Category Archive: better conversations

Change of plans

The suspense is over. Trump’s vision of intolerance, division, and suspicion without understanding has won this battle. That’s what I see on the official form stating that I, as a US citizen, have… Continue reading

Fox News is teaching me

Three weeks and two days (feels like three years and two nervous breakdowns) since Trump was sworn (I think we were all swearing that day) in as president, and I still flinch to… Continue reading

We are not at war. But if we’re lucky and smart, Trump might be just as good as.

War is hell. I’ll take that as a given. But humans seem to have an addiction to it. Sometimes they come close, a veteran of The War to End All Wars coming back… Continue reading

Gratitude, sadness, and mom

  Good morning Mom! How’s it going? Have you had a meditation time already? I’m going to do one at 11:00 if you want to do yours at the same time. I’m going… Continue reading

Why you should go to Istanbul

“Hello! You walk like an American” said the smiling stranger in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet Square. How was I walking? Having been to the city a few times, I knew where I was going but… Continue reading

It’s all one world

My bus pulled up for a WC break on the way to Phuong Nha, Vietnam. A man drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, Germany. Thousands of miles apart, but it’s… Continue reading

Something unexpected and normal happened just now

I was well into my lineup of questions and answers, ordinal numbers and time sequences in class today, blue marker and red marker, hoping my students were getting something out of my antics… Continue reading

Hands Around Lake Merritt

Was election night as bad as it gets, or is the worst still to come? That sick feeling of disappointment, of alienation from your nation, of watching a big part of my demographic… Continue reading

Trump won. What now? Dear god, what now?

What do you do when your country elects a racist, misogynist, morally bankrupt unsuccessful businessman as president and national humiliation? Well. I don’t know about you, but I had ice cream and wine… Continue reading

Hillary headquarters SF on the eve of the election

I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, this was the San Francisco headquarters for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, not some cluster of cubicles behind a crossroads gas station. It was three floors of bustling… Continue reading