There was a spell of a few weeks last spring when I felt a theme in random sightings—Kindness. First, I viewed the animated film based on the charming book by Charlie Mackesy which I loved, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. That book gently presents profound ideas, beginning with the mole asking the boy, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” After thinking a moment, the boy replies, not firefighter or doctor, but “Kind.” Ahhh 

The children at a preschool/daycare near my home are protected by a chain link fence. They have used those largish, red plastic cups pushed through the holes in the fence to spell out words, like Create Kindness…Each time I drive by I appreciate their message to the neighborhood and hope that they are treated that way each day and develop empathy and kindness that will last a lifetime.

This program can now be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h56hwOr-j0U&t=49s

Meet and greet - 12:30 p.m. Community news is disappearing at an alarming rate. Join us Sunday, November 17, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. at Ramsey County Library Roseville, 2180 Hamline Avenue N., for a panel discussion to hear about concerns, work being done to make news available, and options for news in the future. The panel will include Ben Toff, UMN Hubbard School of Journalism, Nora Hertel, from Project Optimist, and Max Nester from the Minnesota Reformer. Co-sponsored with Ramsey County Library Roseville and Do Good Roseville.

“…as painful as foodflation is, it may just be an early ripple of the kind of disruption to the food system that’s coming.”

Eliza Barclay, Introducing the New York Times series, “What to Eat on a Burning Planet”

This summer, while I was thinking about hunger from other directions, I read an op-ed by David Wallace-Wells in the New York Times, “Food as You Know It Is About to Change.” (July 28, 2024) This bombshell of

“If you have not shown young people how to vote by taking them with you to the polls, do not ask them to show you how to do something on your phone.”

Angie Maxwell, “Carry a Big Stick,”

Gravy, No. 90 Winter 2024.

Artwork: "Hunger" by Kateryna Bortsova

Food. It is fundamental to life. And yet, adequate food can still be controversial. Food production and distribution are political on many fronts, but they need not be partisan. 

“I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand!” Linus, in a Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schultz

We hear and see the word famine a lot these days, and when its use for one country or region fades from the news, it is often not because those people are now well fed, but merely because another country or region has supplanted it in the public eye. Risk of famine in Afghanistan after the US pullout and Taliban takeover. Famine in Sudan during civil war. Famine in Gaza. How many people in how many other places do I just never hear about? No one likes being hungry, but starvation is orders of magnitude
worse, and famine means that whole populations are suffering.

But what prompts me to write is not the simple horrifying fact that millions of people around the globe are in dire straits.

Supporting “The Decline of Local News and Its Impact on Democracy,” a two-part program will begin with showing the award-winning film, Stripped for Parts:  American Journalism on the Brink on Thursday, September 12 at Ramsey County Library – Roseville.

Film will begin at 5:45 p.m. with a meet and greet beginning at 5:00 p.m. Co-sponsors: Do Good Roseville and Ramsey County Library - Roseville.

VOTE411 is the League’s one-stop shop for all things voting-related, for the General Election. This year, over 7,000 candidates across the state were invited to participate. Nonpartisan and objective, VOTE411 provides unbiased candidate information through the bi-lingual voter guide, allowing you to compare candidates in their own words, through their responses to League-provided questions.

Decision-making can be a very personal thing. And yet listing pros and cons and making a choice which seems to be the most “rational,” but which feels uncomfortable, will often prove to be a decision one regrets. Also, our gut can be loaded with unidentified biases that will lead us astray, or with a flimsy preference of the moment, that may lead to regret in the longer term when a decision still binds us. How should we think about decision-making? What should we do when our gut is not helpful, and our brain is overwhelmed?

“Persuasion, I suggest, should not be understood as an exercise in argument and counter-argument, as if it were a tennis match—won by hitting shots an adversary is unable to return. Instead, persuasion is best thought of as a process of making or finding space for a given outcome in another person’s world view. Rather than looking for arguments an adversary will be unable to deny, we should look for arguments an adversary will be able to affirm. This in turn depends upon developing as full and nuanced as possible an understanding of that adversary’s view of the world. Thus persuasion depends upon imagination, and in particular upon a certain imaginative capacity to see the world from the perspective of others. Reading may be the best way to develop that capacity.”

One morning as I was mulling over several ideas for Windows and Mirrors, my radio was ever-tuned to MPR. There was Angela Davis talking to students and teachers at Roseville Area High School (RAHS) about Ethnic Studies! There it was.

During the 2023 legislative session a law was passed incorporating ethnic studies into social studies curriculum for Minnesota classrooms K-12. This must be done by the 2026-27 school year. The scaffold for this is still being developed by the Minnesota Department of Education, with curriculum tailored to the age and developmental needs of students. Some districts, including Roseville and St. Paul, are already offering courses in high school. My home district, ISD 622 will have a course beginning next year.