I recently spent a week with family in the Town of Ashland, Oregon. Ashland lies at the very southern end of the state, nestled between the Siskiyou and Cascade Mountain ranges where the two intersect. The centerpiece of the Town is Lithia Park, which unfolds from the town plaza up into the foothills. Lithia Park …
Author Archives: Palma Joy Strand
The “We the People” Mosaic
For a long time, I’ve been drawn to mosaics. I remember making a mosaic as an art project when I was a Camp Fire Girl – pushing tiny smooth stones into wet mortar held by the top of a cottage cheese carton. (These tops used to be metal rather than plastic!) There was – there …
As we hurtle toward the election, remember this…
At the end of September, I drove up to Lake Superior for a long weekend. The Ojibway/Anishinaabe, who lived in the region long before Europeans arrived, call it Gichigami. It is monumental, the lake cut and filled with water by volcanic action followed by glaciers millions of years ago. Along Superior’s southeastern shore, the cliffs of the Pictured …
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Our Differences Are Magic
This column originally appeared in The Fulcrum. The definition of “civity” is “a culture of deliberately engaging in relationships of respect and empathy with others who are different.” The goal of Civity, the organization I co-founded, is building a civity culture. So why the emphasis on others, on people who are different? The short answer …
Walking the Civity Walk
Photo by Daniel Frese on Pexels.com I love to walk. Walking was how I mostly got around when I was a kid, and I guess it stuck with me. It’s not just good exercise, and it’s more than a way to get from one place to another. For me it’s also a way to let …
A Quilt Meditation on Democracy, Social Connection, & Civity
Fall has arrived here in Milwaukee, and the quilts have come out of the closet. My mother took up quilting later in life, and I have several of her quilts. One that is made of scraps from many different other projects is especially dear to me. I can identify dresses she wore and shirts she …
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A DIYCivity Wave
One of the primary projects at Civity over the past year has been developing Do-It-Yourself pages on our website. And we are thrilled to announce that DIYcivity is now up and available! We invite you to peruse, browse, take a gander at one of the resources linked to – and take Civity out for a spin. …
A Path Out of Polarization: The Strengthening Democracy Challenge and the Civity Storytelling Intervention
This article originally appeared on the listserv Beyond Intractability on June 12, 2023. Political polarization seems to be everywhere – in Washington DC, at statehouses around the nation, and in school board and other local government meetings. It has come to appear so entrenched as to be a permanent part of the national landscape, inevitable …
Democracy’s Civity Foundation
I live in an old house – more than 100 years old. The other day I was down in my basement with a plumber looking at replacing some cast iron pipes that have reached the end of their time. It’s never fun to be faced with significant home repairs, but at the same time I …
Head to Heart
Some years ago, a common bumper sticker offered this advice: “Think Globally. Act Locally.” Never has this advice been more salient. Climate change is global, yet its effects are experienced locally. Some communities are hit by harder and more frequent storms, or drought, or wildfire. Some communities are seeing their fossil-fuel-based economies falter as energy …