Author Archives: katesinger4

I was watching the documentary, Toni Morrison: the Pieces I Am last night and was feeling incredibly inadequate. Now of course as a writer I would feel that way. I mean she’s Toni Morrison. And the way she writes, the way she approaches the same words we all have access to and then sets themContinue reading “What’s *Your* Call?”

Patrice Khan-Cullors said yesterday that being an African American in the U.S. right now is to be “hunted.” She was speaking on her new book collaboration with asha bandele, When They Call You a Terrorist (Young Adult Edition): A Story of Black Lives Matter and the Power to Change the World. This was part ofContinue reading “No Hunting”

“I’m in a new place.” We say that a lot, right? Like when we are trying to shift our mindset, move past something difficult perhaps. Once accomplished, we truly have traveled to that new place — or space as academics might say. Because academics like to appropriate simple words to substitute for other simple wordsContinue reading “Moving Out”

I’m in a Best Western Hotel in Sterling, Colorado right now. I wasn’t planning on writing this week, but I also didn’t want to let my fans down. Fan. Well, really, I just felt like writing about some things I’ve been thinking on the road, having driven my car for approximately 24 hours these lastContinue reading “Thoughts from Route 80”

Compromise. A bad word in the English lexicon, right? Don’t ever compromise, we are warned as some kind of encouragement to grab for that proverbial brass ring. There’s the famous Compromise of 1850, for example — not a good thing whatsoever. It has been drilled into us that compromise is for those not willing toContinue reading “Tomorrow is Not Promised, So Compromise Today”

I’m moving. Such a funny word, moving, for this thing we do when we pack up our belongings and relocate ourselves. I mean hopefully we’re always moving, in some form or fashion. “Big move,” people will say when they learn I’m heading to the opposite coast. Aren’t they all big? Or don’t they at allContinue reading “Life Might be Like a Box of Chocolates, but the Pandemic is Like Musical Chairs”

Not everything is a debate. Not everything has a conclusion, a summary, a finite judgment. Our need, our desire to wrap things up — usually with a bow of I’m right, you’re wrong — is a contributing factor to the diseased communications we are witnessing at this moment. What happened to exploring together, simply wonderingContinue reading “Not Everything is a Debate”

During the AIDS epidemic I was deep into my 20-something life in New York City. I was an actor, I was in food service; gay men were everywhere. Until suddenly they were not. Little by little my friends and co-workers disappeared. I would walk down 7th Avenue South passing emaciated men, Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions prominentlyContinue reading “Killing Dreams”

Today’s Zoom sermon was entitled, “When Haters Hate.” Now, many of us have encountered haters. Jill Scott said it in her song, “Hate on Me” (which I hum to myself quite often as a kind of mantra): “If I could give you the world/On a silver platter/Would it even matter? You’d still be mad atContinue reading “The Answer is Fear”

In a few weeks I am presenting a brief workshop on oral history for a local public library. Via Zoom. I’m going to explain what the field of oral history is about and show them examples of oral histories and their uses. I’ll also provide some worksheets, like a guide for the process of takingContinue reading “Story Promoter”