May I say first of all that this book was a pure pleasure to read. It was funny and intriguing and -- fair warning-- opinionated. Skip it if you don't want to be exposed to some feminist polemics. Skip it if you are not open to the possibility that a homeless guy's fashion statement might be just as valid as an Ole Miss alumni's. Skip it if you really love Reed Krakoff's designs, because she trashes them hilariously and without mercy. But if you want to be inspired to pay a little more attention to your own fashion statement and to what other people are trying to say, if you want to think a little bit about what clothes mean (and if you don't mind a little rude language), all while getting a cultural tour of the US and having a LOT of laughs, this is your beach read.
Wilson's central thesis is that "fashion is a joyful and important way to empower yourself," and she travels the country looking for people who do that. But first she tells us about her own fashion journey. I could see that we were going to be friends when she mentioned her "nearly pathological Victorian prudishness," and I knew I had something to learn from her when she discussed her "insatiable craving" for "aggressive fabulousness." I don't know that I myself have the energy or commitment to be aggressively fabulous on a daily basis, but I certainly admire those who go for it.
In Utah, Wilson writes about Elizabeth Smart that "she had endured the most intense case of social brainwashing via fashion victimization since Patty Hearst... even Elizabeth Smart herself didn't know who she was." (It's a great line, but it turns out Smart herself tells the story differently. So just bring the salt as you read.)
In Wyoming, she writes about the power of a hat to transform. Oh yes. If you know me, you know I'm there already. Mary Poppins hat? Check! Mary Tyler Moore snow beret? Check! Crocodile Dundee hiking hat? Of course! All worn with great sincerity, of course.
In Miami, she writes about the origin of Lilly Pulitzer prints-- apparently, they are designed to hide juice spills!
And in the Kansas City, Kansas/Missouri area, Wilson made up for what she may have got wrong about Elizabeth Smart by getting a rural midwestern clothesline exactly, beautifully, lyrically right:
...well-loved, embroidered cotton pillowcases, hand-stitched aprons, appliqued napkins and tablecloths, secured on a fuzzy white rope with hingeless wooden clothespins, waving in the breeze before a wall of pine trees. It actually brought tears to my eyes; it was like stumbling on a time capsule full of lost femininity...
I didn't want to love it, but there was something so careful, constructive, and deeply good about that ravishing laundry. It was a genuine example of home-making as a verb-- a creative act that reifies the idea of "home." There is a lost paradise evident in these mundane niceties that is very moving to me. The most undervalued thing in this world is the time, attention, concentration and patient effort of unhurried human beings. There is a distinct improvement in the quality of life when one is the midst of that uncelebrated cornball magic known as the "female touch': that mythical lattice-crusted pie made with blackberries from the garden, cooling on the windowsill...It's the kind of modest, good-faith creative energy that exists only to dignify and spruce up the immediate vicinity. It is a drive to beautify that never seeks anything so vainglorious as outside affirmation, because it would never put on such ludicrous airs as to call itself "art." These elegant works are merely (merely!) well-practiced, gorgeously skillful experessions of care.
Again, if you know me, you know I react to a piece of hand work in a thrift store the way some people react to a puppy at the SPCA: I must adopt it, take it home and love it with all the honor it deserves. Somebody's "time, attention, concentration and patient effort" is recorded in every stitch, and, in turn, our attention must be paid.
Wilson winds up in Brooklyn, where she observes that "Many items in New York's more avant-garde boutiques have entirely relinquished any pretense of being viable clothing." This section, by the way, is where I started chuckling on the beach. Yup, LOLs in the 390s, hot fun in the summertime. She then goes straight to a comparison of Madison Avenue in Manhattan and Jamaica Avenue in Brooklyn, both home to purple furs and giant handbags... either way, she quips, "The New York fashion statement is, essentially, a bank statement." She's obviously most at home in New York and also makes a brilliant observation about pricey (but well-made and non-experimental) clothes; "If you try on a piece of clothing that is perfect, you should buy it... I calculate that every time I have denied myself a perfect garment, I have bought at least six, and sometimes up to ten inferior versions of it, for years afterward." Preach!
Take this trip through the sunny heart of America with Wilson. She'll annoy you at times, but she'll also entertain you, and maybe you'll get an idea for a new hat.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Friday, June 16, 2017
390-399: Culture: Fashion, Manners, Daily Life, Holidays, Celebrations, Folklore and Myths
Speaking of which. Looking good occupies about two shelves in the not-huge public library where I visited today, but you already knew that was a huge concern of our society. How to look good, why to look good, whether we should care at all.... How could I resist a book called Fear and Clothing? And then Cintra Wilson revealed herself as a kindred spirit in at least one respect, speaking of her upbringing in a houseboat community in the 70's: "The casual approach to nudity... gave rise to my firm belief in the magic of garments, a nearly pathological Victorian prudishness, and a lifelong horror of nudists." Well, you may not be sold on the value of fashion, but I hope that little piece of flash memoir will at least impress upon you of the value of clothes. Wilson makes it clear in her introduction that she is not interested in what makes people beautiful but what makes them look like themselves-- not actually in fashion but in style. I chose In Your Face, by Shari Graydon, from this section as well, because I also can't resist a book that promises to attack "the culture of beauty." Graydon's book proves on closer examination to be written for "youth." It's never too early to provide some counterprogramming to all the "pretty princess" and "little heartbreaker" stuff our society mainlines into us from birth.
Bill Bryson's author promo page opens with "Everyone loves Bill Bryson, don't they?" That's what I thought, so I selected At Home: A Short History of Private Life even though it's the size-- and has the look-- of an academic textbook. It's the kind of book I want to like, but I dunno. It's so long (540 pages). It's so heavy-- several pounds, I'd guess. It looks so much like a textbook (I know, I already said that, but really, the resemblance goes beyond striking)!
The Art of Civilized Conversation is by Margaret Shepherd, better known (by me, anyway) as a fantastic calligrapher and author of many foundational manuals of calligraphy. Stands to reason she would want to present the spoken word as elegantly and graciously as she does the written. And she is very thorough, covering all kinds of conversational situations. A sweet little read if you need a pep talk about the value and feasibility of talking to humans.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
380-389: Business, communication and transport. My Korean Deli, by Ben Ryder Howe
Have we talked about how much I love stunt memoirs? Books like The Year of Biblical Womanhood and I Was (Blind) Dating but Now I See and even The Reading Promise, which, although it described some stunts, might not technically have qualified, since the writer didn't do them just for the purpose of getting material, will always leap off the shelves and into my hands. Near the end of Ben Ryder Howe's My Korean Deli, someone asks him, "You bought the deli so you could write a book, didn't you? Admit it." If so, I hope he got his money's worth-- it's a charming book and deserves a wide readership.
I don't live in New York, but I go there quite regularly. I have been in my share of corner stores, always with the same sense of trepidation I feel when walking into a small diner on a blue road in the midwest, a trepidation that is caused by not the worry but the certainty that "they" will know I don't belong and will a) shoot me dead on sight b) pretend I don't exist or c) charge me double what the regulars pay. Turns out it's not me, it's them: "At a deli you don't really try to sell people things," Howe confesses, "instead, you act as if you want to kill them, throw their s*(& in a bag, and glare at them until they leave the store."
Howe is a funny guy and excruciatingly self-aware, but his descriptive powers also gave me nightmares. Literal nightmares. Salim's deli "appears to be rapidly falling apart, as if a passing truck could make the whole thing crumble. There's even-- and now of course I know why the lease is so cheap-- a hole in the ceiling the size of a volleyball, as if an elephant's leg had come through, and that hole is currently dripping little bits of plaster. Other parts of the ceiling appear to have caved as well... but these have been covered with sheets of aluminum, then painted, and now support little stalactites of dust that wave back and forth in unison..." That's some scary stuff, there. Especially when you realize not for nothing are these joints called delis. They actually will make you a sandwich right there that you are supposed to put in your body. Lord, have mercy.
Howe's experience was a fascinating glimpse of life behind the counter in the city that never sleeps. Recommended!
I don't live in New York, but I go there quite regularly. I have been in my share of corner stores, always with the same sense of trepidation I feel when walking into a small diner on a blue road in the midwest, a trepidation that is caused by not the worry but the certainty that "they" will know I don't belong and will a) shoot me dead on sight b) pretend I don't exist or c) charge me double what the regulars pay. Turns out it's not me, it's them: "At a deli you don't really try to sell people things," Howe confesses, "instead, you act as if you want to kill them, throw their s*(& in a bag, and glare at them until they leave the store."
Howe is a funny guy and excruciatingly self-aware, but his descriptive powers also gave me nightmares. Literal nightmares. Salim's deli "appears to be rapidly falling apart, as if a passing truck could make the whole thing crumble. There's even-- and now of course I know why the lease is so cheap-- a hole in the ceiling the size of a volleyball, as if an elephant's leg had come through, and that hole is currently dripping little bits of plaster. Other parts of the ceiling appear to have caved as well... but these have been covered with sheets of aluminum, then painted, and now support little stalactites of dust that wave back and forth in unison..." That's some scary stuff, there. Especially when you realize not for nothing are these joints called delis. They actually will make you a sandwich right there that you are supposed to put in your body. Lord, have mercy.
Howe's experience was a fascinating glimpse of life behind the counter in the city that never sleeps. Recommended!
370-379: Education. A Mother's Reckoning, by Susan Klebold
Where would you shelve a book by the mother of one of the most notorious school shooters in American history? Is it a book about parenting? Is it about mental illness? Is it a true crime story? Nope, turns out it's a book about a high school, one whose greatest claim to fame is the number of people injured and killed in one horrible incident, and it can be found right between books about why to homeschool (yes, fear of violence is a factor) and about how to get into college.
There are so many reasons NOT to read this book. From before the first page, you know how it's going to come out. Even if you are interested in memoirs of grief or of mental illness, you know this is the worst one you will ever read-- a memoir of a grief that also bears guilt and of illness that wreaked havoc. In almost any category, Klebold and her story are outliers.
It's not an easy book to read-- or listen to, in my case. But, if my original motivation was partly morbid curiosity or some sense of the twisted satisfaction that comes from knowing that someone else's life is worse than yours, I quickly realized that there was much more I could learn from Klebold's experiences.
It's always been very difficult to be a parent and very difficult to be a child because relationships are difficult. But somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, psychology and religion agreed that there are formulas that will guarantee you success with your children, that if you did the right things they would "come out," as if they were cakes, and that if you yourself did not seem to be a successful human, it was because your parents hadn't followed these formulas. The interesting thing was that, although everyone agreed a formula existed, no one could agree on what the formula was. Poor Klebold followed one formula-- family night, organized sports, parental involvement, good schools, nice neighborhood-- and it worked for every other kid at Columbine who didn't shoot up the place.
The story of Columbine is the story of 90's kids raised by this formula, and of their paranoid parents and teachers. It's the story of intruder or lock-down drills (a weird practice that continues to this day), of disaffected, attitudinal white suburban boys (is there any other kind?) being packed off to psychiatrists and counselors by the thousands, of MySpaces and basement places being searched and stalked because what kind of parent doesn't know there are pipe bombs and NeoNazis in their house?!!? In reading this book, I remember why I did some of the weirder things I did, and why my friends still thought I was slacking. It almost makes me long for the Cold War, when we kids hid under our desks to protect ourselves from the Atom Bomb. At least we were hiding from a theoretical enemy, not a theoretical heavily armed friend!
In response to all that paranoia, Klebold's insistence that she was an engaged parent, that she did talk to her kids, that she knew their friends, that she took every reasonable precaution, reinforces what a lot of us discovered: teenagers are very, very good at dissembling, and we, no matter what we would like to think, are crap lie detectors. She cites a study, which I can't track down now, wherein parents, policemen, and customs officials were called in to discern whether 4-year-olds were lying about having done something they had been told not to do. The parents got it about 50% of the time... the trained professionals, less. The policemen and customs officials did worse than blind chance in discerning the truthfulness of four-year-olds.
It's not easy to tell when someone is being truthful. Pretending that you are okay and hoping someone will notice that you're actually not is a fool's game, but it's one teenagers play all the time. Unfortunately, in Klebold's case, the results were deadly, because for Dylan, linking himself to his psychopathic friend Eric and walking into a school with a gun was the best way for him to be sure that he would be successful in ending his own life.
This is where Klebold ends up-- as a member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. She believes that if she had understood that her son was suicidal-- if she had read his journals and gotten even further up in his face when he seemed discouraged and grilled him about his relationship with Eric-- she might have been able to save his life and the lives of his victims. But I don't know. Part of what makes mental health issues so difficult is that those who are struggling with them so often can't accept that help is what's needed or don't believe that help is really going to be helpful.
A Mother's Reckoning didn't really seem like a book about a high school. But maybe it is a book about being a high schooler.
There are so many reasons NOT to read this book. From before the first page, you know how it's going to come out. Even if you are interested in memoirs of grief or of mental illness, you know this is the worst one you will ever read-- a memoir of a grief that also bears guilt and of illness that wreaked havoc. In almost any category, Klebold and her story are outliers.
It's not an easy book to read-- or listen to, in my case. But, if my original motivation was partly morbid curiosity or some sense of the twisted satisfaction that comes from knowing that someone else's life is worse than yours, I quickly realized that there was much more I could learn from Klebold's experiences.
It's always been very difficult to be a parent and very difficult to be a child because relationships are difficult. But somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, psychology and religion agreed that there are formulas that will guarantee you success with your children, that if you did the right things they would "come out," as if they were cakes, and that if you yourself did not seem to be a successful human, it was because your parents hadn't followed these formulas. The interesting thing was that, although everyone agreed a formula existed, no one could agree on what the formula was. Poor Klebold followed one formula-- family night, organized sports, parental involvement, good schools, nice neighborhood-- and it worked for every other kid at Columbine who didn't shoot up the place.
The story of Columbine is the story of 90's kids raised by this formula, and of their paranoid parents and teachers. It's the story of intruder or lock-down drills (a weird practice that continues to this day), of disaffected, attitudinal white suburban boys (is there any other kind?) being packed off to psychiatrists and counselors by the thousands, of MySpaces and basement places being searched and stalked because what kind of parent doesn't know there are pipe bombs and NeoNazis in their house?!!? In reading this book, I remember why I did some of the weirder things I did, and why my friends still thought I was slacking. It almost makes me long for the Cold War, when we kids hid under our desks to protect ourselves from the Atom Bomb. At least we were hiding from a theoretical enemy, not a theoretical heavily armed friend!
In response to all that paranoia, Klebold's insistence that she was an engaged parent, that she did talk to her kids, that she knew their friends, that she took every reasonable precaution, reinforces what a lot of us discovered: teenagers are very, very good at dissembling, and we, no matter what we would like to think, are crap lie detectors. She cites a study, which I can't track down now, wherein parents, policemen, and customs officials were called in to discern whether 4-year-olds were lying about having done something they had been told not to do. The parents got it about 50% of the time... the trained professionals, less. The policemen and customs officials did worse than blind chance in discerning the truthfulness of four-year-olds.
It's not easy to tell when someone is being truthful. Pretending that you are okay and hoping someone will notice that you're actually not is a fool's game, but it's one teenagers play all the time. Unfortunately, in Klebold's case, the results were deadly, because for Dylan, linking himself to his psychopathic friend Eric and walking into a school with a gun was the best way for him to be sure that he would be successful in ending his own life.
This is where Klebold ends up-- as a member of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. She believes that if she had understood that her son was suicidal-- if she had read his journals and gotten even further up in his face when he seemed discouraged and grilled him about his relationship with Eric-- she might have been able to save his life and the lives of his victims. But I don't know. Part of what makes mental health issues so difficult is that those who are struggling with them so often can't accept that help is what's needed or don't believe that help is really going to be helpful.
A Mother's Reckoning didn't really seem like a book about a high school. But maybe it is a book about being a high schooler.
Friday, May 19, 2017
Prison Fellowship's Position Paper on Criminal Justice Reform: Outrageous Justice, by Craig DeRoche, Heather Rice-Minus, & Jesse Wiese
Week One: "The police can lie to you?" "Sure they can. It's illegal for you to lie to the police, but the police can lie to you all they want."
Week Four: "When you come in, you hear them say, 'fresh meat' and 'new fish,' and you think, 'I ain't no meat, and I ain't no fish.' "
Week Six: "What can we do to change the prison culture?" "It all comes down to the warden. If he doesn't think the prisoners deserve better treatment, nothing will change."
These are not lines from a documentary. These are just a few of the many memorable moments I experienced while discussing the book Outrageous Justice with a group from my church.
Outrageous Justice is a team effort by staff members of Prison Fellowship, most of whom have done time themselves. I first learned of this ministry when I read Born Again, by Chuck Colson. (NB: the link goes to the comic book, while I read the actual book, but I just couldn't resist sharing this wonderful abbreviated version. Decent portrait drawing, too! )
So, Outrageous Justice. There's a book, a DVD, and a Bible study guide. For those of you unfamiliar with the last genre, it is a series of lessons to be used in an adult Sunday school or small group format. It will generally include or reference some Scripture, summarize or supplement the content of the book or DVDs to which it is tied, and provide lots of questions for the individual or group to complete.
In this case, both the DVD and the questions seemed to assume a group that was not very familiar with the criminal justice system or the realities of prison. However, we were privileged in our setting to have several members who had been in prison, worked or volunteered in prison, and/or been crime victims. Indeed, the biggest takeaway of the whole experience was how extensive the US prison system is and how much it affects all of us.
To get a very quick overview of why Prison Fellowship might call our criminal justice system "outrageous," you might watch this episode of Adam Ruins Everything. Or maybe John Oliver could explain it to you. Or you could even commit to 13th, the full-length documentary that explores why our prison system is, as a new book says, The New Jim Crow. But actually, there's no better way to understand what's wrong with the way we do things than to sit with a room full of lawyers, social workers, mental health professionals, mental health consumers, people in recovery, people who have done time, and people who have lost property and even loved ones to crime, and discussing questions like, "How easy is it to rejoin society after being incarcerated? How easy should it be? What can I do to make reentry more manageable for those who want to change?"
Aspects of criminal justice that are outrageous and should be reformed are many. There's the paucity of support for victims, both inside the system and culturally. We typically think of rape victims when we think of this problem, but really any crime can be more devastating than we usually imagine. There's the fact that at any given time, almost half a million Americans are in jail not having been convicted of any crime. Most of these folks will lose their jobs because of nonattendance; many will also lose their families. Some will have their charges dropped when the real perpetrator is found; some will plea to a lesser charge whether they are actually guilty or not, just to avoid running the risk of being convicted of a greater charge. Some, of course, will eventually be tried, found guilty and sentenced. Those whose only crime was looking like someone an eyewitness described, or being with someone who had perpetrated a crime earlier, or having the same name as a known criminal, will lose their jobs and their families just as surely as those who actually committed an offense.
There's the belief that prison should be punitive, that prisoners do not "deserve" opportunities to better themselves. Margaret Atwood wrote a wonderful novel about a man who puts on Shakespeare plays with inmates; it turns out this is a thing that really happens. But, as in the novel, in real life, many people question why those who have committed crimes should have the privilege of education, particularly arts education, or of being paid a living wage, or of having money to buy soap and toothpaste when they have outstanding fines. In other words, many people would love to return to the Victorian world depicted by Charles Dickens! This is indeed outrageous.
Once I started learning about the issues with our prison system, I started to see more information about it everywhere. This book is a fantastic introduction mainly because it includes lots of stories from prisoners, victims and volunteers. If you don't have such a group in your own circle of acquaintance, this might be a good placebo!
Week Four: "When you come in, you hear them say, 'fresh meat' and 'new fish,' and you think, 'I ain't no meat, and I ain't no fish.' "
Week Six: "What can we do to change the prison culture?" "It all comes down to the warden. If he doesn't think the prisoners deserve better treatment, nothing will change."
These are not lines from a documentary. These are just a few of the many memorable moments I experienced while discussing the book Outrageous Justice with a group from my church.
Outrageous Justice is a team effort by staff members of Prison Fellowship, most of whom have done time themselves. I first learned of this ministry when I read Born Again, by Chuck Colson. (NB: the link goes to the comic book, while I read the actual book, but I just couldn't resist sharing this wonderful abbreviated version. Decent portrait drawing, too! )
So, Outrageous Justice. There's a book, a DVD, and a Bible study guide. For those of you unfamiliar with the last genre, it is a series of lessons to be used in an adult Sunday school or small group format. It will generally include or reference some Scripture, summarize or supplement the content of the book or DVDs to which it is tied, and provide lots of questions for the individual or group to complete.
In this case, both the DVD and the questions seemed to assume a group that was not very familiar with the criminal justice system or the realities of prison. However, we were privileged in our setting to have several members who had been in prison, worked or volunteered in prison, and/or been crime victims. Indeed, the biggest takeaway of the whole experience was how extensive the US prison system is and how much it affects all of us.
To get a very quick overview of why Prison Fellowship might call our criminal justice system "outrageous," you might watch this episode of Adam Ruins Everything. Or maybe John Oliver could explain it to you. Or you could even commit to 13th, the full-length documentary that explores why our prison system is, as a new book says, The New Jim Crow. But actually, there's no better way to understand what's wrong with the way we do things than to sit with a room full of lawyers, social workers, mental health professionals, mental health consumers, people in recovery, people who have done time, and people who have lost property and even loved ones to crime, and discussing questions like, "How easy is it to rejoin society after being incarcerated? How easy should it be? What can I do to make reentry more manageable for those who want to change?"
Aspects of criminal justice that are outrageous and should be reformed are many. There's the paucity of support for victims, both inside the system and culturally. We typically think of rape victims when we think of this problem, but really any crime can be more devastating than we usually imagine. There's the fact that at any given time, almost half a million Americans are in jail not having been convicted of any crime. Most of these folks will lose their jobs because of nonattendance; many will also lose their families. Some will have their charges dropped when the real perpetrator is found; some will plea to a lesser charge whether they are actually guilty or not, just to avoid running the risk of being convicted of a greater charge. Some, of course, will eventually be tried, found guilty and sentenced. Those whose only crime was looking like someone an eyewitness described, or being with someone who had perpetrated a crime earlier, or having the same name as a known criminal, will lose their jobs and their families just as surely as those who actually committed an offense.
There's the belief that prison should be punitive, that prisoners do not "deserve" opportunities to better themselves. Margaret Atwood wrote a wonderful novel about a man who puts on Shakespeare plays with inmates; it turns out this is a thing that really happens. But, as in the novel, in real life, many people question why those who have committed crimes should have the privilege of education, particularly arts education, or of being paid a living wage, or of having money to buy soap and toothpaste when they have outstanding fines. In other words, many people would love to return to the Victorian world depicted by Charles Dickens! This is indeed outrageous.
Once I started learning about the issues with our prison system, I started to see more information about it everywhere. This book is a fantastic introduction mainly because it includes lots of stories from prisoners, victims and volunteers. If you don't have such a group in your own circle of acquaintance, this might be a good placebo!
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
360-369: Social Problems, Solutions and Organizations
This category is full of books I would like to read anyway. Half the Sky was made into a documentary. It's Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn's exploration of the plight of women and girls worldwide. A Path Appears is also in this category, the eponymous path being the path out of poverty. Both books are very much like Kristoff's weekly column in the New York Times.
Eldercare 101, by Mary Jo Saavedra, and Passages in Caregiving, by Gail Sheehy, are obviously two approaches to the same topic. The former is very practical, detailing folders that should be set up, professionals that should be consulted, and other concrete actions. The latter is, to no one's surprise, more philosophical, and includes, again to no one's surprise, stages of caregiving. I started Eldercare 101, but I am so far along the path that it was just depressing to read about all the things I should have done 10 years ago. In fact, I am so, so very far along the path that, within the last three weeks, my eldercare journey seems to be drawing to a close, and the absolute last thing I want to read is someone else's philosophizing about how to sit at the bedside of a dying person. That's the problem with books like this: when they are not relevant, you wouldn't want to wade through them; by the time you do see their importance, you don't have the energy.
Eldercare 101, by Mary Jo Saavedra, and Passages in Caregiving, by Gail Sheehy, are obviously two approaches to the same topic. The former is very practical, detailing folders that should be set up, professionals that should be consulted, and other concrete actions. The latter is, to no one's surprise, more philosophical, and includes, again to no one's surprise, stages of caregiving. I started Eldercare 101, but I am so far along the path that it was just depressing to read about all the things I should have done 10 years ago. In fact, I am so, so very far along the path that, within the last three weeks, my eldercare journey seems to be drawing to a close, and the absolute last thing I want to read is someone else's philosophizing about how to sit at the bedside of a dying person. That's the problem with books like this: when they are not relevant, you wouldn't want to wade through them; by the time you do see their importance, you don't have the energy.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Extra Credit: March, by John Lewis (Political Science)
People must have started talking about March as soon as it came out, and, really, what's not to like: The Civil Rights movement, from the perspective of a participant, in graphic novel form, is a trifecta of my favorite things. So it went on my Christmas list-- but then, so did a lot of other things that didn't cost $50.
What do you know-- it's the one I got. The person who got it for me immediately wanted to borrow it... and then immediately wanted me to hurry up and read it, not least because I was planning on participating in that other march for the preservation of the rights of women and minorities.
Lewis's experiences were inspiring, sure... but mainly they were humbling, and not in the way that winning a Grammy is (apparently, so I've heard) humbling. No, more like in the way that thinking you are doing something big by getting up at 5 AM to spend a Saturday in Washington DC suddenly looks like a walk in the park (oh wait, actually IS a walk in the park, the National Mall park that is) compared to going to a lunch counter or a voter registration location or bus station to sit or stand or march until you get beat up or hosed or arrested, and then getting up the next day and doing it again until you end up in the hospital or dead.
As bad as things are right now, I don't even have a place to put what American elected officials and American law enforcement did to American citizens on American soil in the '50s and '60s. People, we have been in worse spots than this before, and we have prevailed, but only because forefathers like John Lewis did not value their own lives more than justice.
So. Read this book.
What do you know-- it's the one I got. The person who got it for me immediately wanted to borrow it... and then immediately wanted me to hurry up and read it, not least because I was planning on participating in that other march for the preservation of the rights of women and minorities.
Lewis's experiences were inspiring, sure... but mainly they were humbling, and not in the way that winning a Grammy is (apparently, so I've heard) humbling. No, more like in the way that thinking you are doing something big by getting up at 5 AM to spend a Saturday in Washington DC suddenly looks like a walk in the park (oh wait, actually IS a walk in the park, the National Mall park that is) compared to going to a lunch counter or a voter registration location or bus station to sit or stand or march until you get beat up or hosed or arrested, and then getting up the next day and doing it again until you end up in the hospital or dead.
As bad as things are right now, I don't even have a place to put what American elected officials and American law enforcement did to American citizens on American soil in the '50s and '60s. People, we have been in worse spots than this before, and we have prevailed, but only because forefathers like John Lewis did not value their own lives more than justice.
So. Read this book.
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