Age: 17 Location: Charlotte, NC Kate Lewin first learned about climate change in seventh grade. She remembers reading about rising sea levels and polar icecaps melting and feeling alarmed. Her concern wasn’t just about the environment. It was also distressing to her that more people were not sharing her fear about global warming and the climate crisis and her sense …
Age: 27 Location: San Francisco, CA The things that first appealed to Sara Lezin about working in a burn unit were not, in fact, what made her stay. Armed with a BSN/RN from Duke University, Sara jumped at the chance to serve as a nurse at the Jaycee Burn Center at UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill (“I …
Location: Houston, Texas I feel so humbled and grateful to be a cancer survivor. And the fact that I not only get to be here to celebrate life’s moments big (Noah and Leigha’s upcoming wedding) and small (a Saturday morning walk with David) is something I do not take for granted. So just surviving – when so …
The most appalling and distressing takeaway from Just Mercy, the excellent book that has been on my night table for ages that I finally read last month, is the fact that the real-life cases and injustices it describes did not take place that long ago. And even more appalling is that many of the underlying inequities and …
Age: 49 Location: Charlotte, North Carolina Jen and her husband, Bill, first joined the Charlotte, North Carolina affiliate of Social Venture Partners in 2010. They wanted to give back to the community and, as Jen puts it, “volunteer on a strategic level.” Social Venture Partners (SVP) is a collaborative network of engaged donors who pool their resources to invest …
Age: 52 Location: Charlotte, North Carolina Whenever my kids suffered the indignities of being rebuffed by a friend group or excluded from a social event, I would tell them that being popular is overrated. It is much better to have a close circle of true friends than an impressive but ultimately hollow number of followers. And my …
I love eating out. I am so fortunate that I often get to experience the thrill of discovering a new restaurant, either at home or on the road, when you know from the first bite that you are in good culinary hands and you can just relax and enjoy the meal. I appreciate the emphasis so many …
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee I met a lovely person at a coffee shop in Knoxville on my road trip last week. As a non-binary trans person, they (preferred pronoun) had finally found peace and freedom to be their true self and they were eager to share their journey. This lovely person had been through a lot, with deeply religious …
Ages: 60 and 61 Location: Monona, WI Lynda Finn never considered herself particularly artistic or creative. She would sometimes wonder, when admiring someone else’s work of art or craft project, if she could do that too, but that was as far as it went. Emily Jones, Lynda’s wife, has always had crocheting as her form of artistic expression (“When …
Location: Charlotte, North Carolina David and I lucked into tickets to see My Fair Lady last night. My friend Jim let me know that our mutual friend Kevin was in the national tour that was currently playing in Charlotte. He put us in touch with each other and the starts aligned just right because David and I …