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“There was something about Mary Stuart that was just so easy from the first minute I met her, and so natural, that we would and should be friends.”  –Mary Louise Parker

“It was like love at first sight.” –Mary Stuart Masterson

The Making of Fried Green Tomatoes (blu ray bonus features)

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Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019)

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“The moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever for the better. It’s an enormous force for good.”

— Barack Obama (b. 4 August 1961)

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PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (2019) DIR. CÉLINE SCIAMMA

When you’re observing me, who do you think I’m observing?

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Still sisters, nearly one year old now!

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Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation

By John Lewis

Published in the New York Times, July 30, 2020

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.

Though I was surrounded by two loving parents, plenty of brothers, sisters and cousins, their love could not protect me from the unholy oppression waiting just outside that family circle. Unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles or an innocent morning jog down a lonesome country road into a nightmare. If we are to survive as one unified nation, we must discover what so readily takes root in our hearts that could rob Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina of her brightest and best, shoot unwitting concertgoers in Las Vegas and choke to death the hopes and dreams of a gifted violinist like Elijah McClain.

Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.

You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, though decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.

Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.

When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.

Mr. Lewis, the civil rights leader who died on July 17, wrote this essay shortly before his death, to be published upon the day of his funeral.

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Wear a damn mask, or facehugger will help.

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My heart is broken, Congressman John Lewis, last of the big 5 Civil Rights leaders has passed away at the age of 80 after a fight with cancer. Now he belongs to the Ages. Go and cause some good trouble. 

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Robin Wright as General Antiope in Wonder Woman (2017)

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Breaking: The government has agreed to rescind DHS and ICE rules barring international students attending online universities from staying in the U.S., per a hearing this afternoon in Harvard and MIT’s lawsuit against the agencies. 

ICE will revert back to the guidance it issued in March that allows students taking online courses to reside in the United States on F-1 visas. 

THIS IS GREAT NEWS - PLEASE SHARE!!!!

DHS and ICE Rescind Policy Barring International Students Taking Online Courses

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International students are the lifeblood of academic institutions and forge invaluable bonds between us all. To use them as bargaining chips—in service of a pandemic, no less—is reprehensible and makes us a lesser nation in every sense of the word.

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wishing tree

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Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.

- Joan Didion

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"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” by Frederick Douglass, read by James Earl Jones

“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.”

Read the full transcript here

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Important ideas to consider when creating characters who are black and indigenous people of color. (x) (Creator’s instagram post)