God has a funny sense of humor. When we bought our house and moved in, two men that I didn’t know were living in the flat below us. I remember Mr. Roberts’ son coming upstairs to ask me for video game cheat codes.  He was a bit intimidating at 6’5” but a gentle man who...Read More

How is your neighborhood’s self esteem?  Mine isn’t great.  When people talk about my neighborhood, most of the time it isn’t because something great happened there.  People think bad about my neighborhood. When you think bad about a neighborhood, do you also think bad of the people who live there? What if people thought more...Read More

Like in many inner cities, the neighborhoods in 53206 experience traumatic events at a predictably higher rate than other places outside of our cities. On this episode of the 53206 Cast, Meg and Alex sit down and talk trauma and how traumatic events can impact children’s ability to be successful in school.  Resources: Electrical fires...Read More

Last night my 10 year old went to the neighborhood park with a few other girls from the block.  As she was gone I couldn’t stop listening for anything out of the ordinary and worrying about her in general.  Last week there was a drive by shooting spraying about 100 rounds for several blocks on...Read More

“Do you have a flashlight or candle I can have?” A woman walking down the street stopped me and asked me this question.  I thought this was a weird request so asked why.  She said that the power and water was shut off in her home so a flashlight would be helpful in getting through...Read More

A 16 year old died a few weeks ago because he crashed a car he stole. His life was valuable. All lives are valuable, but I wonder if he didn’t see the value in his life.   We all have made some dumb decisions, but his dumb decisions shouldn’t equate to him loosing his life....Read More

This weekend we saw three people get arrested. Two of them were Black. Out of the three people, the white man getting arrested was clearly treated more humane then the Black man and woman. I have a lot of feelings around this but as we were discussing it with the kids and as I was...Read More

What would happen if those that needed the most got the most? This is my neighborhood playground. It’s been missing these stairs for at least a year, the bigger slide was burned down before my kids were born and this big panel is missing on it. It’s not nice at all and I rarely see...Read More

I used to worry that I was going to say something wrong when I talked about race.  I used to worry I was going to offend someone when talking about injustices and the poor.  I used to worry that I didn’t know what I was talking about since I am a white privileged woman.   The...Read More

We just got back from vacation and although it was nice, I had this nagging feeling the whole time. I kept thinking about how so many people in my zip code can’t go on vacation. So many can’t go out to eat at a nice restaurant.  Vacations aren’t bad, but the fact that not everyone...Read More