Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. ~~Mark Twain
The unfortunate reality is that we simply don’t want to have see this kind of poverty in our own neighborhood. We don’t want to be reminded of how many people are hurting, and how badly they hurt. We are simply afraid to look in the eyes of these people. It makes us uncomfortable, and we want to banish them so we no longer have to see what we have wrought.
Read moreIt’s rare when a city council member from Fort Worth, Texas makes national news, but that’s exactly what happened when Joel Burns recently gave a powerful speech imploring gay teenagers to stand strong in the face of bullying. At a Fort Worth council meeting on Tuesday, Joel Burns, who is openly gay, talked about a number of recent suicides of gay teens due to bullying. Burns had a simple message for them: “it gets better.”
Read moreFront porches, I am convinced, represent such a solid contribution to a reclaiming of community spirit that our government should provide whatever incentives are at its disposal to foster the construction of real front porches.
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