Month: March 2018
overselling the value of fistula surgery
Note: I’ll be traveling a lot the next three weeks, so posts will be sporadic. Thanks for your understanding! You’ve probably heard about the problem of obstetric fistula — the holes in between women’s pelvic organs that cause incontinence, pain,...
Wild Harbors, “Monument”
I’ve been following Wild Harbors for a while (they played in our living room in Baltimore back when we were still renters, so that’s at least 6 years ago now!) I just got their new record via Kickstarter, and it...
learning the tools that let you make your own tools
Alan Jacobs doesn’t want kids to learn to code. But he does think they should learn to build their own websites: To teach children how to own their own domains and make their own websites might seem a small thing....
what it costs our kids
Since yesterday’s post was about the struggles of raising children overseas, here’s Tara Ann Thieke on the problems at home: But when I go home to my newspapers and social media feeds I read about how we need more early...
the life of an expat parent
Rachel Pieh Jones has an excellent piece at The Other Journal on what it’s like to be a parent living abroad. She’s got it worse than me — her kids are older and go to school in another country! —...
Sandra McCracken, “Songs From The Valley”
Sandra McCracken just released “Songs from the Valley”, an achingly beautiful EP full of what you might expect if you took the songs that she wrote in the last several years just didn’t quite fit in her last two records...
why can’t white Christians take black Christians at their word?
I’ve seen this article on Christians of color slowly backing away from white churches shared over and over this past weekend (for good reason, though Amy Sullivan notes that very similar reporting was done a year ago at Religion Dispatches). The...
we can make up great things — like national identity!
Michael Brendan Dougherty has a bone to pick with people who want to sneer at “made-up” national identities: Nationalism as a political movement was also what made democracy possible; it helped to overthrow ancient monarchies that routinely bequeathed nations with...
can Black Lives Matter achieve its goals?
This is a fascinating essay from Cedric Johnson examining the history of the Black Panthers and comparing its political activism to the Black Lives Matter movement: The racial justice frame simply does not adequately explain the current crisis of police...
song post: “Fire and Dynamite”, Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors
“Fire and Dynamite” is the best pop-rock song released in the last ten years. Drew Holcomb has written a number of great songs over the years (check him out!), but this is the best and I’m glad I’ve gotten to...