The Circle Project

Drop the Façade (part one)

When read metaphorically, stories can be an ancestral road map to help us know the way off the Vicious Circle or, in this case, how to stay on it:

It is not uncommon to begin this story in the middle: Parcival was lost. He was trying to find his way home. He had just officially become a knight! In truth, he was actually more a fool, more a trickster than knight, but it was a knight that he wanted to become and so it was a knight that he became! He had trained with a master teacher after an auspicious beginning. And now that he’d achieved his diploma, he was trying to find his way home. He wanted to show his mother that he had become something great!

Our oddness counts

“Our oddness counts for more than our normality. Our strangeness connects us to others more than our conventionality, and when we identify with people it is because we recognize the otherness we share with them.” -Declan Donnellan, The Actor and The Target

Daren spends a lot of time with his two sons. He’s a good dad and wants his boys to be successful in life. The majority of his time with the boys is, in one way or another, teaching them to stand out, to excel, to be independent. The boys go to the batting cages several times a week to practice their swings. “Look at how they connect with that ball! These boys are going to college on a scholarship,” Daren proudly proclaims. His sons are 5 and 7 years old.

Both boys play on little league teams with boys whose fathers also take them to the cages. “The competition is intense,” Daren tells me.

See and be seen

In the days following hurricane Katrina, Dr. Sue Eskridge did what all good teachers do; she used world events to engage her students in something real, transforming her class in Children’s Literature at the Benerd School of Education at the University of the Pacific into the Katrina Book Project. She charged her students with the task of writing, illustrating and producing books for children from the hurricane zone to help them cope with the loss of families, homes, pets, and the life they once knew. In addition, the class invited other organizations, authors, illustrators, and actors from all over the country to contribute to the project. The books and recordings will be bundled with food and medical supplies and delivered to the children over the next several months.

Circling the issue of diversity

When people meet my friend Dan, they often turn away from him, act like they’re suddenly busy with lint in their pockets…anything to avoid looking at him or shaking hands with him.

Why this almost universal response?