Brown Paper Press

🎉THIS SATURDAY!🎉 Maxine has been planning this march for the last three months (with zero help from me, by the way), and it’s going to be epic. Please stop by if you can. In addition to featuring some really powerful speeches (by children), a poster-making booth, and an art auction (whose funds will go directly to the Malala Fund, ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the Trevor Project (among others), Cubberley School’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee will be providing food & drinks! 😍 Oh, and Max will be selling copies of her new book, “How to Be a Feminist (For Little Girls & Boys)” (!!) Maxine, please never stop being the person you were born to be. You inspire me every day, child. ✊🏼

Pretty soon these four pictures will hang on the back wall of the State Theater in my hometown of Mound City, Missouri. They are my great-great grandfather (Henry), my great-grandfather (Charles), my grandfather (Bruce) and my father (James) — all presidents of the Exchange Bank, which Henry founded in 1895. Along with a donation made to the State Theater, which my dad loved so much (and is the reason Charlie & I first met 26 years ago!), the pictures are part of a memoriam to the bank, the men who led it and the community it served for 112 years. When the Great Depression hit, seven banks went under, but the Exchange Bank remained, somehow surviving a run on the bank that was unlike the famous scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Dad loved to tell that story; what I would give to hear him tell it again. Happy Father’s Day to all dads, here and gone, who do (and did) so much for so many.

Last day of Grade 7!