Calling Grandma

Sidewalks

Sorry that Sidewalks has been pretty inactive in the past few months. I’ve been busy, but I’ve also felt really confused about the show’s purpose in an uncertain world. As I record this, it’s the week Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, and everything about this world feels even less certain. From the beginning, Sidewalks has been about experimenting in short little bursts with what radio can be. What does it mean to listen? What does it mean to capture a moment? When I started the show I wanted to come up with a new answer to those questions every single day somewhat randomly with whatever felt right. Right now, I feel like everything we do needs purpose. There are too many forces fighting for hate, greed, and ignorance. We need to consciously and actively work for love, generosity, and wisdom. Sometimes that might mean making things to warm the heart, and sometimes that might mean facing ugly truths. It also, for now, means letting go of the super-short restriction of this show when something longer seems more appropriate. Anyway, on Wednesday night as I was waiting for a flight out of Reagan International Airport. I called my grandparents, whom I love, and who are good-hearted people. They also watch Fox News, listen to conservative radio, and voted for a man who has insulted and threatened every ideal I care about. I asked them if I could record the conversation, and that’s this episode. I should say that this is just one conversation between a family of people who are not as directly threatened by this election. This conversation has three privileged white people, myself included, clumsily and ignorantly discussing race from a position of safety. I’m putting it here, not to engender sympathy for the more troubling things my grandparents say, nor to demonize them either. I’m also not putting this here with any kind of presumption that I know what I’m talking about or have any sense of what we should be doing now. I put this up here because after asking and answering 60 times about why we listen and why we capture moments, I have some answers to pencil in for now: We listen to understand each other and ourselves. We capture moments to learn from them as we move forward.