Kate Gace Walton

This Is Just To Say

I have inhaled the news that MAGA is upset not for the schadenfreude though that is a balm It turns out they hate being duped— we can work with that

The Next Right Thing

When my daughter Anna was three, she pierced my heart by gazing wistfully out the car window after daycare pickup and saying, "I wish Cody's mommy was my mommy."  Cody's mother had spent the afternoon making origami pumpkins with the kids. I had spent

Confirming We're On for Monday

This week’s post came out early, so this message is just to confirm that we’re on for our monthly Zoom this coming Monday, July 7th at 5pm PT / 8pm ET. I’ve now had the giddy experience of removing trolls in real time, so I’m no longer

Who Are We?

A couple summers ago, my husband and I “did RAGBRAI”—The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. To kick off, you dip your back tire into the Missouri River. To finish, you dip your front tire into the Mississippi. In between, you ride 500 miles, camp for seven

Are You Zooming In—or Zooming Out?

Now that I’ve stepped back from running my company, I've returned to mediating—peacemaking on a miniature scale. The Dispute Resolution Center (DRC) I’m affiliated with serves my entire county and handles a wide range of cases: parenting plans and asset division for divorcing couples, but

The 7 Questions Every Presidential Hopeful Should Have to Answer—Starting This Year

Andy Beshear, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Ruben Gallego, Amy Klobuchar, Wes Moore, Chris Murphy, Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer: You, in alphabetical order (because it’s way too early for any other kind of ranking), are 12 people who, I suspect, can

Protest Lego

Is anyone else out there haunted by that Isabel Allende interview from April, where she described fleeing Pinochet’s Chile? She began: “Although things happened very quickly in Chile, we got to know the consequences slowly, because they don’t affect you personally immediately. Of course, there were people who

Let's Workshop This

Is a compelling list of 'Shared Concerns' something we could actually crack? Those of you who joined my unruly Zoom on Monday know what I’m working on: drafting a short list of “universals” that could be taken into any town hall across the country—and everyone present

Since Harvard's in the Headlines...

When I graduated from Harvard, I had a lovely boyfriend—and he wanted to travel the world with me. I’d saved up for this trip by working, in the wee hours of the morning, at a place called The Air Charter Guide. There, I used my terrible German and

I’ve Always Felt I Left South Africa Too Young To Write About It—But Here Goes

For the most part, I don’t trust my childhood memories of South Africa. I think most of them aren’t memories at all, just photographs I’ve seen. In a few cases, though, there are no photos, so the images in my mind’s eye must be real memories:

We'd Best Go Big

“I’m a hard-core capitalist, and my son’s a socialist. We argue about this stuff all the time,” said a friend after reading my last piece.  I liked the sound of that. Engaging a teenager in rigorous debate is a great reason to adopt an extreme stance, at

This I Believe

If there’s a bright side to Team Democracy’s leadership vacuum, maybe it’s this: it forces each of us to decide, all alone in the dark, what we believe.  Here’s where I come out: I don’t just believe in private enterprise. I love it.  I love