Note to readers: the following is the winter version of this poem. What if the statue in Springfield Park could speak to us now? A Mother’s Plea Help me down from this pedestal, would you? And bring my children with me. Toss away this old book and let me trade my granite perch for aContinue reading “A Mother’s Plea”
Tag Archives: Jacksonville
Of Ax Handles and Olive Branches
In Springfield Park in Jacksonville, there is a statue. Known as a “Monument to the Women of the Confederacy,” it depicts a white woman and her two children. Like many confederate memorials erected in the post-Reconstruction era, like many schools named for confederate generals in the Jim Crow era, sculptor Allen G. Newman’s Springfield remnantContinue reading “Of Ax Handles and Olive Branches”
Thus far on the way
I’m no expert on being “woke.” I’m still working on my anti-racism. But I’ve been on this earth for 56 years and I know one thing: nothing’s going to “cancel” me. As white people stumble forward in our conversations about race, we depend on our friends—Black people, indigenous people, people of color—to get usContinue reading “Thus far on the way”
Real leaders cultivate hope, not fear.
September 16, 2020 Here’s my response, as published in today’s Florida Times Union, to Rep. Jason Fischer’s race-baiting, fearmongering editorial, to which I will not provide a link. Column: Fischer unfairly linked protesters with rioters In his Sunday guest column, Rep. Jason Fischer’s writes “Pandering to the woke will not protect you”—just the kind ofContinue reading “Real leaders cultivate hope, not fear.”
Ode to a Fallen Comrade
The death of yet one more print publication is a heartbreak grieved amid much larger, overarching tragedies. Folio Weekly, however—Jacksonville’s alternative weekly magazine—was more than just any publication. She was the written repository of progressive souls in an ostensibly conservative, Southern city. To her progressive-minded readers, writers, and workers, the loss of Folio Weekly isContinue reading “Ode to a Fallen Comrade”
Hello, Again.
For those of you who have read my pieces in Folio Weekly, The Florida Times Union, Jacksonville Magazine, Florida Politics Online, or any other publication syndicating my work, I’ve missed you. More than ten years ago, Folio Weekly’s then-editor Anne Schindler gave me my first shot at professional free-lance journalism. A significant portion of myContinue reading “Hello, Again.”