Bookin' It in 2023

The year 2023 was the most difficult year of my life, for a number of reasons.  I found it nearly impossible to focus on reading for pleasure, but I was able to finish the following four books.

1. The Apology by Eve Ensler
   
2. The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel  
3. Look Again: A Memoir by Elizabeth A. Trembley
4. Practicing to Walk Like a Heron: Poems by Jack Ridl 

Quote of the Day

Life will break you.  Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning.  You have to love.  You have to feel.  It is the reason you are here on earth.  You have to risk your heart.  You are here to be swallowed up.  And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.  Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

-- Louise Erdrich

Hearing MK Czewiec and Elizabeth Trembley

Last night, I had the pleasure of experiencing two authors/educators/graphic artists, MK Czerwiec and Elizabeth Trembley, speak at Hope College's first Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series event of the school year.

Quote of the Day

I've been exposed to the incredible world of music from day one.  I slowly collected songs like rolling around in a pile of leaves in wet clothes.  Everything is sticking to you slowly.  It's amazing how much music a person is exposed to and how it alters your life.

-- Ralph Towner

Quote of the Day

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.

-- Mary Oliver

Quote of the Day

I don't do anything in order to cause trouble.  It just so happens that what I do naturally causes trouble.  I'm proud to be a troublemaker.

I don't do anything in order to cause trouble. It just so happens that what I do naturally causes trouble. I'm proud to be a troublemaker.
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/sinead-oconnor-quotes

-- Sinead O'Connor

Quote of the Day

I think grief treats me best when I'm channeling the people I've lost through my current living.  For example, the best example I can give of this also goes back to music.  There are a couple songs that I love, that I'm really drawn to, but they're songs I'm loving because I know (a close friend who passed away) would love them.  And so I am loving them through him.  Or there are things I know how to make, to cook or bake because I watched my mother do it.  I think grief treats us well when these parts of people that we've gotten to enjoy greet us warmly.  That's the real gift, to say I am not just one person, I am multiple versions of a person and some of those versions of myself have been loved immensely by people who were so incredible.  Through their loving of me I have a richer texture, and that texture that allows me to navigate the world in ways that I am not equipped to do so on my own.  And that means that on my best days I get through the world, through the challenges of living, navigated by a whole host of people who have created a generous blueprint through which I have learned to maneuver this life well.

--  Hanif Abdurraqib

Quote of the Day

If I hope for anything as an artist, it's that I inspire certain people to be who they really are.  My audiences seem to be people who have been given a hard time for being who they are.

-- Sinead O'Connor

Quote of the Day

My process now if I'm in a state of depression or anxiety, both of which I have lived with for much of my life, I ask myself in the morning, "How good do I feel about being alive today?"  Thankfully these days, more times than not, the answer is at the very least, "Pretty good."  Some days it's "very good."  But there are some days where the answer is, "Not very good at all."  And then it becomes a descending clock.  It's no longer, "How do I feel about being alive today?" it's "How do I feel about being alive this hour?"  And if the answer is still "Not very good" then it's, "How do I feel about being alive in the next 20 minutes?"  If the answer is still "Not very good" then it gets a little more urgent and I ask, "What curiosity can propel me towards the next five minutes?"  If I move through the day I will find an accumulation of things that propel me to the next day where the answer might be different and better.

--  Hanif Abdurraqib

Quote of the Day

I'm of the belief that one doesn't move past loss.  Or at least in my life, I don't move past loss.  Grief makes a home within us if we allow it to ... I believe that I should be a generous steward to my grief.  If I tend generously to my grief then it treats me well in return.  That means that each time I'm confronted with the grief, I have a new depth of tools to move through it.  Understanding that grief is not only tied to death or loss, but grief of the various heartbreaks we live with.

--  Hanif Abdurraqib

Quote of the Day

In some ways music, if nothing else, builds these small monuments to people that I can always hold onto.  There are songs that operate as monuments to people I've lost and they make a park of monuments that I can return to.

--  Hanif Abdurraqib

Meeting Elizabeth A. Trembley

I enjoyed hearing and meeting author Elizabeth A. Trembley at Out on the Lakeshore tonight.  She spoke about her graphic memoir, Look Again, as well as the magic of making comics.

Quote of the Day

Fortune favors the prepared mind.

-- Louis Pasteur

Quote of the Day

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

-- Voltaire

Quote of the Day

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

-- Alice Walker

Quote of the Day

Before this [CD] collection (and the growing arsenal of records in the next room over ...) is inevitably handled down or tubbed up, it will remember the story of my life better than my battered brain ever could on its own.

-- Kris Swales, "Friends mock me for keeping my CDs, but I can't bear to part with these postcards from my past" 

Quote of the Day

Listening to music should be an immersive experience.  Streaming music [on the other hand] is something you mostly do while you're doing something else.

-- Kris Swales, "Friends mock me for keeping my CDs, but I can't bear to part with these postcards from my past"

Quote of the Day

Running my eye across my [CD] collection is like flicking through a shoebox filled with love letters and postcards from my past: the exhilarating highs, the soul-crushing lows, sprinklings of the drudgery in between.

-- Kris Swales, "Friends mock me for keeping my CDs, but I can't bear to part with these postcards from my past"

Quote of the Day

And what, you ask, is a life without wonder?  It is drab and dreary.  It is one of imposed certainty and compulsory routine.  It is devoid of splendor and excitement with a bolted doorway to astonishment.

So what, then, becomes of men's passion and intensity?  It is rerouted early on into dominance, aggression, and competition.

-- Eve Ensler, The Apology, p. 103

Quote of the Day

Implicit in wonder is humility.  To surrender to what is larger and unknown, to that vast, mysterious universe of which you are a tiny dot.

-- Eve Ensler, The Apology, p. 102

Quote of the Day

Curiosity is a form of generosity.  Implicit in it is the recognition of another, requiring the puncturing of the vain inglorious shell of self-importance.

-- Eve Ensler, The Apology, p. 101-102

Quote of the Day

... I knew too well the devastating consequences of not being seen, of disappearing in a family that never expressed any curiosity about who I really was, but determined my identity based on their own projections, fears, and needs.

-- Eve Ensler, The Apology, p. 101

Quote of the Day

I refused to know or see you.  And this in some ways was the most destructive and punishing deprivation.  Isn't that all any us crave, really?  To be known?  To be given shape and form by being recognized and cherished?  For how else can we trust that we are even here?  And perhaps that is why I became so extreme.  Because I was invisible to myself, because I had been erased, I needed to find ways to experience my existence and feel my impact on others.  For what is violence but energy given substance and force?

-- Eve Ensler, The Apology, p. 100

Quote of the Day

An apologist is a traitor of the highest order.  How many men, how many fathers ever admit to failures or offenses?  The act itself is a betrayal of the basic code.  It sprays shrapnel of guilt in all directions.  If one of us is wrong, the whole structure and story come tumbling down.  Our silence is our bond.  The power of not telling, of not letting on, is the most ancient and powerful weapon in our arsenal.

-- Eve Ensler, The Apology, p. 83

Quote of the Day

How much self-awareness does a life of privilege and entitlement afford the entitled?  If you are birthed into a particular paradigm that serves you, what would compel you to look outside?

-- Eve Ensler, The Apology, p. 63

Quote of the Day

Make the victim of your lie the liar.  Commit wholeheartedly to this, embellish the story constantly, repeat the narrative faithfully and consistently so that you and everyone around you eventually forget the original lie and certainly lose the compulsion, will, or courage to pursue the truth.  Isn't this the story of so much of history?  The powerful create the lie, package it, and propel it on its way for all eternity.

-- Eve Ensler, The Apology, p. 59

Quote of the Day

I have asked myself, What is an apology?  It is a humbling.  It is an admission of wrongdoings and a surrender.  It is an act of intimacy and connection which requires great self-knowledge and insight.

-- Eve Ensler, The Apology, p. 9

Quote of the Day

I am done waiting.  My father is long dead.  He will never say the words to me.  He will not make the apology.  So it must be imagined.  For it is in our imagination that we can dream across boundaries, deepen the narrative, and design alternative outcomes.

-- Eve Ensler, The Apology, Intro

Quote of the Day

The most important thing I've learned is that what you do will never define you for long.  Who you are always will.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 92

Quote of the Day

What I learned is that the most inspiring thing on earth is a woman who believes in herself, who gives 100 percent, and who owns her greatness unapologetically.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 66

Quote of the Day

Revolutions begin with a collective belief.  The Wolfpack's belief is that scarcity is a lie.  That power and success and joy are not pies.  A bigger slice for one woman doesn't mean a smaller slice for another.  We believe that love, justice, success, and power are infinite and meant to be accessible to all.  Revolutions are won with collective action.  We will take action on behalf of all of us.  We will help each other.  We will rush toward each other.  We will point to each other.  We will claim infinite joy, success, and power -- together.  We will celebrate the success of one woman as a collective success for all women.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 58-59

Quote of the Day

Championing each other can be difficult for women because for so long we have been pitted against each other for the token seat at the table.  Maintaining the illusion of scarcity is how power keeps women competing for the singular seat at the old table, instead of uniting and building a new, bigger table.  Scarcity has been planted inside of us and among us.  This is not our fault -- but it is our problem to solve.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 58

Quote of the Day

The world needs to see women take risks, fail big, and insist on their right to stick around and try again.  And again.  And again.  A champion never allows a short-term failure to take her out of the long-term game.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 51

Quote of the Day

Perfection is not a prerequisite of leadership.  But we can forgive ourselves for believing it is.  We've been living by the old rules that insist that a woman must be perfect before she's worthy of showing up.  Since no one is perfect, this rule is an effective way to keep women out of leadership preemptively.  It's time for a new rule.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 48

Quote of the Day

Imperfect men have been empowered and permitted to run the world since the beginning of time.  It's time for imperfect women to grant themselves permission to join them.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 48

Quote of the Day

Women haven't yet accessed the power of failure.  When it comes, we panic, deny it, or reject it outright.  Worst-case scenario, we view failure as proof that we were always unworthy imposters.  Men have been allowed to fail and keep playing forever.  Why do we let failure take us out of the game?

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 48

Quote of the Day

The picture of leadership is not just a man at the head of a table.  It's also every woman who is allowing her own voice to guide her life and the lives of those she cares about.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 40

Quote of the Day

Every woman is the  leader of her own life.  Do not give up that power.  Claim it.  Value it.  Use it.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 40

Quote of the Day

Here's what important: You are allowed to be disappointed when it feels like life's benched you.  What you aren't allowed to do is miss your opportunity to lead from the bench.  If you're not a leader on the bench, don't call yourself a leader on the field.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 40

Quote of the Day

When we think of leaders, who do we imagine?  Politicians?  CEOs?  Coaches?  I know that's who I usually think of.  Here's my question: Why don't we think of ourselves?  Maybe because our cultural understanding of leadership has omitted far too many of us for far too long.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 35

Quote of the Day

I spent most of my time during my career the same way I'd spent my time on that ESPYS stage.  Just feeling grateful.  I was so grateful for a paycheck, so grateful to represent my country, so grateful to be the token woman at the table, so grateful to receive any respect at all that I was afraid to use my voice to demand more for myself -- and equality for all of us.  What keeps the pay gap in existence is not just the entitlement and complicity of men.  It's the gratitude of women.  Our gratitude is how power uses the tokenism of a few women to keep the rest of us in line.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 31

Quote of the Day

Old Rule: Be grateful for what you have.

New Rule: Be grateful for what you have AND demand what you deserve.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 25

Quote of the Day

When I  was young, I was told: Good girls wear dresses.  I hated wearing dresses.  I'd look at myself in the mirror when I was wearing a dress and the pit in my stomach would rise to my throat.  I'd stare at myself and think: I don't like how this looks or how this feels.  This is not me.  I felt the need to hold my breath from the second that dress went on until the second I pulled it off.  It felt like I was in a costume, hiding who I really was in order to fit in, to be good.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 18-19

Quote of the Day

Old Rule: Stay on the path.

New Rule: Create your own path.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 15

Quote of the Day

Women must stop following the Old Rules, which exist only to maintain the status quo.  If we follow the rules we've always followed, the game will remain the same.  Old ways of thinking will never help us build a new world.  Out with the Old.  In with the New.

-- Abby Wambach, Wolfpack, p. 14