Brad Rourke’s Blog
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Wrapping Up Spring at the Kettering Foundation
I was preparing my registration materials for an upcoming philanthropy sector meeting, and I was asked to give a recap of major items I wanted my colleagues to know about. The past spring (2019, in case you are reading this in the future) has been a busy one at the Kettering Foundation, and I thought…
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The Problem(s) With Facts
My friend, David C. Barker of American University sent me a copy of his new book, One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy. It is an important addition to the current questions about “facts,” “truth,” “interpretation,” and “polarization.” Co-authored with Morgan Marietta of UMass Lowell, the book is quite a comprehensive and I commend…
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1,500 Daily Letters
In early January, 2015, I was at a low point spiritually. As an experiment, I started writing a daily letter to God. Things got better. Life got better. I got better. God got nearer. I have kept up a daily letter every morning ever since. Monday will be my letter number 1,500. There is nothing…
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A House Divided: Announcing New Conversation Materials on Political Division
American public life is highly divided and people find it more and more difficult to talk to one another. Not only are there solution wars over specific issues, but people increasingly lament division per se. I am therefore very pleased to announce publication today of the most recent NIF issue guide, A House Divided: What Would…
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A Personal Mission of Agency
Each year-end I look back and reflect. I look at all areas of my life: family, professional, personal, spiritual, physical, financial. Across all of the major areas of my life, this has been a pivotal year of conceptual progress for me. I developed great clarity on my personal mission. And three ideas that began to…
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Brad’s White Bread Recipe
If you want to feel like Super Dad, just bake a loaf of bread for the family. Your home will fill with the sweet smell of a bakery, and will feel especially inviting.
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My Dreamscape
There is a city I visit repeatedly in my dreams. Rather, a place in a city, and a route to that city. The place. It is a transport station, elevated in a sort of castle-like building on a point. It reminds me of the Flatiron building if it were a castle. Along one side it…
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Two Competing Mythologies
Many people speak of a “tribalism” that seems to be on the rise in America and in our communities these days. By this they appear to mean, for the most part, a bipolar set of group identities, locked in conflict with one another and whose boundaries are based in large part on antipathy toward the…
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Local Democratic Governance
This is more than just funny. It is a wonderful example of the predominant institutional-centered thinking when it comes to communities. Watch this, and take every word deadly seriously — this is what I am delighted to try to undermine daily, by propagating a greater sense of agency by people in communities.
Brad Rourke 