KevinB
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kbensel.bsky.social
KevinB
@kbensel.bsky.social
130 followers 570 following 69 posts
Believer in the dignity of all people and soccer fan.
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kbensel.bsky.social
@chrisrifer.bsky.social This made me think about your comments regarding what the Timbers need to do in order to make the team a desirable destination for young players (a plan for the player's development, an agreement to sell when an acceptable offer arrives, etc).

www.nytimes.com/athletic/681...
Meet the German transfer guru behind Ekitike, Marmoush and Kolo Muani
www.nytimes.com
November 21, 2025 at 9:06 PM
Reposted by KevinB
jeffvandermeer.bsky.social
This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)
For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary. Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from). The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe. Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky. Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat? This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight: * Waste of public resources on military theatrics. * Fraud in the name of “public safety.” * Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect. Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation. Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here. When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness. Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy. A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control. Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard. Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.
October 12, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Reposted by KevinB
picklesbaseball.bsky.social
more dillon, less ice
October 3, 2025 at 11:33 PM
Reposted by KevinB
chrisrifer.bsky.social
It’s really telling that a minister asking the president to treat vulnerable peoples with mercy—a central pillar of Jesus’s ministry—is treated as more transgressive than the president’s right-hand man making a gesture that is most naturally interpreted as a Nazi salute.
January 22, 2025 at 3:10 PM
kbensel.bsky.social
I encourage anyone in Washington state who cares about transgender youth to post their comments on this bill.
adora.blue adora blue @ ??? mystery? @adora.blue · Jan 27
there’s a bill on the floor rn to outlaw gender affirming care for minors in washington, PLEASE go to this link and select "oppose." takes 30 sec. examples on stuff to say in thread!
app.leg.wa.gov/pbc/bill/1038
January 27, 2025 at 9:56 PM
kbensel.bsky.social
S & C and I built this today for Abuelita for Christmas using the Lego Builder app. It was a super fun experience!
Lego Poinsettia
December 8, 2024 at 8:29 PM