Well hi my friends.
I’m going to take a couple weeks off from posting. I’ll be back in early August.
This is not really a vacation because in the first place I’m retired, and besides we can’t travel. But I’ve fallen behind on a few obligations, and I won’t feel right until I catch up. Sometimes you need to stare out across the ocean to feel peace, and sometimes you need to pick up your hoe.
What obligations might a retired lady of the suburbs have? A few. My mother’s house is for sale and I have to support that process. I owe reading and comments to other writers who’ve given me their time. My stovetop is stupidly dirty. And there’s the infinite project of becoming as fully human as possible. Sometimes that’s weird and internal and anxiety-provoking, and sometimes it’s just about picking up the phone and connecting.
I’m going to leave you with my to-do list to act for racial justice. Maybe work soothes your soul too.
- Make sure that at least 15% of the books I read, Netflix I watch, and social media I consume is created by Black writers and artists. To be honest, this is not hard given the talent out there.
- (Also I try make sure that some of these people really, really challenge me. I recommend @sonyareneetaylor on Instagram. This is hard, if you’re thin-skinned like me, but so useful.)
- Buy from Black businesses. Aim for 15% of personal spend. (It helps to build a list of businesses that you can return to.)
- Donate. I give monthly via ActBlue, to Color of Change and the Equal Justice Initiative.
- Work in my personal network. I’m doing legwork for my university’s alumni association to support webinars on racial justice by Black classmates.
Off to hoe my row. Not hoeing a road, by the way, that’s not a thing. Imagine the clang of a metal head on asphalt. It’s better to work in good dirt, or, let’s say, good trouble.
RIP, Representative John Lewis.
Have a wonderful weekend and I look forward to coming back soon.
38 Responses
I highly recommend Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals for an eye-opening history of slavery in the US.
@Cara, I would recommend instead Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (fiction, but historically correct and far-reaching, How To Be An Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (also fiction, in a YA voice,) and anything by Ta-Nisi Coates.
Another source of information of the history since slavery, interestingly enough, House Beautiful. https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/a33301905/what-is-redlining-real-estate-black-america/
@Lisa: Lisa, thank you so much for posting these reading suggestions as well as the to-do list. The House Beautiful article was excellent. I love Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates and have filled my Amazon cart with the other two titles you recommended. If I could recommend one, The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes is the first book that ever truly made me cry. Repeatedly (it’s a collection of short stories). I would recommend it for anyone. Take care of yourself, and I’ll look forward to hearing from you again after your break. <3
Thank you Jess. Langston Hughes is a treasure and I really appreciate the recommendation.
Have a restful and productive break, Lisa! Your mother’s house is exquisite, and it must be excruciatingly painful to see it sold. Homes hold so much emotion, so many memories. I can’t bear to think of the lovely house and neighborhood where I raised my sons, sold in the divorce.
Thank you for the action suggestions.
@Marie, Thank you. I am sorry your house is gone. But I am sure new homes await.
Thanks for the link to your mother’s house – the grounds and view are
breathtakingly beautiful. What a treat it must have been to visit her there!
Have a great stay-cation, and come back refreshed, renewed, and ready for (more) action – we’ll all be here waiting for you…
@Victoire, It was a wonderful place to gather. Thank you. See you soon xoxo.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, LIsa (as you often do). What is so appalling about the last three years is that many people are going out of their way to diminish their humanity other than feeding emphathy’s cup. And speaking of humanity, losing the physical space of a loved one to others is one of the hardest things I have ever done. Many wonderful holidays at my mother’s table are no longer tethered to a place. But they do live on in my memories. So cyber hugs. Maybe TWO cyber hugs.
@Claire, Thank you. What a beautiful comment. Hugs right back at you, in gratitude.
I highly recommend Brit Bennett’s “The Vanishing Half.” See you in August!
@Leslie K, I’ve heard really good buzz for that book. Thanks for the reminder.
Lisa,
You are doing the right thing taking a break. Sometimes, I don’t know how you do it all.
Thanks for the courage to share details of your life. I am not often able to do so and perhaps, I can learn from you.
Luci
@luci, I hope you feel that you can share anything here you feel like. xox.
I shall miss your thoughtful insight. Take care of yourself and those you love while you do the necessary.
@Jacqueline, Thank you!
You are prolific and I will miss your photographs and posts. Enjoy the quiet. We all need that sometimes, even in our own homes.
@Dawn, Thank you. Especially because I am constantly feeling like I don’t produce enough!
Equally admirable if not equally difficult: “My stovetop is stupidly dirty. And there’s the infinite project of becoming as fully human as possible. Sometimes that’s weird and internal and anxiety-provoking, and sometimes it’s just about picking up the phone and connecting.”
I still take mental walks through childhood homes, thirty years after the last one was sold.
@Barbara, What a lovely thought, to walk through your childhood home in your mind.
Any film directed by Ava Duvernay.
@Anita, Yes.
Enjoy your time. A bit of a reset is always nice. Also, getting that to-do list accomplished always feels good. See you again, sometime in August. Until then!
@Susan, Until then!
Lisa,
Why would you recommend those books “instead”?
I’ve not read the “anti-racist” book; I just don’t agree with the premise that any differences in circumstances are the result of racism. There are cultural differences (which derive from white redneck culture of the South) that account for at some differences in circumstances. I do not believe that “systemic racism” exists, though I believe strongly that there are many individual racists.
@Cara, I would recommend the other books instead because from the sound of it, and from Sowell’s other work, I think he will challenge no one here to believe anything new. I might say that I held similar beliefs myself, (except that I have always acknowledged that Black Americans of any social class and background faced more discrimination and bias than white Americans of similar social class and background) until I read the history of laws, policies, and business practices that have systemically denied wealth to Black Americans. When it was not denied, once it accrued, it was seized. And this is after slavery, and not in the South.
oh, you’re mother’s house is beautiful, now added to my lottery dream list:). I am with you on the stovetop. I need to attack it with an old toothbrush and feel I have something in my life under control. Thanks for the reading list recommendations.
@amanda, Thank you! And my old toothbrush is right under the kitchen sink, waiting for me…
Best wishes with your hoeing. On a completely different note, I decided to read Fleishman Is In Trouble based on your recommendation on the High Heels in the Wilderness blog. I am enjoying it immensely. But since the novel is about a short male doctor, I can’t help but picture Tony Fauci as Fleishman. As you might imagine, that mental picture makes it difficult to watch Fauci on TV without my smiling and feeling like I know way too much about his private life.
@MJ, Glad you are liking the book, but you are making me laugh! I read it before Corona hit. I can only imagine what it would be like now. I think, however, that I imagined Fleishman tubby. Why? Who knows!
Lisa,
I learned a lot new from Sowell’s book which, from the sound of it you haven’t read. I haven’t read his others, but this one is certainly grounded in history, with research based on well-documented facts, not on feelings.
At no point does Sowell write that black Americans did not face discrimination, but he does present numerous cases of other group that faced similar discrimination, with wealth taken from them, but who, due to different cultures, prospered (and that includes blacks in the north who came from a different, non-redneck culture).
Also, considering we are daily being indoctrinated that slavery is uniquely America’s shame and that it’s the sole reason for inequality, I think it behooves us to read the true history of slavery which was practiced widely throughout the world, including in Africa, and which Western civilization invested lives and resources to end.
In fact, rather than being attacked for slavery having been a part of the US (and our wealth was certainly not all built upon slavery), people might be proud that more Americans died to end the practice in their country than died in any other wars! Meanwhile other countries continued to practice slavery in the most brutal fashion for many years after we ended it with great sacrifice.
@Cara, I may force myself to read this book of Sowell’s, simply because you have brought it to my attention. I have to say, I find the argument that other countries practiced slavery offers less than no comfort or justification. Pointing a finger elsewhere doesn’t lessen our cupability. This doesn’t mean I am not glad that some in America finally put a halt to our practice. Nor does it mean, as I have said, that I don’t love America’s ideals and the reality of those ideals–for some.
Finally, “Redneck culture” did not embed itself in our property and wealth laws, or we’d have redlined rudeness and taxed children born out of wedlock. Our laws constructed systemic racism.
Wishing you a restorative break! See you ( your blog) in August. And thank you for all your blogs this crazy year.
@Jane, Thank you. You’re welcome:). See you in August!
I thank Cara for bringing Sowell’s work up in this conversation. There is more to this issue than the prevailing narrative and Sowell speaks to that. Thank you, Lisa, for your eloquence and openness.
Thank you, and I agree, Jeannine, that it’s admirable of Lisa to be willing to read another viewpoint. Sowell is not a polemicist and has great reverence for history and facts, versus revisionism and emotions.
Happy summer to all.
I want to be clear here. I will look at the book because I make a point of inclusive reading and thinking. But I am deeply inclined to not like Sowell, at all. I also stongly recommend to my readers: read that which is painful, that which challenges you, that which in fact points the finger at you. It’s too easy to find reasons not to take responsibility. We don’t need books for that. When I meet concepts that make me feel bad about myself, I have learned from this blog that the best lessons are found in imagining that the painful concepts are correct, before I try to defend myself.
I will miss your restorative posts. You are such a bright light to many of us who consider you a friend. Your posts are thoughtful but cheerful – that’s a unique gift! Enjoy your time. Best of luck. Hope to have you back with us soon.
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