Questions of Civic Proportions: How does history help us find ourselves in the space between the past and the future?

My Fellow Citizens, Listen, the United States has come unstuck in time. You might recognize this line from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, but it matches the landscape of my mind today.  U.S. Senator Ted Cruz provoked this feeling of coming unstuck or unmoored. He represents me in the Senate,

My 2020 Reading List: It's Short and Has Issues

My 2020 Reading List is Short and Complicated A difficult year made my reading goals impossible so I asked a different question. This is the season to post your 2020 reading list. If there’s one habit that was made for COVID-life, it’s reading. Socially distant by design and

Questions of Civic Proportions: When You Look Back at2020, What Do You See?

My Fellow Citizens, For 2020, the end-of-year lists are holding space for the things that didn’t happen. That approach seems inevitable, of course, with vacations postponed, weddings rescheduled, and holidays downsized. The lists focus on looking to the past, but this exercise of looking closely at what didn’t

Questions of Civic Proportions: Can We Put American Democracy Back Together Again?

My Fellow Citizens, The answer is equal parts art and democracy, but we have everything we need. The trending stories on social media continue to focus on broken norms and lost time, but there’s another story to talk about in this last month of 2020. What if the year

Questions of Civic Proportions: Have You Seen the Good Hues?

Welcome to Good Hues! This is our remedy for the doom scrolling that accompanied the following of election results and court challenges. With that political moment behind us (mostly), it’s time to turn our attention to complex questions again. As I struggled with writing this newsletter while also following