For days I was eager to get back to my laptop to finally be able to write again. Really write. And here I am with a little time and peace and I feel empty rather than full. At the same time I do have a need and desire to share a few helpful/useful/peace-bringing reads which have made this challenging political moment a little less dim, a bit more manageable.
- Finding Hope in a Loveless Place by Tressie McMillan Cottom
Tressie has become a trusted source of wisdom, clarity and wit. In this post-election essay, she explains how so many “professionally smart people” completely misread the signs and signals that the Republican candidate could win. Understanding how she arrives at hopelessness as a point of departure requires more of the reader than surface comprehension, it demands empathy.
My hopelessness is faith in things yet seen and works yet done. Hopelessness is necessary for the hard work of resisting tyranny and fascism. It is the precondition for sustained social movements because history isn’t a straight line. It is a spinning top that eventually moves forward but also always goes round and round as it does.
- I’m Not Your Racial Confessor Jamelle Bouie, Gene Demby, Aisha Harris and Tressie McMillan Cottom
I love this conversation because it’s probably the only way I can “be in the same room with” these people I so deeply admire.
- The caretakers by Antonia Malchick
I described this essay on place and identity as a “gentle and exquisite read”.
“We live in a world where love of land, love of place, love of home, means very little. We might value it in literature, but if a place must be sacrificed for a higher use, meaning a use that generates money, then love will not save it. That doesn’t make the love any less real.”
- How To Face A Trump Presidency – Resist, Reconnect, Renew by Sarah van Gelder
This article is the most uplifting yet practical piece I’ve read since the election. Taking care of ourselves and our loved ones while resisting political bankruptcy is a tall order for long stretch. The article shares how to do both.
Our first task, then, is to get ready to resist in ways small and quiet, and large and loud…
Much of the progress in the coming years will happen locally—in cities and neighborhoods, and sometimes statewide. Cities are locally accountable and far less gridlocked by partisanship, and they have some latitude to get things done, even with a hostile federal government. City leaders understand the need for living wages, they value their immigrant populations, and they see firsthand the impacts of climate change. Change is still possible in our communities.
This collection of White House photos of the first family are, well, a little bit of comfort in stormy times.
By the way, The New Yorker has had some outstanding cartoons out these last few weeks. go treat yourself to some well crafted humor.
Be well, everyone. We have work to do and we have each other.
edifiedlistener 