Category Archives: Series

Can you imagine the shadows that could be inserted into the National Portrait Gallery’s collection of presidential portraits?

I subscribed to the Black Heritage Postal series sometime in December. Each month, I receive about six stamps featuring black Americans along with the stamps value at the time of its original circulation. In addition to the stamps, I also receive news and updates from the National Postal Museum. The exhibition currently featured at theContinue reading “Models Monday: President’s Day, Black History Month, and the Post Office”

In chapter 5 of Being Mortal, Atul Gawande writes beautifully about the professionals most interested in helping people “in a state of dependence sustain the value of existence.” The people at the center of interest for Gawande are the elderly and some whose grim prognosis requires assistance through formal structures like a nursing home orContinue reading “Models Monday: Translation”

If you are ever in Atlanta with children, your own or other people’s, you might schedule the National Center for Civil and Human Rights as one of your stops; otherwise, this is just ANOTHER Atlanta site that won’t really be as transformative as one might expect. While the Center does many interesting things with newContinue reading “Models Monday: Centers”

I’m exhausted. This is what I plan on doing throughout my recovery: Asagai: (Charmed) All right, I shall leave you. No–don’t get up. (Touching her, gently, sweetly) Just sit awhile and think…Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. A Raisin in the Sun: Act III, Scene 1 Lorraine Hansberry

Spending part of my day in service to those who sacrificed their lives for freedom and for those who wanted both to live and to be buried with dignity, integrity, and respect felt important. Not only were we respecting history but we were also contributing to the beauty of a memorial landscape; indeed, for someContinue reading “Models Monday: MLK Day at South-View Cemetery”

A serious, thoughtful, and careful examination of lived experience undergoes perpetual distortion because of the unique American obsession with happiness. In the United States, sadness, tragedy, crisis, or despair routinely lead to vigorous pursuit of a silver lining, a happy ending, an upside that makes life’s crushing dismay, pain, and sorrow a nearly impossible occurrence.Continue reading “Models Monday: Against Inevitable Happiness”

I became worried that New York City Police officers had ended their protest when they saluted Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner William Bratton at the wake for officer Wenjian Liu. Despite Bratton’s call for officers to recognize that respecting the grieving families should hold precedence over the officers’ and the police union’s “grievances,” many officersContinue reading “Models Monday: Police Protest Yields Wonderful Results”

When I was 19-years-old, I had a meeting with my college track coach wherein we were supposed to discuss the improvements he wanted to see in my performance on the track the following year. Honestly, I can’t remember if he gave me his plan before or after I shared my plan with him. What IContinue reading “Models Monday: Checking Your Assumptions”

I wonder what the experience of living in a thoughtful country or society is like. Living in the United States denies its citizens such an experience. No better case helps showcase our anti-intellectual climate than public discussions and expressed opinions regarding race and racial justice. Perhaps Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and bothContinue reading “Models Monday: The Myth of Time’s Passage”