Reading about race

Hi! As you can see from the dates on these posts, I’ve been away from my website for a while—teaching LGBTQ Literature at Macalester. (More about that in a future post). I did pick the wildest semester to start teaching college with a global pandemic in the middle of it. And also I live in Minneapolis, which is hopefully ground zero for the revolution, so let me formally start this post saying:

Black Lives Matter

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Buckle up, you’re blessed

Antidotes to the “Nashville Statement”

If you missed it in the midst of the hurricanes, a bunch of fundamentalist Christians put out the “Nashville Statement” at the end of August, attacking LGBTQ people. This is nothing new, but it comes at a time when other attacks have been leveled against the LGBTQ community—and this can make it particularly scary and damaging.

(If you’re not a reader of long blog posts, please scroll to the video below in the seat belt section and watch that. It will make you smile and feel wonder, joy, blessing or all three.)READ MORE

Book Insight: ADHD and the Edison Gene

I first read Thom Hartmann in my mid-20s when I was informally diagnosed with ADD. I was highly anti-meds at the time so there didn’t seem any point in getting officially diagnosed. Plus I wasn’t convinced that it was a disorder. (I’m still not.)

Hartmann’s books helped me understand how to choose environments that suited me and helped me be kind to myself when I didn’t fit with cultural expectations about work.

This latest, “ADHD and the Edison Gene,” takes his initial ideas and updates them with more current science. Instead of describing ADD brains as hunters (in a hunter/gatherer vs. farmer paradigm), he’s using the “Edison gene” and inventors. I’m a fan of all of it. I don’t care if you think of me as an inventor, a hunter or a superhero as long as it’s positive and creates an environment where we can do our best work together.READ MORE