inspiration – Peaceful Reader

Where is the love? asks Laverne Cox

Some days I have no words for what is going on in these United States of America. Other days I am bursting with words and often cursing is involved. What the !@#$* are we going through and why isn’t it fixed already? How is it possible that people are simply not enlightened enough to treat everyone they meet with respect? I realize this is simplistic for the racial strife our country has experienced since the first European settlers arrived on the shores of this beautiful land. The first settlements of people stuck it to the Native tribes and then when our ancestors needed help building the country up they stole people from a far away country and forced them into a caste system that continues to keep Black and other people of BIPOC as marginalized citizens, lesser than their white counterparts, continuing the history of slavery through our police forces, banking systems, and government structures. I cannot even say his name anymore but the man living in the WH who has specifically shut down the plan to rid military bases of Confederate names…I have no words for that $#%^&.

I am staying informed by listening to various podcasts, live webinars via Zoom, and Instagram BLM moments. I started following Kendrick Sampson on IG (kendrick38) because I love Issa Rae’s Insecure on HBO and Kendrick is leading the LA BLM protests and he is fierce. I heard him first on Kerry Washington’s account after she lead a short yoga session. I am getting inspiration from Tori Williams Douglass’s podcast White Homework as well as Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us. Yesterday I listened to a new episode of Unlocking Us with Laverne Cox and heard about her new Netflix documentary Disclosure dropping this Friday night! After the deaths of Riah Milton and Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells I think this is an important piece of information for better understanding.

I cannot say that George Floyd’s death started this all because it’s been deeply brewing for quite awhile but I am grateful that an uprising may come out of this event. Every time I’ve been part of a “moment of silence” for George Floyd those almost 9 minutes drag out and cause me to cry because it’s a long fucking time. It shows me intent from that officer to do great harm. It is a dehumanizing act.

I am also reading a ton of books and I’ll save that list for another post…

Stay brave, Stay kind, Stay informed~Think outside your everyday life. Empathy is such an important skill. Err on the side of positive through action…

Beautiful October…

Greetings! I’ve had this blog post milling about in my head since October 1st and I just didn’t take the time to get it down in this format. It seems that is a tough leap to make for me some months. The ideas are there yet they stay swirling around in my head. I’m making a promise to myself to do better; my goal for the month.

This month I took a class entitled It takes a Family from the Safe Schools Academy. The coursework was great and doable and part of one assignment was video chronicling an LGBT celebration at a Quaker school in New York. What a different world we would live in if every school could celebrate diversity this way. There are other classes I want to take from this group including one, On Wednesdays we wear pink: understanding the politics of girl world. Each class is only one graduate credit yet the interesting social justice issues are more relevant than many other grad credits. Each class I take leads me to something else, some other big moment in my constant life-long learner journey.

This video by Courtney Ferrell popped up while watching the Quaker school celebration. I want to pass it along because it is just how I feel about empowering young woman. We all need to “Girl Up” ourselves so we can pass that deep love on to others in our families and community. But we can’t just “Girl Up”; we also have to Man Up because we cannot leave our young men behind allowing them to think they can make disrespectful decisions just because they are young, drunk, or just didn’t know better. It’s up to us to teach them to be an important connection in our community. We need to hold hands with other women to create change for ourselves. We also need to connect with men in a deeper way as well so we can be our allies. What an amazing world we could live in if women and men learned to work together for the greater good-like real solutions for climate change instead of the male-dominated world we now try to exist in. And it’s important to always have some mad money tucked in our bra just in case…

No disservice to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford at all because what she did was very brave but the girls of today need to speak up right away. Tell someone. This situation would look very different if Ford had shared this story with one adult or mentor. So women of today speak out to one adult, your roommate, someone at school so the facts are there. In this instance, the current administration wasn’t looking for a real solution but if one woman did have it on record of Kavanaugh’s behaviour his career would have looked very different.

This morning I shared the video with Groovy Girl and her response was “I know all that and it isn’t easy”-I agree but you have to keep trying. Here’s another Courtney Ferrell TedTalk to keep you motivated and energized. I like how she empowers one person from the audience by bringing them into her space on stage. Have some kind of creative day today!

The end of the month is trudging along

What an unusual April it has been! I’ve made some good food, read some interesting books, and watched some interesting shows/movies with my family.

A long walk to water by Linda Sue Park (2010): This is a fictionalized story of one boy caught up in the Sudanese conflict with alternating sections sharing a young girl’s story as she spends her days carrying water. The stories come together in such a meaningful way; I finished this one in the car as I was waiting for my teenage dancer. If you were watching you would have witnessed me crying in my car. Highly recommend for many readers of all ages.

Green Angel by Alice Hoffman (2004): A short dystopian tale of a young girl left behind after her parents and younger sister take a trip into the city to sell vegetables never to return. The language and descriptions are beautiful and it is an amazing story of Green’s rebirth.

Lost in the sun by Lisa Graff (2015): I read this a few years ago and didn’t love it, then I assigned it to 6th-grade book club and read it again. I liked it much better this time around. I enjoyed Trent’s character more and understood the angst. The parents in the story left me wondering why they did seek help for him and especially thought the dad was an insensitive character.

Choosing Civility; The 25 rules of considerate conduct by P.M. Forni (2003): Forni teaches at the university level and saw a need for an introduction to manners for students. This book is a wonderful refresher course on rules we know but often don’t put into practice. Buy it for yourself or for someone you think could use it.

Curried Lentils: Delicious and easy. We had them with rice first and then another night wrapped in tortillas and heated. Oh so good. She has a similar recipe for curried chickpeas as well.

Chicken & black bean Enchiladas: I made these at the beginning of last week so we would have a few easy dinners. Groovy Girl is really good at making her own food but that takes time and right now she is short on that ingredient so I whipped up this batch of enchiladas so she wouldn’t have to make anything for a few days. I left out the pumpkin this time and used free-range local chicken from our meat market.

Atypical (Netflix)-watched by myself, then with Groovy Girl, and now want to watch with husband. Tells the story of a young autistic named Sam and his crazy yet also normal family. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Sam’s mom. We love his sister, Casey and her boyfriend, Evan.
Everything Sucks! (Netflix)-We only watch this one altogether. It’s about high school students at Boring High, OR. And in doing some googling discovered this show has been cancelled after one season-that really sucks Netflix. Everybody rush to watch this first season…
On my block (Netflix)-Groovy Girl and I watched this series in one night and cannot wait for more. I plan to watch again with husband when his schedule frees up a little. A small group of LA teens who live on the same block try to focus on surviving their neighborhood. Excellent performances by all!
The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu)-yes, I’m still watching. I waited to read the book and then I’ve tried to take it slow. It is a tough show to watch and gives me the chills.

Speaking of chills we went yesterday on a family outing to see The Quiet Place. I loved it and I am not a fan at all of anything scary. No Jason for me, no slashers, no creepy houses, etc. This one was more of a scary dystopian with loveable characters. John Krasinski wrote, directed, and produced this one and his talented wife Emily Blunt plays his wife. Give it a try; truthfully I only closed my eyes once or twice and I brought headphones (one reviewer said this might help) but didn’t end up using them much.

This post sums up my whole month except for some major family downs, two road trips, lots of dance classes, and a few friend celebrations. What do you have to share back with me?

Happy birthday to Dr. Martin Luther King; what would he say now?

What a mess we are in and yet I see hope everyday-we’ve got to stick together and make a difference. Children today have spent the last 8 years with a black president-a graceful, well-spoken, thoughtful, intelligent, and well-educated president. I know, for the most part, this is my “opinion”-stating things like this can start a small twitter war with all kinds of hateful comments. I will miss the Obama family in the WH.

I am not looking forward to a Trump presidency; he has no backbone, is only focused on his own opinion, uses bluster and smoke instead of facts and clear thinking, and lives in opposite land with a silver spoon clutched in his fist. His nickname should be Puff Daddy but that insults the actual Sean Combs. A rooster, maybe. With the flurry over comments made by Congressman John Lewis about the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency based on Russian hacking (which I agree with btw) and DT’s response all during Dr. King’s weekend. It’s hard to see how we are moving forward cuz we some days we aren’t. We are moving ten to 1,000 steps backwards and that is scary folks.

Generally we are a family that does something to commemorate this holiday, even if it is just a discussion about Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement. I had a planned volunteer opportunity this year, packing food boxes, at The University of Northern Iowa. It was cancelled due to extreme icy weather. We took that open time to see “Hidden Figures” to enlighten ourselves. We did slide down our driveway in our little Prius but the roads were okay. Groovy Girl and our second “daughter”, her best friend, came with us. The movie is well-done and we came out filled with discussion. What if we’d known their story in the 60’s/70’s; it could have changed the playing field a long time ago for women and POC in stem. Reading this NPR article confirmed my thoughts-we should have known their stories years ago but at least we have them now. Frankly we can use the inspiration right now!

From the article:

Johnson, who became a high school freshman at age 10, says she always liked learning. She’s concerned about today’s youth relying so heavily on the Internet for information. “They’re hurt and don’t know it,” she says quietly. “They’re not using their brain. … And you’ve got to use your brain for it to grow and for things to be learned.”

As a teacher/librarian I couldn’t agree more with this thought shared by Johnson, a 98-year old mathematician. We need kids to realize the damage they are doing by staring at screens nonstop and expecting Siri and Alexa to answer the questions.

Go see this movie, keep an open mind, educate yourself, be kind and thoughtful, do not take the bait, be ready to speak up, and remember, always remember, the peaceful path Dr. King took even while he was jailed and mocked. What would his tweets look like today?

I just finished Sugar by Jewell Parker Rhodes (excellent elementary fiction about Reconstruction era) and am now reading Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (harsh but a very gripping tale).

For the LOVE of reading.

Last night I was sitting on the quiet side of the dance studio where my daughter gracefully dances and I was reading a book. I’d brought two books with me; The Light between oceans by M.L. Stedman and Donalyn Miller’s book The Book Whisperer. I’ve been trying to read Miller’s book for the last two years as I’ve had many people recommend it to me. I’ve even had one friend tell me that the book sounds just like me! With that said and after only reading the first few pages I came upon this quote which DOES describe me to a T!

“I am a reader, a flashlight-under-the-covers, carries-a-book-everywhere-I-go, don’t-look-at-my-Amazon-bill reader. I choose purses based on whether I can cram a paperback into them, and my books are the first items I pack into a suitcase. I am the person whom family and friends call when they need a book recommendation or cannot remember who wrote Heidi. (It was Johanna Spyri.)

My identity as a person is so entwined with my love of reading and books that I cannot separate the two. I am as much a composite of all the book characters I have loved as of the people I have met. I will never climb Mount Everest, but I have seen its terrifying majestic summit through the eyes of Jon Krakauer and Peak Marcello. Going to New York City for the first time, at forty, was like visiting an old friend I knew from E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale. I wanted to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, hide in the bathroom until it closed, and look for angels. I know from personal experience that readers lead richer lives, more lives, than those who don’t read.”(10-11)

I’ll stop there but I could even go into the next paragraph which furthers her (and my) LOVE of reading! I was crushed when we visited this summer and never made it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but in fairness I was there years ago as a teenager. I ask my children to take a book with them wherever we go-you never know when you might be stuck in the car or an elevator or in line and have just a few minutes to read a page or two. I can’t wait to finish typing this post so I can read my school lunchtime book, Ungifted by Gordan Korman. What has you inspired?