Fools Mission is pleased to direct you to a new blog by our retired leader and co-founder, Thomas Atwood! Fool’s Tales: cultural criticism, social justice, humor, arts, and the archetype of the fool is now live and features a thoughtful and provocative new essay on our recent presidential impeachment process, Impeachment, illusion, and the Godfather […]
For years, Fools Mission has dragged its feet on incorporating as a nonprofit charity. Would our Spanish-speaking friends accept this? Would they help write our mission statement? Would rules against “self-dealing” prevent recipients of financial assistance from sitting on the board, thereby reinforcing power relationships that make us uncomfortable? Would corporate governance ruin the egalitarian […]
As the holiday season draws to a close here at Fools Mission, we reflect on the old and dream of the new. Our consciousness-raising multicultural ministry has brought together young and old, rich and poor, citizens and immigrants, privileged and underprivileged. We build community among people who would otherwise be unlikely to get to know […]
Our November breakfast meeting (we call it The Fools of the Round Table) reminded me why I love Fools Mission. The social hall at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Redwood City (UUFRC) was humming as 25 adults and kids gathered in the social hall. The cast of characters were a typically diverse mix—an SRI Scientist, […]
What if we decided to melt ICE? Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the deportation machine that takes about 400,000 undocumented people out of the country each year. That’s the quota they have, and the quota they make. Forget all about deporting the “bad guys” long touted by the Obama administration. They deport the people […]
For fools and most friends of fools, the jester hats and clown noses require no explanation. They speak to the identity of the fool down through the ages: the trickster, the disrupter, the speaker of truth to power, the healing power of irony and laughter. Humor is as much a part of the story as […]
Before you find yourself in 3R mode (reflexive reaction of revulsion) at the title of this article, I’m sharing a link here to one of the finest think pieces on poverty that I’ve read in awhile. The author is Tressie McMillan Cottom, an African American scholar who describes herself this way on her website at […]