Category: change
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No man–or woman–is an island
“We are each other’s keepers,” writes William Falk, editor-in-chief of The Week magazine. “Deeper truths often are delivered in the envelope of a crisis. Falk quotes John Donne, who said: “No man (or woman) is an island. Every man (or woman) is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
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Take a break
My husband Jerry read me another article about how long this virus crisis may last and how our lives may be changed forever. “Stop,” I told him. “I don’t want to hear it.” I will stay informed, but I am going to take a break now and then from all of the depressing news. –Joy
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Peace and uncertainty
My husband Jerry and I are now self-quarantined in our home with food for several weeks and plenty of books to read and closets to clean. Still, I keep feeling anxious about all of the uncertainty. And, what about my son Jay’s May wedding? And, why am I worrying about a wedding when some people…
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The standards have shifted
Debra Katz believed Christine Blasey Ford “had challenged outdated social norms and had only been able to do so because the #MeToo movement had given her a window, because standards had already shifted,” Jody Kantor and Megan Twohey write in their book She Said. “Things have qualitatively changed,” Katz said. ”The institutions have not changed.…
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The beginning of change
On January 16, 2019, 12 women who had been part of the reporting for Jody Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book She Said gathered in Los Angeles. “This is what everyone in the room, and more people beyond it, now understood,” they wrote. “If the story was not shared, nothing would change. Problems that are not…
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Female-female alliances
When Ashley Judd studied at Harvard, her favorite course was Gender Violence, Law and Social Justice, taught by Diane Rosenfield. The class learned about bonobo apes, “who over the course of evolution have eliminated male sexual coercion in their communities. If a male does get aggressive toward a female bonobo, she lets out a special…
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Think
“Evil comes from a failure to think,” Hannah Arendt wrote in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. “It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there.…
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A snappy new day
“I think I’ll make a snappy new day,” Mr. Rogers once said. That’s good advice. It’s rainy in Dallas, and I am feeling the after-the-holiday blues. The quote is one of the many quotes on my new Mr. Rogers mug, one of my favorite Christmas presents. A photo of Mr. Rogers in his dark coat…
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Judging people
“I … try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said. For Christmas, I received a copy of the book Pocket RBG Wisdom—and some RBG socks…
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Real change
“Generally, change in our society is incremental, I think,” says Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. “Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” For Christmas, I received a copy of the book Pocket RBG Wisdom—and some RBG socks and an RBG mug. –Joy