New ways

WE ARE ALWAYS LEARNING. Newsy things. Cool stuff. And a fair bit that’s totally wrong.

My aunt in Des Moines (a preschool teacher, which makes anything she says seem true and also positive and life-affirming) said she knew of a student named “Le-a,” pronounced with the punctuation as “Ledasha.” This killed me. Until I learned it was most likely made up as a sneering judgment of Black Names. There’s a great story in Freakonomics Movie about the “distinct bifurcation” of black from white naming styles, which concludes that these persistent differences show how huge our class and cultural divisions are. Any “post-racial” awakening is still on hold, even in my well-meaning family.

Meanwhile, my sister Allie taught us a new greeting: Blow It Up and Talk About It. It’s undeniably right (takes some practice, tho).

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