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[aspiringwaterbender]

Kamala And The Flag

*Note, wrote most of this post weeks ago and just never got around to publishing it. Two final takeaways from the Democratic National Convention. The first is that there sure was a lot of flag waving. Which reminded me of this post from July 2018 in which I said it was sad how the flag of my own country had been coopted by one side and how it should be reclaimed. #ReclaimTheFlag Again, I’m…

[aspiringwaterbender]

At Last

I’m not saying the Democrats are listening to me. Nobody listens to me. At sixty, I’m fine with that. (At sixty I have decided to turn into one of those people who prefaces every statement by saying, “At sixty …”) But I will just say that I’m sure if I had the energy to look back through all these blog posts I could find a couple making some of the points being made, belatedly but well, at the…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Uncle David and Uncle Jimmy

Just listened to this AMAZING podcast of how a BBC journalist discovered that thousands of James Baldwin’s personal and professional effects are being stored in the home of a British woman living in the South of France, a woman who just happened to fall in love with David Baldwin, Jimmy’s beloved brother. She has tried to reach out to various institutions to no avail, and fears it will all just…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Time May Change Me

So this week those ever-helpful scientists released research that shows we don’t age gradually but in accelerated bursts, and that two of these occur around the ages of 44 and then again at 60. Which is the age I turned this year. So this was interesting news to me. But last night I was thinking: you know, this wouldn’t be so bad if we also had accelerated bursts of emotional and psychological…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Belonging, Meaning, Purpose, PT 2

Last weekend I watched a documentary called Join or Die, which I highly recommend. I learned about in this article in The Guardian. (Aside: The Guardian is a great newspaper. I read it every morning to take the taste of the Washington Post and the NY Times out of my mouth.) The documentary is about the work of social scientist Robert Putnam, who wrote the book Bowling Alone. That book, and the…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Life is a Series of Worthwhile Distractions

Stop me if you’ve heard this, but years ago I went to an AA meeting with a friend. I was in the throes of my depression, searching for a lifeline, and although I was not an alcoholic, my friend thought perhaps the structure and community might be helpful. On the way there I joked that I sometimes wished there was something I liked well enough to get addicted to – not drugs or alcohol but…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Belonging, Purpose, Meaning, Pt 1

Question: what do the Army and the Marines, the Nation of Islam, your place of worship and mine, the student encampments from the past spring, a bowling league and a Trump rally all have in common? Answer: belonging and meaning. Or, put another way, community and purpose. More and more I am convinced that these two powerful human needs are the motivation (and the explanation) for so much human…

[aspiringwaterbender]

100 Days of Baldwin, Birthday Edition

This is from a 1961 talk given at a forum hosted by the Liberation Committee for Africa on the subject of nationalism, colonialism and US foreign policy. Baldwin speaks more about nationalism than foreign policy, though he does label the US policy towards most of Africa as paternalistic and exploitative. He begins by recalling the famous reassurance he got from Robert Kennedy during the equally…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Serve and Protect

From The Washington Post: The day before Sonya Massey was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Illinois, her mother called 911 seeking help. She said Massey was having a mental breakdown — and she implored law enforcement officers not to harm her daughter, newly released 911 recordings show. “I don’t want you guys to hurt her, please,” Donna Massey said around 9 a.m. on July 5. When the…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Happy Birthday, Uncle Jimmy

August 2 will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of James Baldwin. I think I will make a cake. Here is a great photo of Baldwin talking to Jerome Smith, a civil rights activist, outside the Broadway theater where his play, Blues for Mister Charlie, was playing. The play was neither a commercial nor a critical success but Baldwin believed the critical reaction of the White liberal reviewers…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Black Women Will Have to Save Ourselves

It’s easy to become numb to these things. My next post will be about my theory that life is mostly a series of worthwhile distractions, and, certainly I have my share. How else to explain that police in the U.S. have killed 746 people so far this year but this is the first time I have cried for one of them? Given that Black people are 2.9x more likely than White people to be killed by police, it…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Black Women Are Not Here To Save You

I really need to stop reading newspaper comment sections, even those at the Washington Post. They raise my blood pressure, and I’m now at the age when such a rise can be considered dangerous. So let me just say this to the typical WaPo reader, (70ish, White, liberal, naive, smugly ignorant of the people and the myriad and rich ways of living in the flyover states -there is this sliver of truth…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Black Women Are Not Here To Save You

I really need to stop reading newspaper comment sections, even those at the Washington Post. They raise my blood pressure, and I’m now at the age when such a rise can be considered dangerous. So let me just say this to the typical WaPo reader, (70ish, White, liberal, naive, smugly ignorant of the people and the myriad and rich ways of living in the flyover states -there is this sliver of truth…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Vive La France!

What a time to be in Europe, watching the future play out. Perhaps it’s just a sign of how disheartened I am at the state of my own country, but last night’s election results in France nearly brought me to tears of joy. I was, I will say, heartened, even thrilled to see the French, for all their faults and flaws and arrogance, rally when it counted most. History is alive in Europe in a way we…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Hope

It’s odd towards the British for hope. I’m in Europe, in the Netherlands– which, like France and Italy and much of the rest of the so-called civilized West, is not just flirting with fascism but has already gone willingly if drunkenly into the bedroom and closed the door– and the feeling of foreboding and menace lurking beneath the pale and lingering evening sun (last night the light did not fade…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Changes

Yesterday was 60. It was anticlimactic in a good way, not only because I tossed a party for myself two weeks ago but because I’ve been thinking of myself as 60 for at least six months and so the day itself was just another day, mostly. I did wake up thinking, “Well, if I had died yesterday the obituary would say 59 but if I die today it will say 60.” So there’s that. It’s been quite the year for…

[aspiringwaterbender]

Changes

Last week was a helluva week, and not in a good way. At some point I will write about it. In the meantime: And these children that you spit on/As they try to change their worlds/Are immune to your consultations/They’re quite aware of what they’re going through As always: I wish Uncle Jimmy were here.