In the season premiere of 6.5 Minutes with C21, Jamee Pritchard talks with Milwaukee storyteller and community historian Adam Carr about what it means to practice slow care in a world that moves too fast. Reflecting on what he calls our "wounded landscape of care," Carr shares his walking practice, his weekly ritual of eating soup by the lake, and the quiet rebellion of being purposefully inefficient. Through these small acts of attention – walking, listening, pausing – he finds a balance between doing and being, reminding us that care begins when we slow down enough to notice what's around us.

Drawing from his recent Story Cart: Attention workshop, known as Beach Class, Carr reflects on what the water teaches:

"The lake is really good at what it does. We've stopped being good at what we do. We've become distracted, bad animals. We've only made it as animals to where we've gotten by our ability to form community, and we're so distracted we're really terrible at that right now. I thought the lake could just be a little bit of an antidote to the hurried mind."

From his attention experiments to his reflections on storytelling, technology, and collective care, Carr invites listeners to rediscover the art of presence and the possibility of community that emerges when we move at the pace of being human.

Notes:

Guest: Adam Carr — Independent writer, artist, journalist, and community historian based in Milwaukee; former Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Milwaukee Parks Foundation and longtime producer at 88Nine Radio Milwaukee.

Host: Jamee Pritchard, Graduate Fellow, Center for 21st Century Studies (C21)