We always clearly label Opinion Columns to ensure they won’t be mistaken for news. Our Op-Ed writers apply their professional expertise to our community’s unique challenges to promote innovative thought and encourage healthy discourse.
In this Opinion column, Salter allows us to follow along as CalTrans Planner Christina Prosperi sorts through a wealth of professional experience to apply for a new job. Here's how Christina learned to master her narrative as she navigated the job search process.
"People with severe limitations and obstacles in their lives, with hardships and pain, have as much to teach and to give the world as people with signs of success. In some ways, the people who persevere in those kinds of circumstances teach us the most important things about, love, perseverance, and courage. There are no prerequisites to being a loving person."
In this Opinion column, neuroscientist Dr. Irene Salter gives us a glimpse of the inner world of an anonymous public servant who feels like her days are often wasted on a million unimportant tasks. Salter coaches her to trade in day-to-day control for greater peace of mind in a process that will shift her systems and identity to allow her to stop playing small and start playing big.
"At the heart of why I do what I do is my mom. She was 14 when she had me and she got no services. She tried to ask for help, but she was underserved and later got arrested for stealing food. She was put in a juvenile detention center and then she had me. I would say for the first 10 years of my life, we slept on couches. I remember falling asleep in my mom's VW Bug and counting all the little holes in the fabric of the roof, just like I was counting sheep. I was cold, I was hungry, and it was hard on my mother to hear her children cry."
In this essay, Johnson reflects on the additional burdens the local justice system has inflicted on her already challenging circumstances. It’s only her strong support net, she argues, that keeps the system from unfairly labeling her as a criminal, driving her further into society’s margins.
I love people. I even love the people that don't love me back—the haters, the folks that would rather we were all dead, to be honest. They're human beings, too, and I hold no malice against them. I think they're just misinformed and misdirected. People are afraid of what they don't understand."
We're committed to shining a light on GOOD in Shasta County. But how will we define what's good? Brisolara responds to a reader question with the framework by which she'll be evaluating diverse community actions as she interviews those doing Underground Good.
An anonymous Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency employee says she’s struggled to feel successful in her work after being unable to implement her vision for change. In response, Salter explains the difference between finite and infinite games and how that informs our view of success, long-term.
Local program evaluator, educator, writer, and resilience & equity coach Sharon Brisolara introduces a new monthly column focused on providing a window into the mindsets and worldviews of the unseen, ordinary people who are doing good in Shasta County.
After the Carr Fire ravaged Shasta County, Elena Nim dove headlong into investigating the cause of catastrophic wildfires, learning how they are inextricably tied to the forced removal and genocide of local Indigenous peoples, whose traditional practices had long maintained the health of forests. California’s wildfire crisis can’t be solved, Nim writes, without changes to how we all relate to the land.
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