Five things you can do besides wear a bracelet

If wearing a blue bracelet makes you feel better right now, ok, I guess. But the truth is that the Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ folks in your life already knew whether or not you were a safe person. The bracelet is really just for you.

But if you actually ARE in the place where you are ready to do something, here's a list of low-commitment actions you can take. Personally, I'm not there yet. I know I move slowly and need to get myself in a good place from which I can start doing the work. If you needed ideas, but, like me, need some time, bookmark this and come back to it when you're ready.

1. Support good and local (when possible) journalism.

As confidence in our institutions erodes, journalism that is actual journalism--not entertainment disguised as news, not propaganda--is becoming an endangered species.

If you have a hometown paper you trust and like, subscribe. If not, look into publicly funded news organizations. Look into your local PBS and NPR stations. For Northeast Ohio, Signal Akron and Signal Cleveland have also been doing really good work in online print journalism.

If you're not able to support these organizations at this time with donations or by becoming a member, then start using them as your news sources.

Links:

Ideastream Public Media (NEO PBS and NPR)

Signal Cleveland 

Signal Akron 

 

2. Donate to local organizations that support people who will be targeted over the next 4 years.

If you have disposable income right now and your goal is supporting Black people, brown people, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants, there are organizations near you doing this already. Set up a donation with them--make it monthly so it will continue even after this initial rage wears off and we fade into waves of complacence and frustration and you won't need to remember to do it.

A few links to orgs in my area:

International Institute of Akron --helps refugees and immigrants achieve an empowered life with dignity, connection, and belonging.

ASIA (Asian Services in Action)--the largest health and human services agency serving the AAPI community of Northeast Ohio.

Freedom Bloc --On a mission to build black leadership and political infrastructure in Black communities through civic education and engagement, leadership development and economic reinvestment.

Plexus --Plexus LGBT + Allied Chamber of Commerce

Big Love Network --Big Love is Akron’s local environmental health equity organization.  We are an evolving network facilitating neighbor-led/creative placemaking, sustainability, and health equity efforts throughout Akron as a means for social change.

 

3. Support your local arts, artists, and small local businesses.

The arts build healthy communities, and believe it or not, healthy economies! It's a crucial part of your local social and yes, financial, infrastructure. If you can't support a local org with money right now, support them by patronizing them with your presence--many have free or very low cost admission. I'm listing local organizations here, but I promise, wherever you are, there is a small gallery, venue, or museum you can support. Buy holiday gifts from local artists, shop Small Business Saturday events and art and craft fairs. Even if you don't buy anything, collect business cards from your favorites so you remember to default to them when buying gifts rather than shopping through big tech websites.

Links to some Akron-local orgs you can support with your funds and/or presence:

Summit Artspace --quickly becoming my favorite source and resource for the arts in Akron. They support not only artists, but the community. 

The Nightlight --An exceptional arthouse cinema experience—for everyone.

Akron Soul Train --Akron Soul Train is an artist residency program connecting and empowering the community and artists by granting residencies that provide resources for all creative disciplines to foster a more vibrant downtown Akron.

CATAC --seeks to provide a home base to nurture emerging local artists and those of international reputation creating new work and experimenting with new forms of expression.

Akron Bazaar and Cleveland Bazaar --northeast Ohio’s longest-running indie craft show, with over eighteen years of fantastic events on our track record since 2004.

The Rialto Theatre --Akron’s premier live music venue

There are literally dozens more just in Akron and the surrounding areas...

4. Donate or volunteer at your local foodbank.

Foodbanks are overwhelmingly cited as the organizations that make donations go further than humanly possible. Ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but these are the only organizations that can find a way to turn $1 into three free meals for those in need. And regardless of whether the economy is up or down, regardless of your neighborhood, food insecurity is real, and I promise you, worse than you could imagine. My day-job hosts food bank pickups once a month, and folks are lined up in their cars for a mile, waiting for literally hours to get a couple bags of groceries. These orgs will always need volunteers and money. Always.

Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank

Greater Cleveland Foodbank 

 

5. Support your local public library.

Wherever you are, your library will accept donations. But more importantly, you support them by your presence. Every year they report their attendance numbers statewide and nationally to show that they are a critical resource in the community.

And they are.

When free and open access to information is eroded, everyone suffers. But your local library isn't only about books and movies and music. It absolutely is, but it's infinitely more.

As access to public resources continues to erode, the responsibility for filling the gaps left by failing and dismantled social safety nets is filled, intentionally or not, by the libraries.

Just some of the things that you may not immediately associate with what libraries do:

• Maker spaces, with 3D printers, laser cutters, Cricut machines, embroidery and quilting machines, CNC cutters, free access to Adobe suite software, vinyl printers, and so much more that I'm not even remotely tech savvy enough to understand but maybe you are
• Free meals for kids, and food pantry pick ups
• Assistance with applying for various social services
• Free computer and internet access
• Free Microsoft Certification classes
• Free career assistance
  

And--your libraries are under attack right now, and over the coming years it is only expected to get worse.

As book and material challenges and bans become more frequent and libraries are placed in the crosshairs for doing nothing more than providing information to anyone who wants it, they need your support. Here in Ohio, the statehouse attempted but failed (so far) at defunding public libraries that provide materials they want to censor. You can read about it here.

So what can you do? Show up. Vote for every library levy on your ballot as they show up in the coming years. If you haven't visited your library in a minute, step through those doors. Get a card. Ask for a list of programs and register and attend an author talk, writing workshop, a cooking class, a storytime with your kids, a program to learn how to use all those fancy maker machines I listed above. Make the library a weekly visit.

Beyond that, libraries need you to call your Ohio state representatives and Ohio senators. Make it a weekly call--schedule five minutes a week and put a reminder in your phone. In Ohio, we are blessed with something called the Public Library Fund, which uses a percentage of statewide tax revenue to fund public libraries across Ohio. It's one of the reasons the libraries in Ohio surpass some of those in even the biggest cities in the nation. Yes, those.

So here's a quick script to use when you call if you need help:

"Hi, my name is [your name] and I am a constituent at [your address]. I'm calling because I want to support my public libraries across Ohio, and I am asking you to keep the PLF at current levels of funding. I am also asking you to support the freedom of information by preventing any efforts to tie those library funds to the materials our libraries offer." (You can add a thank you at the end if you want. Depending on whether or not you like your rep, maybe you don't want.)

That's it. You'll probably reach voicemail without even talking to a real person.

Here's how to find your Ohio reps:

Ohio House of Representatives

Ohio Senate

---

This list is NOT even close to all-inclusive. And this list is largely hyper local. So if you know of other orgs, share them with your friends who are asking, "What do we do now?" There is always something to do. No one person needs to do it all. But everyone can do one thing. When we're ready.

Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times; but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.

I believe that we were meant to be in this time and were given the gifts to do what is needed in the world right now.

Life. Love. Light.
T

Baseball, but really, time and nostalgia, and really, baseball

Time does strange somersaults when I start thinking about math and dates. For example, there's an age gap between my husband and me. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it doesn't feel like there's any time between us at all. But it's a wide enough gap that when we start talking about, say, graduation years or how old we were during certain historical events, it brings that time into sharp relief.

My husband and I are both baseball fans--Steve moreso than I am, but as with so many pop culture things that stick with a person from youth, he connected with one World Series team in particular at an important time in his life. When he talks about those players and that team, he is sharing with me the histories and traditions of his people. It's beautiful and emotional because he has that connection with those memories.

And while Steve was still very much a Cleveland baseball fan during the mid-nineties, in the hey-day of Cleveland ball, those '95-'97 teams were the ones that I connected with (even though, sadly, they never actually won a World Series at the time). I remember the first time I shocked him with a baseball nugget of trivia when I told him that I would always believe there's an alternate universe somewhere that the strike-shortened season of 1994 actually ended with Cleveland winning the World Series. That was my team--Kenny Lofton, Albert Belle, Carlos "by land, by sea" Ba-er-ga!

But what brought those '90s baseball seasons into even sharper relief was my dad showing me how momentous those times were.

My dad wasn't born in the US, but as a kid growing up here, he started following Cleveland baseball "about '63 or '64". In over 30 years of being a fan, he'd barely seen a team with a winning record, much less a playoff contender. When my brother and I were small, my parents would pack us up in the car with a cooler filled with hotdogs, and we would have a picnic at old Municipal Stadium with 50 other folks spread out over 80,000 seats, and maybe somewhere in there a ballgame would break out. People would flip the wooden seats in the cavernous upper deck to spell out words like "Go Tribe". Our family and any friends with us would take up a whole row or two just for ourselves, because no one else was sitting nearby. When John Adams beat the drum, it ECHOED, and everyone would grab the seat of the nearest empty chair and slam it up and down with the drumming.

And maaaaan, giveaways back then. Not these bobbleheads that sorta-maybe look like the player if you squint enough. We went to one afternoon game where they gave away bats--real, regulation, full-sized, Louisville Slugger, wooden baseball bats. They were painted bright red, and had the team logo and sponsorships painted on them in white, and you can bet we played with them in the backyard for years. I think my dad still may have them in the garage somewhere, relics of the before-times, when winning baseball in Cleveland was still a dream.

In '95, the first time the team made it to the playoffs in a generation, my dad saved the newspapers, recorded the clinch celebrations on VHS, bought "Central Division Champion" t-shirts and treated them like Sunday best. It wasn't just a winning team. It was the first winning team in a generation.

The World Series in '95 was tough. The World Series in '97 was tougher. And since then, we've had a number of winning, even good, almost magical teams. '07 nearly broke my dad, when Cleveland lost to the Red Sox and he swore, "I'm never watching sports again!" Of course, he did.

Then we had 2016 and the rain delay game seven heartbreak. Then 2017 and The Streak, but it wasn't enough to get us through.

Now it's October 2024, and I'm getting ready to watch (or more likely not watch) a World Series that remained out of reach from the Guardians again. When I do that somersault math, I realize that I'm the same age my dad was for those mid-nineties teams. I feel a tiny bit of that cynicism creeping in, the cynicism where my dad seems to be permanently planted now whenever we talk baseball. But despite all his lifetime of watching losing teams, or watching winning teams that couldn't quite win that last game, I can still hear the hope there. It's a hope that didn't want to fully admit that all of us thought this was the year we could win the big trophy, a hope that good things can still happen, and that we'll get to see them happen soon.

Maybe I'm only talking about baseball now. Maybe I'm not. Maybe I want to see the Guardians win for me, but maybe I also want them to win, just a little bit more, for my dad. Maybe I want us all to believe that there's still hope, there's always hope. Not just for baseball.

A word on pronouns

 First, I use them. You use them. We all use them.

What people really mean when they say they won't use "pronouns" is that they refuse to self-identify their pronouns.

But pronoun identification is not a burden, or something that will only serve one small segment of the population. It's a curb cut.

Curb cuts are the small ramps cut into sidewalks at crosswalks. They were mandated by law through the ADA to assist those with physical disabilities and mobility difficulties. Yes, they help people who use wheelchairs, walkers, or other mobility assistance. But curb cuts also help people pushing strollers, pulling wagons, making deliveries, pulling wheeled luggage, riding scooters, etc. Anyone who's had to push, pull, or ride something across the street from sidewalk to sidewalk has had their life made easier by a curb cut. (If you're interested in this idea, check out the work of Angela Glover Blackwell who has written more on the Curb Cut Effect.)

Regularly self-identifying pronouns is also a curb cut. Because yes, it will help those in the LGBTQ+ community. 

But do you know who else will benefit from pronoun identification? People named "Alex." Or "Jamie." Or "Adrian." Or those with any other first names that society considers to be gender neutral. 

Anyone with a name that does not have gender connotation commonly recognized by mainstream American society will be helped. This includes people of color, immigrants, people with very modern names, people with very traditional names, and many people I've neglected to mention here (because I know I have my own gaps).

I'll give you one big example of how pronoun identification would help me in my own day job. Part of my job involves calling or sending a letter to people who have submitted an application for a service. If the person's first name is one that I'm not familiar with as gendered, I have occasionally found myself embarrassed by misgendering, or awkwardly using "they" to avoid misgendering, the person I am trying to reach. Selfishly, I want to be saved from embarrassment. But also, I want to save the person I'm addressing the embarrassment and awkwardness of being misgendered--because that also brings an entire additional dynamic to the conversation. They are now in the uncomfortable position of needing to decide whether or not they correct me, and regardless of their choice, an additional level of discomfort been added to the interaction.

If everyone used pronoun identification reflexively, it would smooth those interactions. Rote business interactions would continue to be just that: rote. If I have to call my bank or the doctor's office or whatever it happens to be, I want it to be as quick and easy as possible and limited to the scope of the reason I called. I don't need additional levels of discomfort and frustration built into those interactions--and neither does anyone else.

So let's make everyday interactions easier, smoother, and more comfortable for everyone--regardless of how they identify themselves. It's such a small and simple thing to make one tiny part of someone's day a little easier.

Words are hard.....

 This year, I told myself I was going to dive back into writing. It had been gnawing at me, various ideas percolating, bubbling, screaming to be let out of my head and onto the page.

So of course, as I decide I'm going to write, all words leave my brain. I've felt foggy, sticky in the mind. It's even been hard to simply sit down with a book and make it past the same page my bookmark has been on for more than a month. Several different varieties of chaos may be to blame. Or maybe not.

My mind hasn't been in a words-kind-of mode right now. It's an unnatural state for me. Even when I wasn't writing productively in recent years, I'd post several hundred word rants about anything and everything on social media. Words are one of my most natural states of expression.

It's uncomfortable that I am not even a little motivated to write right now. Even this little snippet here feels taxing and clunky.

And yet, I want to make stuff, work on design, getting ideas for patterns, videos, how to implement different ideas. Colors and fibers I want to use. I'm even thinking about ideas to modify and customize my shoes. I'm on my phone researching how to stitch things onto shoes. The words aren't there, but the "make stuff" side of my brain is in overdrive.

I heard once that the healthiest artists were always sculptors. I don't know the truth of that or if there's data to back it up. But I bet I could name at least a dozen writers who suffered from addiction, depression, and other mental illness in less than a minute. Plenty of painters suffered similarly. So maybe there is something to working with your hands, making things, physical objects rather than transitory words or two-dimensional images, that keeps a mind healthy. Maybe not.

Maybe my brain pushing me into the physical end of creativity is the same way that my body craves a diet of fresh greens after a holiday sugar binge--inherently, my body knows that I need a specific kind of nourishment and tells me to seek it out to balance some of the more unhealthy choices or circumstances of late. Rather than fight it and try to do something I'm not in a frame of mind to attack at this moment, maybe the best course of action is to dig in where it feels healthiest at the moment. Set the story and poem ideas aside for a bit--not forgotten or thrown out, just saved and stored for a more opportune moment. And trust that everything will come around again when I'm in a better place to receive the inspiration for it.

Find your magic

Maybe magic exists in all of us.

Maybe the magic isn't only for a chosen few, but it is an essential part of being living, breathing, human, physical, and spiritual beings. We misunderstand that it only exists for a small handful of superstars and creative geniuses, when in truth it exists inside of all of us.

Maybe the magic is actually a poison when it is inside a person. Maybe that magic was never really meant to be inside our bodies, flowing through our veins, permeating muscles and organs, infiltrating every cell of our beings.

Maybe the only way to live a fully healthy human existence is to get the magic out from inside of our bodies and put it out into the world.

Some people exorcise their magic by playing sports or engaging in other physical feats.

Some people paint or draw. 

Some people invent new technologies. 

Some people teach. 

Some people heal and take care of others. 

Some people write. 

Some people play music. 

Some people sing. 

Some people have the unbelievable ability to love every human being they come into contact with. 

Some people cook. 

Some people build. 

Some people fix and repair. 

Some people plant and garden and farm. 

Some people care for animals. 

Some people care for the earth. 

Some people stitch. Some people wire circuits. Some people create curriculum. Some people minister. Some people pray. Some people carve and sculpt. Some people clean and tend. Some people organize and simplify. Some people connect people with other people, or connect people with the things and services they need. Some people innovate.

And everyone has something--and probably multiple somethings--to let the magic out.

Because when we hold it inside, when we never let it out, it fouls our blood, it turns into illness and stress  and meanness, a hardness to the world.

When it is stored inside of us, it turns rotten. But when we release it through any one of the hundreds and thousands of actions that people are placed on this planet to do, it becomes not only inert, but it transforms from a poison into an actively positive force in the world, bringing joy to others and inspiring them to find ways to release their own magic.

Stop Feeding the AI

I remember reading an article maybe a decade or so ago about the impending automation revolution, describing self-driving cars and other technologies that seemed (to me) impossible at the time, but are very real now in 2023.

One of the things mentioned in the article was how the automation of those kinds of tasks (jobs) would free up humans to do other things. At the time, I thought, “What ‘other things’ are you expected to do if that was how you made a living?”

Now I understand the idea was that people would be freed from monotonous or even physically harmful tasks in order to pursue endeavors that truly mattered to them. The leap from point A to point B is maybe not as smooth as that old article made it seem, especially when we’re talking about the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people that would be outsourced to ‘employees’ that can work tirelessly 24/7 without break, salary, or benefits. But who wouldn’t love to have a robot scrub the bathtub for you, wash and fold your clothes, or clean your windows? How many people already have robots in their houses (still imperfect though they may be) that will mop and vacuum their floors?

The implication is that when we would be freed from these tasks that consume so much of our time, humanity would enter this new age of enlightenment, a digital era renaissance, in which we would have the time to write symphonies, paint masterpieces, and finally write that great American novel. Freed from drudgery, we could dream and create. After all, it is a true tragedy to imagine how many Beethovens or Picassos were lost to factories, fields, and plantations over the history of humanity, and how much richer would our lives would have been if they’d had the resources for their genius to shine.

Those creating these automation technologies–I have to believe–are doing so with that intent in mind, the intent to free humanity for true greatness

Enter the AI bots.

Over the last few months, my social media feeds have been bombarded with AI generated images that are vibrant and amazing with their apparent “creativity”. Their advent was swiftly followed by a chorus of voices telling us that this new technology is harming them, many artists who know for a fact that their works were stolen and used without their permission to train AI bots, bots that were now generating art based on the labor and creativity of real humans. If you haven’t seen or heard anything about this controversy, just google “AI steals art” and you’ll find almost 5 million search results. At the very least, AI art is harmful, unethical, and quite possibly prosecutably illegal.

While I understand the potential good of robots that perform physical tasks for humans, thinking about these “robots” designed to perform the mental and creative labor of humans seems like nothing but heartbreak to me.

If robots that sweep the floor or save a factory worker from injurious repetitive motions are supposed to be able to give us the time to engage in meaningful work, I would love to know how in the world a bot that can generate an image in minutes for free–an image that takes a human hours of dreaming, labor, and planning–is helping humanity?

The AI bots are not only stealing the work of the artists it uses to “learn”. They’re stealing the joy of creation, which many of us would say is the purpose of being on this plane of existence in the first place.

Yes, I hear you screaming that YOU as an artist/writer/painter/designer/musician will continue joyfully to plug away in your own chosen medium regardless of what the robots do.

I’m not suggesting we can’t still create art. But think about how much of what we consume every day is art. Clothing, shoes, tv shows, movies, music, video games, furniture, not to mention books, visual art, even company logos. Until now, those were all designed and created by people. How long before CEOs decide they no longer need to pay a marketing team if they can buy an AI program to do the work? How long before newspapers and magazines no longer pay journalists to write their content? How long before every bit of entertainment we see and hear is being generated by something that was told over and over what we like until it finally spit out the Oscar-winning movie of the year. How long before the majority of art that feeds into our everyday experiences bears absolutely no trace of human creativity?

The bots aren't creating anything especially good. They are learning how to recombine images that already exist in ways that we think are interesting and will make us click “like”. It isn’t actually generating any new ideas. It isn’t creating new art. When new ideas are no longer put out into the world, I worry for the next generations and the possibility of people learning to think for themselves.

The purpose of art–all art, as I understand it–is communication. And when it ceases being about communication and shared experience, it’s dead, it’s no longer art. While I acknowledge that the AI bots are here to stay, and will likely continue getting “better” at what they are doing, they will still never have what human-to-human created art has: shared experience. It's my hope that eventually we will come full circle, back to recognizing that this robot-generated art is not the shiny new toy we thought it was, but is dead, void of any human experience behind it. And when people begin to see the soul behind art created by humans, we will circle back around to truly valuing the work, physically, mentally, and emotionally, of our fellow people, our fellow creators on this planet.

Not quite a poem

10 Things War Can Cure

1. Longevity.

2. Peace.

3. Education.

4. Abundance.

5. Home.

6. Family.

7. Lagging gun sales.

8. Quiet.

9. Sovereignty.

10. Writer's block.