Sidewalks

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace on December 10, 1964 in Oslo. Full speech here: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance_en.html

I recently encountered excerpts from the speech underneath the waterfall at the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. I thought it was worth sharing on this Martin Luther King Day.

My Grandpa Sol passed away earlier this week, so I'm re-sharing this episode...

The audio comes from a shoddy 2012 iPhone recording I made when home for my last summer before college graduation. I was trying to interview people about how the Bay Area changed in their lifetime. It was generally a dumb idea for a project—you can't really describe a place beyond your own experience of it—but Grandpa Sol sat patiently through my fumbling questions. Even though I hadn't set up the interview to ask for advice, he overflowed with it, and stuck pearls of wisdom wherever he could in his answers. This is a small selection of those pearls.

“Lose a hero. Befriend a cat.”

by Tobias Butler

Sorry that Sidewalks has been pretty inactive in the past few months. I’ve been busy, but I’ve also felt really confused about the show’s purpose in an uncertain world. As I record this, it’s the week Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, and everything about this world feels even less certain.

From the beginning, Sidewalks has been about experimenting in short little bursts with what radio can be. What does it mean to listen? What does it mean to capture a moment? When I started the show I wanted to come up with a new answer to those questions every single day somewhat randomly with whatever felt right.

Right now, I feel like everything we do needs purpose. There are too many forces fighting for hate, greed, and ignorance. We need to consciously and actively work for love, generosity, and wisdom. Sometimes that might mean making things to warm the heart, and sometimes that might mean facing ugly truths. It also, for now, means letting go of the super-short restriction of this show when something longer seems more appropriate.

Anyway, on Wednesday night as I was waiting for a flight out of Reagan International Airport. I called my grandparents, whom I love, and who are good-hearted people. They also watch Fox News, listen to conservative radio, and voted for a man who has insulted and threatened every ideal I care about. I asked them if I could record the conversation, and that’s this episode.

I should say that this is just one conversation between a family of people who are not as directly threatened by this election. This conversation has three privileged white people, myself included, clumsily and ignorantly discussing race from a position of safety.

I’m putting it here, not to engender sympathy for the more troubling things my grandparents say, nor to demonize them either. I’m also not putting this here with any kind of presumption that I know what I’m talking about or have any sense of what we should be doing now. I put this up here because after asking and answering 60 times about why we listen and why we capture moments, I have some answers to pencil in for now:

We listen to understand each other and ourselves.

We capture moments to learn from them as we move forward.

Sunrise by sidewalks

Telling It Like It Is: On terrible truths & beautiful truths.

*Produced by Molly Jean Bennet @mollyjeanbennett / @mollyjeanbee

Adapted from an essay Molly wrote on Medium.

Inspired by Michael Schmeltzer @mschmeltzer01

And by Donna Minkowitz @minkowitz

Photo by Molly Jean Bennett

Gettysburg by sidewalks

Hello, don't forget your spirit.

I turned 25 last week.

A turtle and a toad go for a walk.