Photo credit.

Photo credits for all photographs: Bob Howard. You can find program details online HERE. See yourself in a picture, want to tag or untag yourself? (Leave a comment under the photo and we’ll go back through them and make corrections!)

She was born in the Old Country and spoke only Yiddish. She had four daughters, one son, and no formal education. Bubbe was what was called a “poor relation” in pre-Social Security America. After her husband died, she shuttled among her five children, cooking briskets and playing canasta with her grandchildren.

Bubbe would fix after school snacks and listen intently for hours as the little girl who grew up to be the endlessly patient grandmother of my children gave minute-by-minute accounts of her day.

Bubbe did not live to see that little girl become a speech teacher, a television personality, and the first woman everything in Florida’s state university system. But Mom never forgot her debt to Bubbe.

“I used to think I was doing Bubbe a huge favor to ‘entertain’ her,” Mom would say. “She must have been bored to death. But she was teaching me that my voice mattered.”

I never thought to ask how, exactly, Bubbe acquired that tag-line that keeps her memory alive all these decades after she lived and died. But I suspect a connection between her ability to listen patiently, even to a small child speaking a different language, and her intolerance of injustice.

The ability to listen is fundamental to a just society. In Bubbe’s day, and now, it’s a skill that’s in very short supply.

As the Scarecrow in Oz observed, “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking.” We interrupt each other mid-sentence to disagree with what we think someone is about to say. Even at the Village Square it is necessary to issue frequent reminders against “team clapping”.

Communities that do justice, love mercy, and teach the little ones that their voice matters have a lot of Bubbes around. Mother’s Day is a good time to cook them a brisket and say “thanks for listening.”

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Florence Snyder is a corporate and First Amendment lawyer. Contact her at lawyerflo@gmail.com

Photo credit: Sea Dream Studio, under Creative Commons License (2.0 generic)

“The Village Square created an outlet for that during its first Our Town forum highlighting growth and change in Tallahassee on Tuesday at St. John’s Episcopal Church downtown. The standing-room crowd of more than 250 heard brief summaries on priority projects, such as Gaines Street revitalization. Residents were eager to pose questions ranging from whether Cascades Park will have a dog park and when more parking and sidewalks would come to Midtown…” Read it all here.

Check out The Village Square‘s discussion on the topic in our “Get Local” Tallahassee section of our We the Wiki website.  Feel free to add to it, too — additional sources, fact checks, even write an op-ed.  Remember, the content of our Wiki is made greater by factual, civil, diverse contributions from people like you.  So, go ahead — check it out.  And if you’re a first-time user, be sure to check out the Tools & Tips page, too.  If you have trouble with the site using Internet Explorer, try switching over to Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari.

Construction is a welcome sight in this day and age. Construction is a sign of revival, a sign of progress and a signal of an ending economic slumber.

You may have noticed that, for the past month, there have been signs of construction throughout Midtown. This is one of those signs we have been waiting for.

In June, our city will complete construction on the Fifth Avenue Midtown Plaza. This project is not only a sign of emerging prosperity but a testament to community engagement. It happened because the shared interests of businesses, residents and those who love all things Midtown came together under a common goal: Make Midtown great.

Through shared visions, that goal is becoming a reality more and more each day.

Read Jay’s article – and learn what’s up in Midtown – in today’s Tallahassee Democrat.

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Photo is a City of Tallahassee artist rendition of the 5th Avenue Plaza.