The Hammer Times

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  • The Road to Racial Empathy Runs Through the Comedy Club

    Talking about race is hard, and the conversation is often stifled by White guilt, the fear of making a fatal misstep in language, or the overwhelming weight of historical suffering. White people, even those in a group of friends, can have wildly disparate experiences with race themselves, making dialogue fragile. The only way forward is Read more

  • Democratic Knowledge

    One principle that delighted me about early Amazon, was its commitment to making knowledge democratic. Anyone, no matter their title, could ask anything of someone else, regardless of their title. In the early days, when Amazon was small, the knowledge hierarchy was flat, and knowledge that was role-specific was taught. The VP of Finance opened Read more

  • Coast to Coast – Day 1

    Portland to Meridian, Idaho Unexpected – One rest stop had a pen for horses in addition to the expected area for dogs. Beautiful – Snow capped mountains; Columbia River shimmering in the sunlight Ziggy – Read more

  • The Portland Years

    Part 2: Dedicated to Friends of the Body Have you ever started a small project, that grew into a bigger project, and after a while it seemed like the project became your life? That’s how energy or body work started for me, with a hoped for quick fix for anxiety morphing into a seven year Read more

  • The Portland Years

    Part One I lost my faith in God in my twenties, aware at the time that it was slipping away, but helpless to do anything to stop it. When I sought support from a range of pastors, they all said the same thing. The fact that I was talking to them about losing my faith Read more

  • Kintsugi – Beautiful Repair

    Recently a friend and I played with the idea of Kintsugi —the Japanese practice of mending broken pottery with gold, as a radical metaphor for mending our own broken shards. Our human tendency is to discard or completely bury the broken parts of ourselves. We can’t imagine that they might be of any value, let Read more

  • Stained Glass Church Windows

    I love to watch the light flow through stained glass. Sometimes it rushes in, illuminating everything at once. Other times, it enters slowly, quietly, as if there’s a sleeping baby in the room. There’s a sweet warmth as the sunlight kisses each color pane awake. Like people, some colors awaken quickly. Yellow pops up, smiling, immediately radiant. Others, like orange and Read more

  • Kim Brown

    Oh, my, what an absolute treat my sister and I had this week! We connected with Kim Brown, who was one of our babysitters when we were in elementary school. It’s been decades since either of us had been in touch with her, losing track across all of our multiple moves. I googled her on Read more

  • ‘72 Plymouth Valiant, Two U-Hauls and Mom

    Mom likes to remind us that, “Can’t never did anything.” A farm girl from northwest Iowa, her spirit of adventure and work ethic combined typically translate into, “Sure, we can.” That can do spirit has translated into a lifetime of joint projects, many involving moving large furniture X to place Y — I inherited my Read more

  • Noise-Canceling Headphones V 2.0

    I have a pair of Bose external noise-canceling headphones. I would like a pair of internal noise-canceling headphones to block out the chatter inside my head. They could cancel out the intrusive thoughts. Or, muffle the snide remarks of the doubting Thomases gossiping from the corners of my mind. How magical it would be! Nattering Read more