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Quote by Stewart Stafford

“Micro-managing creativity kills it. To encourage creative brilliance, foster an atmosphere where it can thrive and then step out of the way and let it happen.”

Quote by Stewart Stafford

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Stewart Stafford

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“I'm constantly having to give people geography and history lessons on how my grandmother's hometown is 65 percent Afro-Puerto Rican, on how the majority of slaves were dropped off in the Caribbean and Latin America, on how just because our Black comes with bomba and mofongo doesn't mean it isn't valid. And it seems I'm always defending the parts of me that I've inherited from my mother: the roots that come from this country, the facts that Aunt Sarah tells me about our people in the Raleigh area, the little sayings she slips into her emails that I know come from her mother, and her mother's mother, and her mother's mother's mother, to the first African mother who touched foot on this here land. The same wisdom I whisper to Babygirl every now and then, a reminder of where, and who, we are from. This stuff is complicated. But it's like I'm some long-division problem folks keep wanting to parcel into pieces, and they don't hear me when I say: I don't reduce, homies. The whole of me is Black. The whole of me is whole.”

“Like other species, we evolved in wilderness and although we are now able to satisfy many of our physical needs outside it (at least in the short term), psychologically we still need the vital diversity, complexity, grandeur, and beauty of wild places. We need to feel connected to something tangible that can be seen, smelled, tasted, that is much greater than out own fleeting existence. Call it religion. There are untold millions who believe in this religion although they may not come out and say so, mostly because its tenets are so deeply ingrained as to be taken for granted. No organized faith is therefore necessary. To me and others of this religion a wilderness made by God and/or by the mechanism of evolution is at least as, if not more, holy than a cathedral made by man, and to harm it is a desecration. I see enough glimpses of this wilderness in my forest to feel inspired by a feeling of interconnectedness with the web of life. It gives me a dream. It is a realistic dream that is not destructive, and that all can take part in and enjoy the results. Preserving and fostering the fantastic life on earth grants infinitely more practical and intellectual rewards than the expensive but trivial knowledge of whether there are microbes on Mars.”

“The protestor also asked me why I was there, did I have a family member who is gay? He stated, “You don’t just come to these things for no reason”. I replied, “Honestly, I did start going and taking my family to gay pride festivals just to be amongst other cultures. It’s good to get to know people who are different from yourself.” The world’s a big place and you may find that you have more in common with people than you think or, in this case, that you know more gay people than you think. I would like to say the same to you.”