“Liam got his period,” my middle-school-aged daughter casually mentioned. That was about five years ago, and it was the first time my brain circuitry fritzed around gender expression. When I was growing up only girls got periods—and girls only used she/her pronouns. But with patience and practice over the last few years, my neurons are steadily rewiring into a whole new network for referring to gender.
I never shoot the breeze anymore, even in the middle of a casual conversation. You won’t see me sweating bullets under any circumstances. And nothing can trigger me, although it…
This month’s post on reducing gun violence (The Gun Problem and a Silver Bullet Remedy) prompts me to highlight a remarkable and well-known nonprofit organization—Everytown for Gun Safety. Everytown encompasses…
The Women’s March four years ago was a reflexive response by women who felt cheated by a system dominated by men since its inception. I’m grateful that the worldwide march…
One could say that America was born from rage and grows from rage. I learned that firsthand at the Women’s March four years ago, when my country was mired in…
I’ve always had a nagging sense that we humans hold far more power than we realize—yet we keep it out of reach, always just around the bend. For me, when…
Every time the nurses or doctors came into my daughter’s hospital room, they shuffled through her chart, puzzled. “Did they forget to mark her oxycodone, her painkillers?” they would ask.…
My last post (Designing a Better Map to Guide Us) spoke of a hopeful future and a unified US. But I have to confess that the current election has tested…
Every now and then my petulant 14-year-old daughter will extract herself from the latest viral TikTok video and declare her thoughts about a real-world issue. This week she surprised me…
Earlier this week, an intense windstorm knocked out our power for several hours. Today is the third day of an orange sky casting an eerie pall over Portland, as wildfire…