Syllabus #57

Did we forget to agree on a safe word for 2020?

We are in some heavy times.  Here are some lows and some highs from the past week:


"This is not the social justice Coachella. This is not systemic racism Woodstock. This has to be a forever commitment, even after protest eventually subsides."

Maybe you have no soul, but you're a numbers person.  The numbers here don't lie - systemic racism has had a substantial, measurable impact on the financial well-being of black households.  How do we stop this?  And get right out of here with your whataboutism - What about Beyonce, or my poor white cousin Billy Ray?  Those are exceptions that prove the rule, and these numbers are averages. 

Have you watched Dave Chappelle's 8:46?  I haven't yet, but I think it's happening tonight.  I know it's going to cut deep and probably be uncomfortable, but necessary.  I don't agree with everything he says (I absolutely hate the jokes he makes about trans people) but he always has a powerful point to make about racism.  

Speaking of highs, do I have any parent friends who want their kid(s) to get an educational gift from Weird Aunt Katie?  

This is powerful.  Listen to this man speak from the heart.   

Bad boys, bad boys.

This NBF statue is trash, both in terms of what it represents and aesthetically.  It's a monument to inbred stupidity.

Oh thank GOD!  If you, like me, suffer from chronic overabundance of sorrel, LOOK NO FURTHER.  (If you are like me, you probably actually had to google what sorrel even was just now.)

I feel like there's a reason her name is Marie Kondo - her practices are designed to declutter a small living space.  What if you just like to be surrounded by a lot of crap?  I dunno how I feel about this.  When we purged a good 2/3 of our belongings two years ago, I felt so free and light and I never want to accumulate a bunch of crap ever again, but also, that might be an elitist viewpoint when I could, in a pinch, afford to replace anything I got rid of if I really needed to. 

Analog Reading:

Finished The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel.  I loved it.  I loved that at the surface, the book is about a Ponzi scheme, but it didn't center the villain/fraudster.  It wove together the strands of the lives the schemer unraveled in a very beautiful and compelling story.

Read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.  I found myself nodding and thinking "yes, of course," to a lot of what she lays out, even though I may not have consciously considered a lot of her points before, they all felt familiar and accurate.  She frames the problem of racism as a systemic problem in which even well-meaning white people who claim not to be racist participate, and from which we benefit.  Being not racist isn't simply not saying the n-word or waving at your black neighbors.  Being anti-racist is a lifelong process of examining the ways in which we as white people have benefited from a racist system, trying to disrupt that system in any way we can, searching out the biases and prejudices that we have absorbed, listening to black people/POC and accepting criticism, sincerely apologizing when we screw up, and making an effort to always do better.

Started Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan.  I'm reading it for my book club.  It's frivolous and fluffy but at the same time it's a window into a culture and lifestyle that I really don't know a lot about so I keep telling myself it's like the black bean brownies I make when I want to indulge but still feel smug about it.