Jewels for the thirsty: June 2020

Friday, June 26, 2020

Senses working overtime #268

1 Little Frimley Kitchen's donuts

The theme for this week is that prince of foods...the donut. Yes, just like a hamburger is the perfect meal, donuts are the perfect snack. So - find yourself one from the many on sale at Little Frimley Kitchen, order your favourite coffee, sit back, relax, check the latest football news from The Guardian on your phone, and enjoy!

2 Donut King

As great as LFK is, Donut King in North Hollywood, where Samantha used to live, is donut heaven. I realise it's a chain (there is even a Donut King in Palmerston North) but the North Hollywood one is special!

3 Mmmmmm

Photo by Kobby Mendez on Unsplash

4 Mmmmmm too

5 Donuts

Overtime: Fascination

It all began in the mid sixties, on a family trip to Sydney, and specifically down an underground ramp with lots of shops, on the way to get a train on the City Circle line, as my brother and I peered through a shop front window and watched the donuts being made.

We walked down the ramp, a little hyperactive, and excited to be in alien surroundings: an underground bitumen ramp going under the street, with shops along the sides, and with the prospect of going on a train. Those were all new sensations for us.

Underground smells are unique (and just like the London Underground smells). As we walked downhill down the ramp, surrounded by those new smells, we spied a shop window with a machine making donuts behind it. I distinctly remember watching the donuts being made in the frying section, being turned over and then tavelling on a little conveyor belt to drop into a cinnamon bath.

Mum and dad would purchase some donuts for us all and we would eat them from the brown paper bag as we walked to the train, the excess cinnamon dropping to the bottom of the bags.

Whenever I have a donut from Little Frimley Kitchen, I get a happy flashback to those innocent days in Sydney.

Friday, June 19, 2020

Senses working overtime #267

1 Being a dad

2 Poetry Corner

little prayer

let ruin end here

let him find honey
where there was once a slaughter

let him enter the lion’s cage
& find a field of lilacs

let this be the healing
& if not let it be

Danez Smith (2017)

3 The end of Tourism?

Rome is empty

4 The five mental states that hold us back in life

5 Rebranding racial stereotypes

Overtime: Sweet Caroline

Friday, June 12, 2020

Senses working overtime #266

1 Burnout

Seems this is the current topic around the media (and our workplace). Here are some pointers to relieve the stress.

2 Poetry Corner

Poem for My Love

How do we come to be here next to each other
in the night
Where are the stars that show us to our love
inevitable
Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness
and the rain
falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh
the black men waiting on the corner for
a womanly mirage
I am amazed by peace
It is this possibility of you
asleep
and breathing in the quiet air

June Jordan

3 LeBron James

...has used his celebrity status to form a proactive group to promote voter rights. Could this, and other initiatives happening world wide, finally address privilege and racism effectively? It's starting to feel like it's possible.

4 American cops - the stats

American police shoot, kill and imprison more people than other developed countries. Here's the data.

5 Media responses to protests

Overtime: Seth Godin's stance: Black Lives Matter.

The systemic, cruel and depersonalizing history of Black subjugation in my county has and continues to be a crime against humanity. It’s based on a desire to maintain power and false assumptions about how the world works and how it can work. It’s been amplified by systems that were often put in place with mal-intent, or sometimes simply because they felt expedient. It’s painful to look at and far more painful to be part of or to admit that exists in the things that we build.

We can’t permit the murder of people because of the color of their skin. Institutional racism is real, it’s often invisible, and it’s pernicious.

And White Supremacy is a loaded term precisely because the systems and their terrible effects are very real, widespread and run deep.

The benefit of the doubt is powerful indeed, and that benefit has helped me and people like me for generations. I’m ashamed of how we got here, and want to more powerfully contribute and model how we can get better, together.

It doesn’t matter how many blog posts about justice I write, or how clear I try to be about the power of diversity in our organizations. Not if I’m leaving doubt about the scale and enormity of the suffering that people feel, not just themselves, but for their parents before them and for the kids that will follow them.

It’s easier to look away and to decide that this is a problem for someone else. It’s actually a problem for all of us. And problems have solutions and problems are uncomfortable.