The morning light filters in through wavy glass windows in a little nook off a farmhouse dining room. I sit across from Christie Purifoy, watching a squirrel foraging outside in the winter-bitten grass, and it strikes me that the drab brown of mid-March is a perfect backdrop for our conversation about placemaking–a visual reminder that […]
honoring women
Why Didn’t You Call Me?
I never need to call #SQUAD in a crisis. They’re already here. Every single time life takes me to the gates of hell, I remember that I haven’t yet determined effectively how to clone myself. Each time, I thank God for Grace, since I never need to know how to do it all. This is […]
When Hospitality is Radical
She pauses, the doorbell’s eerie reverberations beat a note of panic through her veins. She wipes her hands on the linen apron wrapped around her and hurries to tell them to hide themselves in the basement or attic. She breathes deeply, realizes this is the moment she and her husband have talked about, […]
Girls Can Do All the Things
Juliette Gordon Low founded the girl scouts because she had been hanging out with the Boy Scouts founder and thought, well, why the heck weren’t girls encouraged to go hike in the woods, build a fire, swim? She liked all of that stuff. When people think about women who have made a major impact on […]
A Letter to My Muslim Sisters
I don’t remember your name. I do remember your laughter, your patience when you helped me with my pronunciation of sounds that are difficult for the English-trained tongue. I never saw you again after our college Arabic class ended but the look in your eyes has remained with me all these years—the fear and sorrow […]
Minnie Vautrin: Staring Down Death
“The city is strangely silent—after all the bombing and shelling. Three dangers are past—that of looting [Chinese] soldiers, bombing from aeroplanes and shelling from big guns, but the fourth is still before us—our fate at the hands of a victorious army. People are very anxious tonight and do not know what to expect . . […]
Female Fingerprints Are All Over Global Cities: Will we See them?
Night came swiftly as the cool air of Autumn descended upon the plantation. Fog covered the great poplar tree so that just the swish of her petticoat was visible as she removed the encoded message, replacing it with another. She knew that this station, on her family’s farm outside of the capital, was their most […]