Bookin' It in 2019

For a number of reasons, I only finished reading an embarrassing total of four books in 2019.  They are as follows.

1. Whose Boat Is This Boat?: Comments That Don’t Help in the Aftermath of a Hurricane by Donald J. Trump (as collected by the staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert)
2. The Scrap Sculptures of Stuart B. Padnos: Book 2
3. Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon
4. Revenge of the She-Punks: A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot by Vivien Goldman

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When people don't have the facts, democracy doesn't work.

-- Amy Berman Jackson

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Politics don't corrupt people.  People corrupt politics.

-- Amy Berman Jackson

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Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

-- Margaret Fuller

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Finding a group, a place to fit in, is a compelling dream for outsiders and can be a heady experience when lived.  Cocooned among like-minded misfits, often for the first time, it is a relief to feel that, as a group, one has helped to make a safe alternative haven beyond the regular world's judgment.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 108

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Punk features more unlove songs than love songs.  How could it be otherwise, when it's made by outsiders wrestling with the octopus arms of the patriarchy?  It's the loud sound designed to send the old walls tumbling down (and that has also come to refer to not just 1950s dating conventions, but gender).

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 95-96

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The audacity and courage of female artists who defy the odds is to be celebrated; like the women in this chapter, who find a way to dig life and create what they want with or without money by combining whatever resources they have.  And when Babylon and/or the universe does decide to lavish its fruits on you, don't swallow it all up for yourself.  Keep more than solvent to do what you need to do -- but don't forget to also spread it around.  Just like Patti Smith did.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 86

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You can't promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people.

-- George Kent

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The insanely extended struggle for women's equal pay may be invisible simply because of its age -- ironically, the fate that many women fear.  The gender pay gap is a wound that will make society unequal until it is fixed.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 85

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Sometimes it seems as if equal pay for women is such a long-standing cause that it lacks the glamor of "newer" issues.  Some artists in this book were loath to define themselves as "feminist."  However, ask if they believe in equal pay for women, and they always do -- which means they are feminists, after all.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 85

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Small discoveries and appreciations are treats in one's day that can make a person happier, and thus more likely to attract positive interactions.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 68

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(Patti Smith) had not specifically focused on making work calculated to attract money.  No doubt she made artistic choices that she trusted would not alienate an audience, but she basically made the sound and told the stories she wanted to hear.  As she chronicles in her memoirs, like any aspiring artist without family money, Smith knew how to enjoy life without necessarily having much financially.  Playing it her way was of more significance, and appropriate material reward would hopefully follow.
 
-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 60

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There is a clear continuum from the feminization of poverty to the masculinization of wealth.  It's no accident.

-- Gloria Steinem, Moving Beyond Words, 2012

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We must make a place in a market manipulated to pander to the cliched male gaze; find a voice for our feelings when we've never heard anyone sound the way we hear in our head; break generations of our family's female mode of being; construct new forms of family and effective motherhood; position ourselves within the newly possible flexing of gender experimentation and fight for the right to do so.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 53

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Discovering one's own sound, like a writer finding her voice, is an accumulation of such individual, intuitive steps over the edge, trusting in one's own velocity to find a flight path.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 35

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We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us.  Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.  This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics.

-- Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977

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So this book is an attempt at a healing...and yes, even a noncorrosive revenge, as the title suggests.  "I don't do revenge," drawled Chrissie Hynde on hearing the title.  Yes, but we're not talking that mean-spirited sort of gotcha! revenge.  In the case of punky females, revenge means getting the same access as your male peers, to make your own music, look and sound how you want, and be able to draw enough people to ensure the continuation of the process.  Sounds simple enough, talent permitting, but as this book shows, it's different for girls.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 7

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When women perform a professional, hard-rocking set, with no concession to female stereotypes, they're an automatic threat.  They're a threat to men because they challenge male supremacy in a citadel that has never been attacked before; they threaten women who perhaps never dared acknowledge that THEY want to be onstage doing the energizing instead of watching their boyfriends do it, in passive admiration.

-- Vivien Goldman, Sounds, December 11, 1976

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I want justice, oceans of it.  I want fairness, rivers of it.  That's what I want.  That's all I want.

-- Elijah Cummings

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The purpose of being a serious writer is to keep people from despair.  If people read your work and, as a result, choose life, then you are doing your job.

-- Sarah Manguso

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The last year has forced us all into politics ... We do not breathe well.  There is infamy in the air ... [It] robs the landscape of beauty, and takes the sunshine out of every hour...

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1851

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There is art left to be made in this world.

-- Anthony Bourdain

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Whenever life gets overwhelming, go back to chapter one of this book and think about your days.  Try your best to fill them in ways that get you a little closer to where you want to be.  Go easy on yourself and take your time.  Worry less about getting things done.  Worry more about things worth doing.  Worry less about being a great artist.  Worry more about being a good human being who makes art.  Worry less about making a mark.  Worry more about leaving things better than you found them.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 201

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This is precisely the time when artists go to work.  There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.  We speak, we write, we do language.  That is how civilizations heal.  I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.  Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge -- even wisdom.  Like art.

-- Toni Morrison

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Imitate the trees.  Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long.

-- May Sarton

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Live in each season as it passes and resign yourself to the influences of each.

-- Henry David Thoreau

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You have to pay attention to the rhythms and cycles of your creative output and learn to be patient in the off-seasons.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 187

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That tree was the great teacher of the last two decades of (Corita Kent's) life.  She learned from that tree.  The beauty it produced in spring was only because of what it went through during the winter, and sometimes the harshest winters yielded the most glorious springs.

-- Mickey Myers

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Go out and walk.  That is the glory of life.

-- Maira Kalman

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When we're glued to our screens, the world looks unreal.  Terrible.  Not worth saving or even spending time with.  Everyone on earth seems like a troll or a maniac or worse.  But you get outside and you start walking and you come to your senses.  Yeah, there are a few maniacs and some ugliness, but there are also people smiling, birds chirping, clouds flying overhead...all that stuff.  There's possibility.  Walking is a way to find possibility in your life when there doesn't seem to be any left.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 176 & 178

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Things are already a mess out there.  We've made enough of a mark on this planet.  What we need are fewer vandals and more cleanup crews.  We need art that tidies.  Art that mends.  Art that repairs.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 167

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Art is not only made from things that "spark joy."  Art is also made out of what is ugly or repulsive to us.  Part of the artist's job is to help tidy up the place, to make order out of chaos, to turn trash into treasure, to show us beauty where we can't see it.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 166

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New ideas are formed by interesting juxtapositions, and interesting juxtapositions happen when things are out of place.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 149

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It's amazing how little human life changes.  When I read Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, I marvel at how every ancient poem is basically a withering commentary on our contemporary politicians.  A dip into Henry David Thoreau's journals paints a portrait of a plant-loving man who is overeducated, underemployed, upset about politics, and living with his parents -- he sounds exactly like one of my fellow millennials!

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 143 & 145

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Interacting with people who don't share our perspective forces us to rethink our ideas, strengthen our ideas, or trade our ideas for better ones.  When you're only interacting with like-minded people all the time, there's less and less opportunity to be changed.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 140

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To think independently of other human beings is impossible.  Thinking is necessarily, thoroughly, and wonderfully social.  Everything you think is a response to what someone else has thought and said.

-- Alan Jacobs

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The world needs you at the party starting real conversations, saying, "I don't know," and being kind.

-- Charlie Kaufman

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[C]ertainty, in art and in life, is not only completely overrated, it is also a roadblock to discovery.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 132

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"Attention is the most basic form of love," wrote John Tarrant.  When you pay attention to your life, it not only provides you with the material for your art, it also helps you fall in love with your life.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 118

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We give things meaning by paying attention to them, and so moving your attention from one thing to another can absolutely change your future.

-- Jessa Crispin

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When you have a system for going back through your work, you can better see the bigger picture of what you've been up to, and what you should do next.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 118

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To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

-- Mary Oliver

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The pencil's best feature is that it has no way of interrupting you with texts or notifications.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 112

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The first step toward transforming your life into art is to start paying more attention to it ... It's impossible to pay proper attention to your life if you are hurtling along at lightning speed.  When your job is to see things other people don't, you have to slow down enough that you can actually look.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 105 & 107

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This is exactly what an artist does: By paying extra attention to their world, they teach us to pay more attention to ours.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 105

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I noticed a long time ago that there's actually very little correlation between what I love to make and share and the numbers of likes, favorites, and retweets it gets.  I'll often post something I loved making that took me forever and crickets chirp.  I'll post something else I think is sort of lame that took me no effort and it will go viral.  If I let those metrics run my personal practice, I don't think my heart could take it very long.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 89

Quote of the Day

An Amazon rank doesn't tell you whether someone read your book twice and loved it so much she passed it on to a friend.  Instagram likes don't tell you whether an image you made stuck with someone for a month.  A stream count doesn't equal an actual human being showing up to your live show and dancing.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 87 & 89

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It's easy to become as obsessed with online metrics as money.  It can then be tempting to use those metrics to decide what to work on next, without taking into account how shallow those metrics really are.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 87

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Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

-- William Bruce Cameron

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It's always good to have a hobby where there's no way to monetize it...So follow your dreams, but right up to the point where they become your job, and then run in the other direction.

-- David Rees

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Saying "no" to the world can be really hard, but sometimes it's the only way to say "yes" to your art and your sanity.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 61

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There can be, and should be, a blissful, serene enjoyment in knowing, and celebrating, that there are folks out there having the time of their life at something that you might have loved to, but are simply skipping.

-- Anil Dash

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The function of freedom is to free someone else.

-- Toni Morrison

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Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

-- Toni Morrison, Beloved

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You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

-- Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

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If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

-- Toni Morrison

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My philosophy is very simple: If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just -- you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something.  Start trouble.

-- Rep. John Lewis

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Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes -- including you.

-- Anne Lamott

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The phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key elements of discovery: loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom.  Those have always been where creative ideas come from.

-- Lynda Barry

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The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes of all political and social life a mass illness.  Without this housecleaning, we cannot begin to see.  Unless we see, we cannot think.

-- Thomas Merton

Quote of the Day

What's clear is that it's healthiest if we make a daily appointment to disconnect from the world so that we can connect with ourselves.  Kids, jobs, sleep, and a thousand other things will get in the way, but we have to find our own sacred space, our own sacred time.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 43

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You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes to you.  This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.  This is the place of creative incubation.  At first you may find that nothing happens there.  But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

-- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

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Silence and solitude are crucial [to think and practice your art].  Our modern world of push notifications, 24/7 news cycles, and constant contact is almost completely inhospitable to the kind of retreat artists must make in order to focus deeply on their work.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 39

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Creativity is about connection -- you must be connected to others in order to be inspired and share your own work -- but it is also about disconnection.  You must retreat from the world long enough to think, practice your art, and bring forth something worth sharing with others.  You must play a little hide-and-seek in order to produce something worth being found.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 39

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Finish every day and be done with it.  You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.  Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote of the Day

Your list is your past and your future.  Carry at all times.  Prioritize: today, this week, and eventually.  You will someday die with items still on your list, but for now, while you live, your list helps prioritize what can be done in your limited time.

-- Tom Sachs

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A list is a collection with purpose.

-- Adam Savage

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Leonardo da Vinci made "to-learn" lists.  He'd get up in the morning and write down everything he wanted to learn that day.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 25

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Lists bring order to the chaotic universe.  I love making lists.  Whenever I need to figure out my life, I make a list.  A list gets all your ideas out of your head and clears the mental space so you're actually able to do something about them.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 23

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I make lists to keep my anxiety level down.  If I write down fifteen things to be done, I lose that vague, nagging sense that there are an overwhelming number of things to be done, all of which are on the brink of being forgotten.

-- Mary Roach

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What your daily routine consists of is not that important.  What's important is that the routine exists.  Cobble together your own routine, stick to it most days, break it once in a while for fun, and modify it as necessary.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 21

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Trauma permanently changes us.  This is the big, scary truth about trauma: there is no such thing as "getting over it."  The five stages of grief model marks universal stages in learning to accept loss, but the reality is in fact much bigger: a major life disruption leaves a new normal in its wake.  There is no "back to the old me."  You are different now, full stop.  This is not a wholly negative thing.  Healing from trauma can also mean finding new strength and joy.  The goal of healing is not a papering-over of changes in an effort to preserve or present things as normal.  It is to acknowledge and wear your new life -- warts, wisdom, and all -- with courage.

-- Catherine Woodiwiss

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A little imprisonment -- if it's of your own making -- can set you free.  Rather than restricting your freedom, a routine gives you freedom by protecting you from the ups and downs of life and helping you take advantage of your limited time, energy, and talent.  A routine establishes good habits that can lead to your best work.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 20

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Finding yourself is not really how it works.  You aren't a ten-dollar bill in last winter's coat pocket.  You are also not lost.  Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people's opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are.  "Finding yourself" is actually returning to yourself, an unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.

-- Emily McDowell

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The idea is not to live forever, but to create something that will.

-- Andy Warhol

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It's undeniably fun to read about the routines and rituals of creative people, but what becomes clear after a while is that there is no perfect, universal routine for creative work.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 17

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Every day, hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture; speak a few reasonable words.

-- Goethe

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Blood does not family make.  Those are relatives.  Family are those with whom you share your good, bad, and ugly, and still love one another in the end.  Those are the ones you select.

-- Hector Xtravaganza

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When you don't have much time, a routine helps you make the little time you have count.  When you have all the time in the world, a routine helps you make sure you don't waste it.  I've written while holding down a day job, written full-time from home, and written while caring for small children.  The secret to writing under all those conditions was having a schedule and sticking to it.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 15

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My life is full of love; I designed it that way.  I try to make my own experience about love and I look for kindness in others.  That's the thing I value the most: it will get you through everything.

-- Armistead Maupin

Quote of the Day

There will be good days and bad days.  Days when you feel inspired and days when you want to walk off a bridge.  (And some days when you can't tell the difference.)  A daily routine will get you through the day and help you make the most of it.  "A schedule defends from chaos and whim," writes Annie Dillard.  "It is a net for catching days."  When you don't know what to do next, your routine tells you.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 15

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If you want to know who the oppressed minorities in America are, simply look at who gets their own shelf in the bookstore.  A black shelf, a women's shelf, and a gay shelf.

-- Armistead Maupin

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Relying on craft and routine is a lot less sexy than being an artistic genius.  But it is an excellent strategy for not going insane.

-- Christoph Niemann

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Being gay has taught me tolerance, compassion and humility.  It has shown me limitless possibilities of living.  It has given me people whose passion and kindness and sensitivity have provided a constant source of strength.

-- Armistead Maupin, More Tales of the City

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It is not the experience of today that drives men mad.  It is remorse or bitterness for something which happened yesterday or the dread of what tomorrow may bring.  Let us therefore do our best to live but one day at a time.

-- Richmond Walker

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The creative journey is not one in which you're crowned the triumphant hero and live happily ever after.  The real creative journey is one in which you wake up every day, like Phil [from Groundhog Day], with more work to do.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 13

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Any man can fight the battles of just one day.

-- Richmond Walker

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We have so little control over our lives.  The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on.  What we work on and how hard we work on it.  It might seem like a stretch, but I really think the best thing you can do if you want to make art is to pretend you're starring in your own remake of Groundhog Day: Yesterday's over, tomorrow may never come, there's just today and what you can do with it.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 11

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The truly prolific artists I know ... have figured out a daily practice -- a repeatable way of working that insulates them from success, failure, and the chaos of the outside world.  They have all identified what they want to spend their time on, and they work at it every day, no matter what.  Whether their latest thing is universally rejected, ignored, or acclaimed, they know they'll still get up tomorrow and do their work.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 10-11

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Even after you have achieved greatness, the infinitesimal cadre who even noticed will ask, "What next?"

-- Ian Svenonius

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Other than death, there is no finish line or retirement for the creative person.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 10

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The creative life is not linear.  It's not a straight line from point A to point B.  It's more like a loop, or a spiral, in which you keep coming back to a new starting point after every project.  No matter how successful you get, no matter what level of achievement you reach, you will never really "arrive."

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 10

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The poison was shame, and the antidote is pride.

-- Craig Schoonmaker

Meeting Lisa Lenzo

I was pleased to meet author Lisa Lenzo tonight at Uncommon Coffee Roasters during the launch event for her brand new book, Unblinking.  I was even lucky enough to win a jar of Lisa's homemade blueberry lemon jam during the party!

Remembering Rachel Held Evans

I returned from a lovely, leisurely brunch yesterday to learn that author/thinker Rachel Held Evans had died...at 37.  I loved reading her first two books, Evolving in Monkey Town/Faith Unraveled and A Year of Biblical Womanhood.  I am heartbroken at the loss of this gifted, thoughtful communicator.

Quote of the Day

A few years ago, I'd wake up every morning, check the headlines on my phone, and feel as if the world had gotten dumber and meaner overnight.  Meanwhile, I'd been writing and making art for more than a decade, and it didn't seem to be getting any easier.  Isn't it supposed to get easier?  Everything got better for me when I made peace with the fact that it might not ever get easier.  The world is crazy.  Creative work is hard.  Life is short and art is long.

-- Austin Kleon, Keep Going, p. 1

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I think I need to keep being creative, not to prove anything but because it makes me happy just to do it...I think trying to be creative, keeping busy, has a lot to do with keeping you alive.

-- Willie Nelson

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People will often be polite to you in person, while advancing policies that harm you and your family.  You will be polite to them in turn, but you need not stand for such harms.  Instead, you push back, honestly and emphatically.  So it goes, in the public square.

-- Pete Buttigieg

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Your time in the closet and your journey to coming out belong to you.  You are not required to open healed wounds or write lengthy threads in order to explain your worth to others who aren't willing to see it themselves.

-- Chasten Buttigieg

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And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

-- John Steinbeck

Jazz, Jokes and Jack

Last night, I was thrilled to attend the book release party for my poetry professor Jack Ridl's brand new book, Saint Peter and the Goldfinch, at the Douglas United Church of Christ.  It was an evening of jazz, jokes, and, of course, poetic journeys with Jack. 

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In marriage, every day you love, and every day you forgive.  It is an ongoing sacrament -- love and forgiveness...  Like the yin/yang symbol...Here I am, and here she is, and here we are.  Now when I have to make a sacrifice, I'm not sacrificing to her, I'm sacrificing to the relationship ... That's what a marriage is -- whereas, in a love affair, you have two lives in a more or less successful relationship to each other for a certain length of time, as long as it seems agreeable.

-- Joseph Campbell

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Marriage is not a love affair.  A love affair is a totally different thing.  A marriage is a commitment to that which you are.  That person is literally your other half.  And you and the other are one.  A love affair isn't that.  That is a relationship for pleasure, and when it gets to be unpleasurable, it's off.  But a marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life.  If marriage is not the prime concern, you're not married...

-- Joseph Campbell

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Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black

-- Johnny Cash, "Man in Black"

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Marriage is not a simple love affair, it's an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.

-- Joseph Campbell

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You have to stop listening in categories.  The music is either good or it's bad.

-- Duke Ellington

Hearing Fred L. Johnson

I was pleased to be able to hear Dr. Fred L. Johnson III speak last night at the Herrick District Library.  The Hope College history professor and author presented a talk entitled "The History of African Americans in West Michigan."

Quote of the Day

So little understanding exists between black and white America.  On the face of it we are at best civil with each other, but all too often this civility masks unresolved resentments and hatreds.  African Americans are repeatedly asked to reveal proof of the realities of racism to skeptical white people.  They reluctantly explain the countless incidents of discrimination, and even assaults directed at them and those they love.  Some cite the election of President Barack Obama as evidence that racism has ended.  More often than not, the response of the questioner is denial and disbelief, while the black person, having reopened wounds, is left frustrated and reinjured.

-- Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, p. 16

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The distrust many black people have for whites is often palpable.  The indifference of most whites to the black experience is contemptible.  The disparities with regard to health, wealth, and education are vast and expanding.  All of these things make it more difficult to live as a black person in America than as a white person.

-- Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, p. 16

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America's resistance to accepting responsibility for slavery and repairing the damage continues to prevent the nation from taking its place as the world's moral leader.

-- Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, p. 15-16

Hearing Joy DeGruy

I was pleased to be able to hear Dr. Joy DeGruy speak at the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Lecture at Hope College yesterday.  I am currently reading her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, and look forward to continuing to learn from her important work.

Quote of the Day

This, then, is racism: the belief that people differ along biological and genetic lines and that one's own group is superior to another group.  These beliefs are coupled with and compounded by the power to negatively affect the lives and limit the options of those perceived to be inferior.  America's history is inextricably bound to this racist ideology.  From the codifying of slavery to the belief in Manifest Destiny, to the treatment of illegal immigrants and the branding of them as criminals, rapists, or potential terrorists, many of America's actions continue to conflict with its creed that, "All men are created equal."

-- Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, p. 15

Quote of the Day

(Whenever I ask an audience) to identify how black racism adversely impacts the lives of white people as a group, there is silence.  There is silence, because while black people may have prejudices, and at times even feel hatred toward white people, perhaps even inspiring fear in many, the reality is that black people lack the power to affect the lives of white people, as a group, in the same way [as white people affect the lives of black people].  Black people's feelings toward white people do not preclude a white person's ability to get a loan, receive fair treatment by the justice system, acquire education, and so on.

-- Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, p. 14-15

Quote of the Day

Race is a concept of society that insists there is a genetic significance behind human variations in skin color that transcends outward appearance.  However, race has no scientific merit outside of sociological classifications.  There are no significant genetic variations within the human species to justify the division of "races."

-- James King, The Biology of Race

Quote of the Day

At the root of (racism) is the unchallenged belief that there are physical differences between people that account for the intellectual attributes and abilities of those people.  Since before Aristotle's time, people have been using the idea of racial difference to justify the subjugation and enslavement of those different and less powerful than themselves.  Such brutality and oppression in the name of racial superiority has occurred so many times, over so many years, that we, as a nation, can no longer recognize and acknowledge the simple beauty in the diversity of the human family.

-- Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, p. 12-13

Quote of the Day

Why was there so little racial tension in South Africa, a country with fresh, open wounds from apartheid?  And why was there so much racial tension in America, a country that supposedly put an end to its great sin of chattel slavery well over a hundred years ago, and its version of apartheid years prior to my visit to South Africa [in 1994]?  Perhaps South Africans experience so little tension compared to Americans because officially apartheid had such a short life span, about forty-five years.  Perhaps it is because in the end they voluntarily gave up their unjust system.  Perhaps it is because South Africa admitted their crimes to the world, and through the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (established in 1996, two years after apartheid was abolished), many whites in South Africa owned up to the crimes they committed against their black countrymen.  Maybe it is because South Africa has fought, suffered, and continues to struggle to establish justice and firm footing while in the plain sight of us all.

-- Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, p. 12

Quote of the Day

Those who have been the victims of years, decades, and centuries of oppression first must heal from injuries received first-hand, as well as those passed down through the ages.  Those who have been the perpetrators of those unspeakable crimes, and those who continue to benefit from those crimes, have to honestly confront their deeds and heal from the psychic wounds that come with being the cause and beneficiaries of such great pain and suffering.

-- Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, p. iv

Quote of the Day

(The crimes of subjugating, enslaving and exterminating one another) are perpetrated in a seemingly never-ending cycle.  The powerful oppress the less powerful, who in turn oppress those even less powerful than they.  These cycles of oppression leave scars on the victims and victors alike, scars that embed themselves in our collective psyches and are passed down through generations, robbing us of our humanity.  For who can be truly human under the weight of oppression that condemns them to a life of torment, robs them of a future, and saps their free will?  Moreover, who can become truly human when they gain so much from the pain and suffering of those whom they oppress and/or take advantage of?

-- Joy DeGruy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, p. iv

Bookin' It in 2018

I read the following 17 books in 2018. The titles in bold were particularly influential, inspiring or intriguing.

1. When We Rise: My Life in the Movement by Cleve Jones
2. What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton 
3. I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
4. Mister Rogers: A Biography of the Wonderful Life of Fred Rogers by Jennifer Warner
5. I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections by Nora Ephron
6. To Drink from the Silver Cup: From Faith Through Exile and Beyond by Anna Redsand
7. Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World by Jennifer Palmieri
8. Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead by Cecile Richards
9. What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson
10. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
11. Awkward Moments Children’s Bible: Volume #3 by Horus Gilgamesh
12. Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
13. Then Comes Marriage: How Two Women Fought for and Won Equal Dignity for All by Roberta Kaplan
14. Perfectly Clear: Escaping Scientology and Fighting for the Woman I Love by Michelle LeClair
15. What I Hate: From A to Z by Roz Chast
16. Notes from a Public Typewriter edited by Michael Gustafson and Oliver Uberti
17. Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks: A Librarian's Love Letters and Breakup Notes to the Books in Her Life by Annie Spence