About

About the blog

A Thread of Connection is a blog dedicated to furthering the cause of the Dayton’s Bluff Community Asset Network (DB-CAN), a project sponsored by Dayton’s Bluff Community Council. We believe that communities are nourished and revitalized by connecting people’s gifts. Therefore, we hope to fully connect and mobilize the gifts and assets of the people, associations, and institutions of Dayton’s Bluff in order to build a stronger community.

About Sherry Johnson:

I’m always feeling the pull of two different worlds.

Whereas now I’m a middle-class professional, I grew up with working-class parents in southern Wisconsin. When Dad lost his sales job in 1985, I learned what it meant to live paycheck-to-paycheck. Then, Mom’s factory job moved overseas in 1987. Despite their amazing ability to hide it, I knew we’d sunk into poverty.

Thanks to my penny-saving grandma and a full ride to UW-Madison, I became the first college graduate in my family. But to this day, my salty language and working-class directness can land me into trouble.

I woke up to racism in high school when the KKK came to town and my best friend was taunted with racial slurs in the hallway. In college, I felt more at home with African-American peers and the cabinet-makers with whom I worked second-shift than I did with typical UW students. I’ve never missed that my escape from poverty had a lot to do with white privilege, and that has made me passionate about equity.

I taught English and theatre in high schools for 10 years before pausing to raise my son. We love, live, and learn in Dayton’s Bluff, our designated home neighborhood of 9 years and counting. As the new DB-CAN coordinator for the Dayton’s Bluff Community Council, I’m trying to get my ideals to gain traction in a world where it’s easy to talk and difficult to act.

I’m most at home with my hubby’s homebrew in one hand and a copy of M. Scott Peck’s A Different Drum in the other. I love rollerderby and the women who play it. Cats are better than dogs.