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July 2024

June 2024

May 2024

Emergency Preparedness: Are You Ready?
05/28/2024

Farewell from the 2023/24 Social Work Interns
05/28/2024

Gina on the Horizon
05/28/2024

Mark Your Calendars for the Healthy Aging Research California Virtual Summit
05/28/2024

Meet Our New Development Associate
05/28/2024

Putting the Strategic Plan into Practice
05/28/2024

Washington Park: Pasadena’s Rediscovered Gem
05/28/2024

Introducing Civil Rights Discussions
05/22/2024

Rumor of Humor #2416
05/14/2024

Rumor of Humor #2417
05/14/2024

Rumor of Humor #2417
05/14/2024

Rumor of Humor #2418
05/14/2024

Springtime Visitors
05/07/2024

Freezing for a Good Cause – Credit, That Is
05/02/2024

No Discussion Meeting on May 3rd
05/02/2024

An Apparently Normal Person Author Presentation and Book-signing
05/01/2024

Flintridge Center: Pasadena Village’s Neighbor That Changes Lives
05/01/2024

Pasadena Celebrates Older Americans Month 2024
05/01/2024

The 2024 Pasadena Village Volunteer Appreciation Lunch
05/01/2024

Woman of the Year: Katy Townsend
05/01/2024

April 2024

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January 2024

Some thoughts on 8 minutes, 46 seconds

By Margo Halsted
Posted: 02/01/2021
Tags:

I can’t breathe.  Eight minutes, forty-six seconds. I can’t breathe.

George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery . . .

Videos (thank God for them), TV, newspapers, protesters . . .

I’ve not fully understood how a Black person feels.

I am learning. 

I never capitalized Black before.

I had some Black friends at junior and senior high school.  They had to walk a long way to school, literally “from across the tracks”. 

My mother-in-law many years ago said she understood that I had been friends with Black students in school.  “But you never would dance with one, would you?” she asked.  I responded that I had.  She didn’t believe me or didn’t want to believe me.

My Black hairdresser would tell me how her son was pulled over by a cop almost every day on his way to work. She had other very scary stories about her other son and the police.

I always knew that I was white and also one-quarter brown, but wasn’t able to understand how a Black or Brown person felt. I never really understood what their lives were like.

While teaching at UC, Riverside in the '70s all the faculty were asked to identify if they had any minority background because it would help the school with their records. I listed “Hispanic” because my grandmother was born in Mexico. (My mother was born in Arizona before it became a state and didn’t have a birth certificate for many decades until she applied for one.) My main teaching position was at the University of Michigan from 1987-2003. I learned from papers given to me upon my retirement that my position there had been assisted by that earlier “Hispanic” listing: the Music Department had received initial funding for part of my salary. 

I’ve been wary of police at times but was never afraid for my life. I’m beginning to understand so much more. I attended a Pasadena rally on Juneteenth with a “Black Lives Matter” sign to show my solidarity. 

So far, the only other ways I’ve actually made a difference have been to make a donation to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LFD) and to the Los Angeles Chapter of BLM.  

I am learning.

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