Preparing for Proximity
The turn of this year feels too fragile for plans.
Katerina Parsons (’15) lives in Washington D.C., where she works in advocacy at Mennonite Central Committee’s Washington office and studies international development at American University’s School of International Service. She spends a lot of time thinking about US policy towards Central America and North Korea, writing, singing, and searching for the city’s best pupusas (suggestions welcome).
by Katerina Parsons | Jan 1, 2021 | 1 comment
The turn of this year feels too fragile for plans.
by Katerina Parsons | Dec 1, 2020 | 3 comments
If our imagination is wild enough and our compassion strong enough to invent radioactive kittens that will protect future generations, what other innovations might we create?
by Katerina Parsons | Nov 1, 2020 | 2 comments
I don’t want to think about the election right now.
by Katerina Parsons | Oct 1, 2020 | 5 comments
The moment I began to slide, I thought of nothing.
by Katerina Parsons | Sep 1, 2020 | 2 comments
Birds feel the pull of the compass, and they also cast their eyes upward for a map.
by Katerina Parsons | Aug 1, 2020 | 4 comments
Here, lightly edited, are a year of the mundane and serious and baffling things I felt the need to save.
by Katerina Parsons | Jul 1, 2020 | 6 comments
I am from this place as much as I am from anywhere, and it’s this recognition that helps me know that I can feel this way again.
by Katerina Parsons | Jun 1, 2020 | 2 comments
I managed to stretch this weak joke (reach for the stars but, like, “the actual stars”) for far too many lines—all rhyming, of course.
by Katerina Parsons | May 1, 2020 | 1 comment
I feel caught up in a collective urge to tend things.
by Katerina Parsons | Apr 1, 2020 | 1 comment
But one day we started to tell the story, and as we heard it coming from our mouths we knew it meant the story was behind us, and we had lived through it.
by Katerina Parsons | Mar 1, 2020 | 3 comments
A robin pulls a fat worm from the ground in the middle of a traffic circle and life suddenly feels too grand, too expansive, too beautiful to possibly come to an end.
by Katerina Parsons | Feb 1, 2020 | 1 comment
How much do we love red? We crush rocks for it. We smash bugs for it.
by Katerina Parsons | Jan 1, 2020 | 1 comment
Hope does not exist in a moment; we must create hope.
by Katerina Parsons | Dec 1, 2019 | 4 comments
What I mean is that we must be skeptical of solutions that simply throw money at complex issues.
by Katerina Parsons | Nov 1, 2019 | 3 comments
Satisficing doesn’t mean you lack standards. It just means you’re realistic about those standards.
by Katerina Parsons | Oct 1, 2019 | 5 comments
The third time in a short conversation that I heard myself saying, “Well, in Honduras…” I stopped myself. I didn’t mean to be a bore; I simply didn’t have other experiences to draw from.
by Katerina Parsons | Sep 1, 2019 | 0 comments
After I have been
Back in the United States for a few weeks, I find myself
Crying at the strangest things.
by Katerina Parsons | Aug 1, 2019 | 2 comments
21. Sometimes my life seems to spark like a live wire, and I feel intoxicated by its opportunity and potential.
by Katerina Parsons | Jul 1, 2019 | 3 comments
This may be the last post I’ll write from Honduras.
by Katerina Parsons | Jun 1, 2019 | 0 comments
If you visit Tegucigalpa, you’ll find more than you expect.
by Katerina Parsons | May 1, 2019 | 0 comments
How many “insightful” comments about politics or social issues have I made that are really just regurgitations of something I forgot I read somewhere else?
by Katerina Parsons | Apr 1, 2019 | 0 comments
If you’re interested in cutting out meat, or at least eating less of it, here are five days of meat-free meals like the ones I eat—no fancy tools or Whole Foods necessary!
by Katerina Parsons | Mar 1, 2019 | 0 comments
What works in changing people’s minds? Not facts.
by Katerina Parsons | Feb 1, 2019 | 0 comments
Our lives simply don’t work as a checklist.
by Katerina Parsons | Jan 1, 2019 | 0 comments
Marilynne Robinson’s debut book is lyrical, atmospheric, and completely absorbing, the “literary equivalent of a Sigur Ros song” as I tried to describe it to a friend.
by Katerina Parsons | Dec 1, 2018 | 0 comments
It is not a partisan statement to say that the U.S. immigration system is broken.
by Katerina Parsons | Nov 1, 2018 | 0 comments
Let’s start in a coffee shop where a middle aged woman has just been told that there are no more blueberry muffins. She reacts badly.
by Katerina Parsons | Oct 1, 2018 | 0 comments
“I was always going to do the thing. You didn’t have to hound me like that.”
“Sure.”
by Katerina Parsons | Sep 1, 2018 | 0 comments
Neighboring governments are refusing to accept these hungry, oppressed citizens, just for lacking a simple pamphlet made of dead trees and bureaucracy.
by Katerina Parsons | Aug 1, 2018 | 0 comments
When I first moved to Honduras three years ago, I ate everything my host family ate: beans, eggs, cream, tortillas. Heavy, simple plates—bland, but satisfying. But then suddenly one day, months in, I just couldn’t do it anymore.