Category: thought fodder

ideas observations thought fodder

It’s Not a Distraction; It’s a Demonstration of Our Values

By Mary Warner | by Mary Warner

In the latest dust-up between President Trump and the NFL, in which the President tweeted that NFL players who took a knee to protest racism during the National Anthem should be fired for being unpatriotic, there are people on social media telling us not to be distracted. They are indicating this is an issue manufactured by the President to sidetrack us from the destruction of the Affordable Care Act and the Russian investigation. Such comments…

Continue reading

ideas observations thought fodder

Bring on the Purple to Bring Us Together

By Mary Warner | by Mary Warner

Donald Trump, who can’t seem to get over the fact that he won the election, retweeted a 2016 election map that shows pretty much the entire country in red, emphasizing the precincts that gave him a majority of their votes. The map purposely attempts to display that “everyone” in vast swaths of the United States voted for him. Unfortunately, this map lacks any nuance. Even in my county, which provided over 70% of its votes…

Continue reading

observations thought fodder

One Source of Our Blindess

By Mary Warner | by Mary Warner

“Nonprofit With Balls” is a blog that’s all that and a bag of chips (with some unicorns thrown in for good measure). Its posts, written by Vu Le (pronounced “voo lay” – because I know how to read an About page), offer a typically irreverent, but uncomfortably honest look at the nonprofit world. Vu’s humor makes the uncomfieness easier to bear. (And, frankly, darn it, we do-gooders are not the dour types that we are…

Continue reading

design ideas observations reading thought fodder

Feeling a Tad More Eco-Friendly

By Mary Warner | by Mary Warner

I’m reading a book called “What We Leave Behind” by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay. It is depressing as hell. It explains how people are murdering the earth, which we absolutely are, but hasn’t offered any solutions thus far. I’m only part-way through the book and am hoping there will be some concrete suggestions that help me feel as though I can do something. Being left in a hopeless morass by a book is no…

Continue reading

Letters to Legislators thought fodder writing

Letters to Legislators: Disable the Mute Button

By Mary Warner | by Mary Warner

When I was a kid, my mom used to laugh at me for yelling at the TV whenever I saw injustice playing out on shows. Yes, most of these shows were fiction, but I simply couldn’t stand the unfairness. One of my kindred spirits, a woman who could not tolerate injustice, is Eleanor Roosevelt. She died before I was born, but we share the same birthday, October 11, and I wrote a research paper on…

Continue reading