It’s incredibly fitting that our cover this edition in print included a sign that reads: stop ahead. It’s important to note you don’t stop at a stop sign forever, it’s a momentary pause. Whether to think or to ensure your safety and sustainability, it’s a pause before you continue going down the road you were on (or perhaps you’re turning at that stop sign and trying something new?) .
It’s apt because our print edition needs to pause.
I write to you kindled by the love of our community and the Palestinian people.
I am tired of all the caveats, the conditional statements, the analogies. I believe we are suffering from a crisis of imagination in a situation that actually does not require much. It may sound counterintuitive amidst a discourse that encourages you to put yourself in Palestinians’ shoes, asks you to imagine if it was your family or friends or neighbors who were being slaughtered, would have you use a thousand “what if” statements instead of looking at what’s really going on. It’s a cheap liberal tactic to get us to care about others only in terms of how much we care about ourselves and our loved ones.
I don’t say this to be dramatic, but 2023 has been the SICKEST season of my life ever. To be clear, I don’t mean that in the “that’s sick, bro” way, I mean that in the cold and flu season way and in the bronchitis/COVID-19/constant earache way.
On a slightly more uplifting and inspirational note, being sick on repeat did uncover a fun and invigorating experience — The Newsroom. Not ours, the fictional broadcast newsroom from the HBO original The Newsroom.
In the Roman pantheon, Minerva was the goddess of wisdom, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade and strategy. Gracious! It boggles the mind that even a goddess could possibly incorporate so many sterling qualities. As it happens, there is a human being who comes close. She lives at Taliesin – “Shining Brow”, named for the famous Welsh bard – and is in her 99th year. The years have robbed her of easy mobility but left her mind intact. Still sharp as a razor, she is almost the last of the apprentices who knew Frank Lloyd Wright personally, as he gathered around himself what was called the Fellowship, the brainchild of the last Mrs. Wright. It was composed mostly of very young people who subscribed to his philosophy of Natural Architecture. They paid to come learn how to practice it and be a part of the close-knit, sometimes competitive circle that basked in his aura, sat at his knee.
Valley Sentinel lends platform in print and online to foster community ideas
We are pleased to announce the (soft) launch of Valley Sentinel’s Impulse Initiative. It has always been our goal to build community and over the past year plus we’ve been talking to area residents every day about their wants, hopes and dreams for the community. We’ve asked many times in print what ideas you had for the community and how we go about doing them. This initiative is a culmination of those things.
Discovering yourself in any space can pose challenges for someone. Whether it be your career choice or becoming the person you were born to be, figuring yourself out is a long journey. This is also a journey that never ends. Don’t expect to wake up one day, and suddenly be your completed self. You should be growing and changing every single day.
If you follow Valley Sentinel on social media, over the last few weeks you’ve seen that we have been struggling with inconsistencies and missteps with the printing company that prints the paper each week.
It’s hard to believe that Valley Sentinel has been publishing since October— that’s nearly six months. I say that it’s hard to believe because for me the weeks have flown by and I feel like we have come so far in this endeavor.
As covered in the March 11 River Valley School Board story, board member Sara Young proposed an ‘Equity and Understanding Work Group’, composed of teachers, administrators, a community representative and a parent, who would be charged with admirable equity, diversity and inclusion tasks, including proposing district policy.
To think that we have lived with COVID-19 impacting our lives for over a year now still hasn’t hit me. I’m sure most of us have seen the internet memes about how we’re still processing last March while this March has already started, but for me, it’s kind of true.