...
Pondering the Roar of Falling Water
As I noted last week, Henry and I took a month-long road trip earlier this summer. While we had the basic trajectory of the trip outlined, we made a number of additional decisions along the way—letting the Spirit guide our journey. Niagara Falls was one of our...
The Flow of Singing and Silent Water
As summer’s heat continues to bake the Sonoran Desert, I continue to reflect on the theme of water. After focusing on the dying Dead Sea and the thirsty Jerusalem Temple, I want to turn my attention to the flow of water because of a line I recently encountered from a...
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