Author: Jessie
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How The Pandemic Has Changed Me
I pay attention to how much toilet paper I use and how many times I have to go during the day. I check my hold list at the library as often as I check my email. I have paid for nothing but rent, insurance, and food since social distancing began. Over 60% of my necessities Read more
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I Am A Millennial
March of 2020 has seen a lot of us glued to our Twitter feeds or 24 hours news cycle, as a pandemic becomes the headline of the day. While a lot of the news coverage has been problematic, one particular type of article has been making the rounds recently due to the yearly celebration of Read more
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Happy Birthday Jackie Robinson
Today would have been Jackie Robinson’s 100th birthday. He passed away almost twenty years before I was born, and yet, I’ve been an obsessive fan all my life. I don’t remember ever not knowing who Jackie Robinson was, thanks to my grandfather who grew up in Brooklyn and shared both his knowledge and love of the Read more
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I Work Where a White Supremacist Might Find Me
“I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent.” – Rabbi A.Y. Kook Today I must speak, once again, in solidarity with other victimized groups across our country. The tragic and heinous events this morning at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh Read more
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I Thought Wisdom Came with Age
Today I watched the senate judiciary committee hear testimony from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the doctor who has accused him of sexual assault, PhD Christine Blasey Ford. There is a lot I could say. There is a lot I have said. I believe Dr. Ford is a hero. I believe Brett Kavanaugh was Read more
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Timing and Age: The New Voices from Parkland Florida
I remember where I was when I heard about Sandy Hook. I was in a cubicle working my first job out of college. When I heard about Parkland it was almost the same, still a cubicle just a different office. I always think of Sandy Hook’s Noah Pozner because he was a twin, like me. Read more
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The Silence of Small Things
When I was in high school I had a teacher who told me that the swastika was not a symbol I should find upsetting. When my sister was in middle school a boy drew a swastika on her notebook and the principal said that the boy didn’t mean anything by it and it was only Read more
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The Ten Plagues: Science Not Silence
A week ago today I was still refraining from eating most carbs, as it was the Jewish holiday of Passover. A holiday where Jews across the world come together to remember the exodus from Egypt. One of the better known elements of the Passover seder, the holiday’s ritual meal, is the recitation of the 10 Read more
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Cultural Consciousness
It’s only Wednesday. But it’s already been a hard week. A bomb threat was called into the JCC in my community. And today I went on strike for International Women’s Day. These two events may seem unrelated, except in timing, but they have become combined in my mind. This week there were many people in Read more
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In Broad Daylight: What I Believe
This time it is my city. This time it is my community. This time it is my people. This time it is not my family. I am lucky it is not my family, as I was lucky when it happened in St. Louis, and Philadelphia, and not here. But I am writing now when perhaps Read more