Archive

One law for all

July 22, 2016 Tammy Alexander

By Tammy Alexander Recently the U.S. Senate considered two bills related to immigration enforcement. Both bills were introduced in response to the death of Kate Steinle who was shot while walking on a pier in San Francisco last year. Reports indicate the man who shot Steinle, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, was not aiming at her but was firing recklessly and the bullet ricocheted. Lopez-Sanchez is an undocumented immigrant. The controversy that followed centered around whether local police should have held Lopez-Sanchez for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials after he finished serving a prison sentence earlier that year. More than 300 local […]

Ghostbusters (2016)

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July 22, 2016 Michelle D. Sinclair

The 2016 remake of Ghostbusters hit theaters last weekend with more than 30 years of ectoplasm dripping off its back. First of all, the very idea of remaking Ghostbusters strikes my generation as heresy. It’s as ridiculous as remaking Back to the Future or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then you have the brouhaha over putting four women in the packs and jumpsuits, and it’s easy to forget there might be an actual movie under all the nasty Internet comments. A little silly, a little scary, and a whole lot of humor that somehow manages to be old school and […]

Interested in Quilting? Stay Tuned

July 22, 2016 Melodie Davis

I am not a quilter. I grew up Mennonite. My mother, an aunt on my father’s side, and a grandmother on my mother’s side were all either avid quilters or piecers, or both. A piecer is one who enjoys putting together designs and patches to make a quilt. Quilters are those who make the tiny stitches. And that’s the thing about a good quilt: most come with a good story, unless you got it online or in a store. Neither Mennonites or Amish have any special corner on quilting, even though Mennonite relief sales and quilt auctions are organized and […]

Do-gooder’s dilemma

July 22, 2016 Celeste Kennel-Shank

He usually stands at the bottom of the stairs that reach the street from the elevated train. Sometimes he sings; sometimes his spirits are low. “If do-gooders are always thinking of how the world is unjust and needs to be changed—if they want to replace our world with another, better one—then do they love the world that we know, which is the world as it is?” He’s cheerful if he had a chance to sleep in a bed the night before; a room is $20. And if I stop to buy him a cup of coffee (extra cream, extra sugar) and a […]

Walking the talk on women, peace and security

July 15, 2016 Thirdway

By Jennifer Wiebe, Director of MCC’s Ottawa Office. I’m sure you’ve heard by now. Canada has a self-professed feminist prime minister. Right out of the post-election gate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced a gender-balanced Cabinet (“Because it’s 2015,” he explained. End of story.). Then there is his snapchat video on how men can be better feminists, his statements on gender parity at the World Economic Forum, his comments pushing for gender equality while in New York at the Commission on the Status of Women, and the list goes on… The prime minister is promoting himself globally as a defender and promoter of women’s rights. And there is […]

The BFG

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July 15, 2016 Vic Thiessen

Steven Spielberg rose to fame and fortune as one of the world’s greatest film directors because of his uncanny skill in reading the inclinations of the masses, resulting in one blockbuster after another (though there were a few misfires along the way). That skill seems to have deserted him with his new film, The BFG, which has bombed all over North America despite being (in my opinion) one of the better children’s films made in this century. Unlike the nonstop action featured in most children’s films made today, The BFG is a slow, thoughtful film. Based on Roald Dahl’s 1982 […]

A Work in Progress

July 15, 2016 Melodie Davis

I went on a Master Gardeners tour back in June. I am not a master gardener, either in name or practice. But I learned something vastly more important than how often to deadhead a rosebush or what perennial to plant where. How reassuring to know that even Master Gardeners have problems with their trees and hedges and flowers. I especially enjoyed the home of a professor of biology whose garden and yard were like a laboratory of experiments. She calls her backyard “the Eclectic Edge,” and her husband cheerily admits it is her space—she gets to decide what to put […]

Loving the enemy

July 15, 2016 Thirdway

By Lynda Hollinger-Janzen In a land that closely resembles the place Jesus lived more than 2,000 years ago, his words still prove true. The people of Sidi, Burkina Faso, plant their fields with the tools and methods described in the New Testament. They draw water from wells, and feed their families with crops they harvest. Some of them live by Jesus’ teaching, recorded in Matthew 5:44: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” In the planting season of June 2015, members of the Mennonite Church in Sidi discerned that God was calling them to renounce the time-honored […]

Tangerine and Risttuules (In the Crosswind)

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July 8, 2016 Jerry L. Holsopple

What does it mean to have a homeland and to long to return to it, or to choose to stay where you are because you have buried too many family members to pick up and leave again? What is worth sacrificing for your homeland? Two recent Estonian films flirt with answers to that question with very different narratives and styles. Two recent Estonian films flirt with answers to that question with very different narratives and styles. Tangerine opens in 1992 with a saw blade running through a board as Ivo makes another tangerine crate. He is Estonian but has lived […]

A True Community Service: Free Clinic

July 8, 2016 Lauree Purcell

Editor’s note: Lauree Purcell is a freelance writer and mother of two teenage daughters in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I met Kathy Whitten about 15 years ago at church, and I’ve always been impressed with the many ways she energetically helps and befriends people throughout the community. I look up to her as an amazing role model because she’s truly inspiring. This is about her volunteer work at the Free Clinic, which has served the city of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County for 25 years—and I’m guessing there may be a similar clinic and volunteers in your own community. Having someone to listen […]