As an former avid concert goer (stopped when I became a solo mom) I feel the same way and thank you for articulating what I’ve been feeling but could not quite pin point. I still remember my first concert to see Wallflowers thanks to radio station give away (remember those?!) when I was 16. It was a turning point for me as I experienced that feeling of crowd energy and exhilaration There is something transformative about the concert experience which I always wondered if and how it could be translated to social change, the way it changed me.
I have probably an unrealistic expectation of the human’s capacity for change and the ski story confirms that. There is more I want to say about but my brain cells are running low these days !
The radio station giveaway! I didn't live in an area where concerts were anything like accessible, but you know what our radio station gave away? VHS tapes of music videos. I once spent ages on the phone with B98 and won a Milli Vanilli tape. 😂 My dad was so irritated with me tying up the phone line, not to mention it was a party line so it affected the entire spread-out rural neighborhood.
There is something transformative about that collective experience. I haven't had many of those in my life but it's something I'm going to think more about. With my brain cells that are also running low!
Never! Not loud enough! LOL. Hadn't heard that Coates' quote before but it's perfect.
And you are so right -- the opposite of a cult. And feeling like your vote doesn't count is exactly what conservatives want liberals to believe. Meanwhile, when they aren't suppressing votes, that are telling their own supporters how important it is to vote.
Maybe abortion is finally going to get more and more progressives out to the polls.
You might enjoy this (not too long) article since you are only the second person I know that went to math camp. My old hometown friend John is Professor of Mathematics on the Elizabeth Stillman Williams Chair at Vassar College. John got his PhD in algebraic topology.
The Patterns of Poetry: On the Mathematical and Poetic Value of Numbers ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)
I really appreciate you sharing this and particularly your old hometown friend John! Not sure if it's come up before, but my undergraduate degree was in mathematics, and group algebra was where I liked to play (though I still have a thing for combinatorics). I'm still friends with David Bressoud, my advisor, who was president of the Mathematical Association of America for several years. He really got me into the thinking of it -- not philosophy exactly, since he was very much a math person, but an in-depth way of approaching what math is because he was just so enthusiastic about it. He's really just a wonderful, inspiring person.
Also, though, that essay had The Raven in it, which I can still recite because I memorized it in school 4 years in a row! Math is indeed poetry. I enjoyed reading this. 🧡
Yep, I know you are a math major, and I know it is a passion for you, and your comment about math camp reminded me of John. With all that in mind, I happened to read that article and thought you might enjoy it, especially the "Raven" portion, which I also recall you mentioning.
Funny how serendipity seems to be an overused word of late. 😊
I'm not sure it's so much serendipity as "my brain is full of holes these days and I can't remember what I've said to whom!" I appreciate you thinking of me, with both of those. I really did enjoy that essay! (One of my spouse's friends from way back when spent some years as president of the International Pi Society, so it was particularly resonant!)
I know how busy, hectic, stressed, fill in the blank your days can be, so I was a little reluctant to send it, adding to the overwhelm. But the "Raven" was the hook. Glad you enjoyed the read.
I have been completely overwhelmed, so you know what I did today? Shut everything down and went for a muddy hike with friends for a couple hours. Was finally able to shake out some of those overwhelms into actual tasks by the end of it, and even asked for help with some of them. Walking in the woods wins again … 🚶🏻♀️
Antonia, I have to say this - I never laughed so hard reading something so full of vigour, humour, and deep compassion. “to share their craft as part of sharing experience and love and agency and fierce joy in being who they are and loving whoever and whatever they damn well please.”these lines hit me like a bus. Yes creation is the hallmark of identity, the one real thing that no one can take away from the creator is his creation because we create from an intangible centre of existence, in Sanskrit it is called ‘Aatman’ - the essence that enables life to exist in the physical form.
I adore the spirit, light, and humour that you bring to your community. And I feel your fears, anticipations, and anxieties. I see you. 🌼💜
I am so glad! I love to laugh, and to laugh with friends, but I've never been successful at writing funny. It's a nice surprise when it happens!
Well, Aatman hit me like a bus in return, in the best possible way. I am actually copying it down to ponder on it, or to walk with it. "We create from an intangible centre of existence," oh my goodness how true that is! "I see you"--you spill over with kindness wherever I meet up with you, and it's so beautiful it makes me feel weepy. Thank you for being you, Swarnali, and for being here and in so many other places. 🧡
I used to tell my students that "systems determine behavior" and the response was underwhelming. Not that you can't get them to draw diagrams of systems and have, maybe, a better awarenss of the interconnections of things, but taking those realizations from, say, a food web or even the feedbacks that created the Dust Bowl, to apply them to their individual lives is not something I seem to be able to do. They aren't prepared to hear it. And then I think of the journey from childhood - when the books I read most at, say, age 10 were barely accurate biographes of heroes (Washington, Boone, etc.) and what I futilely dreamed about was being able to hit a baseball like Stan the Man - to now, I get it. Stepping outside the self (the ego, really) is hard. If things in your life are bearable, why would you make the effort?
I was in a forum yesterday asking people's thoughts about trust. It's a small and varied group, which was good because the answers were varied, too. And one person said something that'll stick with me, which is that he thought of privilege as less about what you can get than about what you're protected from. The privilege is really about how many different ways you don't have to be vulnerable, and that when you're vulnerable you both have to trust more people and can't afford to trust more people.
Indeed, if your life is bearable, if it feels safe, why make the effort? And yet people do. I don't know what makes the difference, what causes some people to agitate against their own comfort enough to want to make the world better, while others don't. And is it possible that narrative could start to change that? (I was reading a book about Anishinaabe last week, and the author talked about how when Anishinaabe people give talks, they try to reach from heart to heart, rather than from head to head.)
I love the joy of this, of those feelings in a concert--I went to Brandi Carlisle and Sarah McLachlan (!) last summer and was struck at how much it felt like pure joy, everyone singing along, everyone there to watch and support talented women and bask in the love of music. It was bliss. And I also felt like you, that it was such a reminder to see thousands of people--many queer, many women--together in joy. In generous spirit. And how often we don't get to be reminded that by so much of what is put in front of our eyes to read and consume and interact with. I love that you shared this because it too reminded me of those times I've experienced, and how joyful so many thousands of people can be in one spot. Those are moments and times to hold on to tightly as mooring in the rest of the world's bullshit. 💜
It really is fun! We do need shared experiences like that for some corners of the soul. And it being in person, the embodied experience of it you might say, is a different world from anything else. To just HAVE FUN!
Man, maybe you should stop writing such fluff and try to tackle something with actual weight in your next newsletter. LOL LOL LOL.
Couple of things. Would love to see what you make of SEA and sidewalks and walking general in places like Bangkok. Because let me tell you that it can be a challenge for Westerners!
As for that moment of purity and joy and power you describe feeling with 69,000 people and wondering why it doesn't catch fire and spread out from that stadium like a wildfire, I don't know.
I think it's just hard to keep that level of feeling up for very long. I know there have been times I've gone to all sorts of events and had that pure moment where I am CERTAIN this is going to fuel me in whatever way I'm feeling inspired.
Only to pretty quickly lose it and be back to trying to do whatever I'm trying to do without that burning energy.
This probably doesn't even make that much sense. LOL. Oh, well....
Like ... maybe I should just ... shake it off? Is that what you're saying? 😂 (She even sang that, which I didn't expect. She must be so tired of it by now! Or maybe not.)
I would definitely love to wander around places like Bangkok with you and find all the challenges! It is so much, such a different way to be in the world, using a car as little as possible. Both the good and the bad. To me, experiencing the bad--the traffic, the noise, the garbage, the inaccessibility--is important because it shows ways in which different areas of the world can be inaccessible for many when their needs aren't designed in.
Shortly after I moved away from Austria, there was a big protest all over the city. It was mothers with strollers, who had an awful time using the otherwise excellent public transportation system. It's the kind of city where you'd really never need a car at all ... unless you're in a wheelchair or dealing with small children or ... many other reasons. I guess one of the driving ideas behind my book was that it's easy for *me,* who loves walking and has access to it, just say, "walk everywhere," but what about all the ways in which the world is built to make that impossible?
I think you're right about collective action, and it does make sense. It's not the euphoria I was thinking so much as the simple numbers. It's not really a coherent thought, just something that came to mind a few times during the show. And really, the answer is what it always is: along with regular bouts of apathy (the largest voting block in the U.S. by far is people who don't vote, and I don't really blame anyone for that--I know a lot of people who don't vote, and I know why), there's gerrymandering, voter suppression, the complete anti-democratic structure of the Constitution ...
If numbers were enough, we wouldn't have to work so hard at it. But they're not.
Actually, Antonia, I think you just need to calm down. LOL LOL.
I do not know what mothers with strollers and people who need wheelchairs can do here in Bangkok. The sidewalks can be an immense challenger for even someone fully mobile. Hell, I fell in Kuala Lumpur when the sidewalk just ended.
I'm honestly getting more and more allergic to cars and traffic. Even if it's going to mean taking a trip twice as long, I'd MUCH rather be riding the Sky Train or the metro here in Bangkok for a whole host of reasons.
As for voter apathy, I have much less patience for it than you do. Please note, apathy does not overlap with disenfranchised or working three jobs and don't have time. I'm in no position to judge that.
But ever since I cast my first vote back in 1982, I had to listen to people my age whine that voting didn't make any difference, the parties were the same yadda yadda yadda. Uh huh, a Supreme Court made up of picks by Democratic presidents wouldn't working night and day to bring A Handmaid's Tale to life.
Thank goodness this generation of young people finally seems to be voting in greater numbers.
Are you saying I'm being too loud?! 😂 (Could do this for months, her lyrics are so good.)
I'm with you on the cars and traffic. Bangkok sounds pretty difficult, but it's just so hard when too many people who make policy and budget and infrastructure choices build for cars instead of people. I'd always rather take transit. Anything that allows me to watch the scenery or take a nap has my vote!
You're right about voter apathy. It's not that I have a ton of patience for it, it's just knowing so many people who don't and why. It's not just how little they feel their voice or vote matters, it's that everyone and everything around them has always reinforced that view. It's almost like being in the opposite of a cult? I wonder a lot how you bring people out of that, if you could even just make voting easy and fun and get it to be habitual.
In my time working on this kind of thing, I've gotten ONE friend to start voting. He's still a bit disgruntled about it because things have only gotten worse in Montana. But it's a step. I do get tired of hearing that it doesn't make a difference. I think it was Ta-Nehisi Coates who said, in response to people saying you were just choosing the lesser of two evils, "And? Yeah! In that case I'm going to go for less evil."
It does seem like younger people are taking that power more seriously. I'm really glad to see it. Having half my family live in Russia, and hearing what it's like to cast a vote there and literally watch workers stuff ballot boxes, it makes me sad that people take the right to vote for granted.
Also, thanks for the (expensive) book review. Whenever I think I have an original thought, I am aware that I will, if I scrounge around, find out that Dewey got there first.
I have that EXACT experience. I started reading that piece and quickly got to, “Oh, of COURSE, Dewey.” I started running into him when I first homeschooled over a decade ago and everywhere I turn now, there he is.
I think that’s a big part of it. This is part of a larger unformed thought, but I’ve been increasingly sobered by the depth to which everyone I know believes that individual effort is what makes the most difference in their lives, rather than structural forces. Not that individual effort doesn’t matter, of course it does. But I’ve been amazed at the degree to which almost everyone I know discounts the effect of the structural and systemic forces on individual lives.
Your aurora photo reminds me of one of my favored descriptions for why one lives in MN. There is one very BAD REASON for living here but hundreds of wonderful little ones. The aurora just happens to be one.
I am going to listen to the Planet Critical podcast as it seems to align with the program I mentioned that I'm currently taking.
Music, especially live music, remains an experience that brings people together. Can we call you a Swiftie going forward?
Seeing as how Spotify saw fit to inform me last year that I was in the top 1% of Taylor Swift listeners (which … honestly, that seems outlandish; I know I had Midnights on a lot but I do listen to lots of other music!), I’d say Swiftie is a fair characterization!
I need to write you back about that program, but it did come to mind while listening to this. There were some things she said that I didn’t quite agree with but it resonated enough to make me want to read the book.
And those hundreds of wonderful little ones aren’t all mosquitoes, are they?!
Well Swiftie it is going forward :) -- Mosquitoes are a challenge for sure and mostly a pest. While it is going to be controversial, it seems CRISPR is on deck to deal with the scourge of mosquito-borne illness. It seems in our lifetimes, life will be TRANSFORMED in Africa especially as a result. I think, it will surface the importance of system thinking and understanding the secondary effects of manipulating the reproduction of mosquitoes. Your average Minnesotan would certainly like less of them. When it is all said and done though, having more coastline than any other state and all the lovely lake activities makes it a worthwhile trade at least IMO.
I thought they'd already released those in Florida? I'll have to look it up.
And the lakes ARE lovely. I was just being facetious. When I was in college in St. Paul, my boyfriend at the time was from northern Minnesota and I learned to appreciate the beauties of the state pretty quickly. Just the trees alone, even in the Twin Cities -- coming from Montana, I'd never seen a full fall foliage show like that. I still remember the first one. So dazzling.
Yay! I’m glad. I’m looking forward to it, too. Definitely a switch to more fun reading, and I’ve been working on finding all BIPOC, women, and non-binary writers for the short story selections, which is EXTRA fun because the writing is just *so good.* Next level from what I grew up with. The first read will be Hao Jingfang’s story “Folding Beijing” and the essay she wrote about it, “I Want to Write About Inequality.”
Short stories are hard. For me, anyway. I don’t read many short stories in general, but for this circle we agreed it was better because the readings are usually excerpts of 10-25 pages and it doesn’t really work for sci fi novels where the worldbuilding is such a big part of it all. Like how on earth would I excerpt N.K. Jemisin’s Fifth Season trilogy? So this was a challenge. But I asked for suggestions in a couple of reliable places and have gotten some really good ones and that’s exciting because now I have a very large pile of books to read! Rebecca Roanhorse and Octavia Butler are already in the queue for the reading circle.
I like how you put it about what’s available for kids. I loved fantasy and sci fi so much growing up, but, as much as I still love many of those books,what was available feels scant in comparison to what they have today. The Warrior Cats series alone is actually good and well-written and has like 50 or 70 books or something ridiculous (I only read the first series). Not to mention the countless other YA and related series and standalones. So much to enjoy!
That is certainly one way to learn that dictionaries don’t necessarily reflect people’s lived experiences!
As an former avid concert goer (stopped when I became a solo mom) I feel the same way and thank you for articulating what I’ve been feeling but could not quite pin point. I still remember my first concert to see Wallflowers thanks to radio station give away (remember those?!) when I was 16. It was a turning point for me as I experienced that feeling of crowd energy and exhilaration There is something transformative about the concert experience which I always wondered if and how it could be translated to social change, the way it changed me.
I have probably an unrealistic expectation of the human’s capacity for change and the ski story confirms that. There is more I want to say about but my brain cells are running low these days !
The radio station giveaway! I didn't live in an area where concerts were anything like accessible, but you know what our radio station gave away? VHS tapes of music videos. I once spent ages on the phone with B98 and won a Milli Vanilli tape. 😂 My dad was so irritated with me tying up the phone line, not to mention it was a party line so it affected the entire spread-out rural neighborhood.
There is something transformative about that collective experience. I haven't had many of those in my life but it's something I'm going to think more about. With my brain cells that are also running low!
Never! Not loud enough! LOL. Hadn't heard that Coates' quote before but it's perfect.
And you are so right -- the opposite of a cult. And feeling like your vote doesn't count is exactly what conservatives want liberals to believe. Meanwhile, when they aren't suppressing votes, that are telling their own supporters how important it is to vote.
Maybe abortion is finally going to get more and more progressives out to the polls.
It might be. I guess we're finding out, aren't we? I'll keep trying to do my part ...
You might enjoy this (not too long) article since you are only the second person I know that went to math camp. My old hometown friend John is Professor of Mathematics on the Elizabeth Stillman Williams Chair at Vassar College. John got his PhD in algebraic topology.
The Patterns of Poetry: On the Mathematical and Poetic Value of Numbers ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)
I really appreciate you sharing this and particularly your old hometown friend John! Not sure if it's come up before, but my undergraduate degree was in mathematics, and group algebra was where I liked to play (though I still have a thing for combinatorics). I'm still friends with David Bressoud, my advisor, who was president of the Mathematical Association of America for several years. He really got me into the thinking of it -- not philosophy exactly, since he was very much a math person, but an in-depth way of approaching what math is because he was just so enthusiastic about it. He's really just a wonderful, inspiring person.
Also, though, that essay had The Raven in it, which I can still recite because I memorized it in school 4 years in a row! Math is indeed poetry. I enjoyed reading this. 🧡
Yep, I know you are a math major, and I know it is a passion for you, and your comment about math camp reminded me of John. With all that in mind, I happened to read that article and thought you might enjoy it, especially the "Raven" portion, which I also recall you mentioning.
Funny how serendipity seems to be an overused word of late. 😊
I'm not sure it's so much serendipity as "my brain is full of holes these days and I can't remember what I've said to whom!" I appreciate you thinking of me, with both of those. I really did enjoy that essay! (One of my spouse's friends from way back when spent some years as president of the International Pi Society, so it was particularly resonant!)
I know how busy, hectic, stressed, fill in the blank your days can be, so I was a little reluctant to send it, adding to the overwhelm. But the "Raven" was the hook. Glad you enjoyed the read.
Ha! Bringing me back to childhood …
I have been completely overwhelmed, so you know what I did today? Shut everything down and went for a muddy hike with friends for a couple hours. Was finally able to shake out some of those overwhelms into actual tasks by the end of it, and even asked for help with some of them. Walking in the woods wins again … 🚶🏻♀️
👍👍
Antonia, I have to say this - I never laughed so hard reading something so full of vigour, humour, and deep compassion. “to share their craft as part of sharing experience and love and agency and fierce joy in being who they are and loving whoever and whatever they damn well please.”these lines hit me like a bus. Yes creation is the hallmark of identity, the one real thing that no one can take away from the creator is his creation because we create from an intangible centre of existence, in Sanskrit it is called ‘Aatman’ - the essence that enables life to exist in the physical form.
I adore the spirit, light, and humour that you bring to your community. And I feel your fears, anticipations, and anxieties. I see you. 🌼💜
I am so glad! I love to laugh, and to laugh with friends, but I've never been successful at writing funny. It's a nice surprise when it happens!
Well, Aatman hit me like a bus in return, in the best possible way. I am actually copying it down to ponder on it, or to walk with it. "We create from an intangible centre of existence," oh my goodness how true that is! "I see you"--you spill over with kindness wherever I meet up with you, and it's so beautiful it makes me feel weepy. Thank you for being you, Swarnali, and for being here and in so many other places. 🧡
Back at you Nia , much love ❤️
💞
I used to tell my students that "systems determine behavior" and the response was underwhelming. Not that you can't get them to draw diagrams of systems and have, maybe, a better awarenss of the interconnections of things, but taking those realizations from, say, a food web or even the feedbacks that created the Dust Bowl, to apply them to their individual lives is not something I seem to be able to do. They aren't prepared to hear it. And then I think of the journey from childhood - when the books I read most at, say, age 10 were barely accurate biographes of heroes (Washington, Boone, etc.) and what I futilely dreamed about was being able to hit a baseball like Stan the Man - to now, I get it. Stepping outside the self (the ego, really) is hard. If things in your life are bearable, why would you make the effort?
I was in a forum yesterday asking people's thoughts about trust. It's a small and varied group, which was good because the answers were varied, too. And one person said something that'll stick with me, which is that he thought of privilege as less about what you can get than about what you're protected from. The privilege is really about how many different ways you don't have to be vulnerable, and that when you're vulnerable you both have to trust more people and can't afford to trust more people.
Indeed, if your life is bearable, if it feels safe, why make the effort? And yet people do. I don't know what makes the difference, what causes some people to agitate against their own comfort enough to want to make the world better, while others don't. And is it possible that narrative could start to change that? (I was reading a book about Anishinaabe last week, and the author talked about how when Anishinaabe people give talks, they try to reach from heart to heart, rather than from head to head.)
Thank you, Nia; this was wonderful and thought-provoking, as usual! <3
Thank you, Greg!
I love the joy of this, of those feelings in a concert--I went to Brandi Carlisle and Sarah McLachlan (!) last summer and was struck at how much it felt like pure joy, everyone singing along, everyone there to watch and support talented women and bask in the love of music. It was bliss. And I also felt like you, that it was such a reminder to see thousands of people--many queer, many women--together in joy. In generous spirit. And how often we don't get to be reminded that by so much of what is put in front of our eyes to read and consume and interact with. I love that you shared this because it too reminded me of those times I've experienced, and how joyful so many thousands of people can be in one spot. Those are moments and times to hold on to tightly as mooring in the rest of the world's bullshit. 💜
It really is fun! We do need shared experiences like that for some corners of the soul. And it being in person, the embodied experience of it you might say, is a different world from anything else. To just HAVE FUN!
yes! 🙌
Man, maybe you should stop writing such fluff and try to tackle something with actual weight in your next newsletter. LOL LOL LOL.
Couple of things. Would love to see what you make of SEA and sidewalks and walking general in places like Bangkok. Because let me tell you that it can be a challenge for Westerners!
As for that moment of purity and joy and power you describe feeling with 69,000 people and wondering why it doesn't catch fire and spread out from that stadium like a wildfire, I don't know.
I think it's just hard to keep that level of feeling up for very long. I know there have been times I've gone to all sorts of events and had that pure moment where I am CERTAIN this is going to fuel me in whatever way I'm feeling inspired.
Only to pretty quickly lose it and be back to trying to do whatever I'm trying to do without that burning energy.
This probably doesn't even make that much sense. LOL. Oh, well....
Like ... maybe I should just ... shake it off? Is that what you're saying? 😂 (She even sang that, which I didn't expect. She must be so tired of it by now! Or maybe not.)
I would definitely love to wander around places like Bangkok with you and find all the challenges! It is so much, such a different way to be in the world, using a car as little as possible. Both the good and the bad. To me, experiencing the bad--the traffic, the noise, the garbage, the inaccessibility--is important because it shows ways in which different areas of the world can be inaccessible for many when their needs aren't designed in.
Shortly after I moved away from Austria, there was a big protest all over the city. It was mothers with strollers, who had an awful time using the otherwise excellent public transportation system. It's the kind of city where you'd really never need a car at all ... unless you're in a wheelchair or dealing with small children or ... many other reasons. I guess one of the driving ideas behind my book was that it's easy for *me,* who loves walking and has access to it, just say, "walk everywhere," but what about all the ways in which the world is built to make that impossible?
I think you're right about collective action, and it does make sense. It's not the euphoria I was thinking so much as the simple numbers. It's not really a coherent thought, just something that came to mind a few times during the show. And really, the answer is what it always is: along with regular bouts of apathy (the largest voting block in the U.S. by far is people who don't vote, and I don't really blame anyone for that--I know a lot of people who don't vote, and I know why), there's gerrymandering, voter suppression, the complete anti-democratic structure of the Constitution ...
If numbers were enough, we wouldn't have to work so hard at it. But they're not.
Actually, Antonia, I think you just need to calm down. LOL LOL.
I do not know what mothers with strollers and people who need wheelchairs can do here in Bangkok. The sidewalks can be an immense challenger for even someone fully mobile. Hell, I fell in Kuala Lumpur when the sidewalk just ended.
I'm honestly getting more and more allergic to cars and traffic. Even if it's going to mean taking a trip twice as long, I'd MUCH rather be riding the Sky Train or the metro here in Bangkok for a whole host of reasons.
As for voter apathy, I have much less patience for it than you do. Please note, apathy does not overlap with disenfranchised or working three jobs and don't have time. I'm in no position to judge that.
But ever since I cast my first vote back in 1982, I had to listen to people my age whine that voting didn't make any difference, the parties were the same yadda yadda yadda. Uh huh, a Supreme Court made up of picks by Democratic presidents wouldn't working night and day to bring A Handmaid's Tale to life.
Thank goodness this generation of young people finally seems to be voting in greater numbers.
Are you saying I'm being too loud?! 😂 (Could do this for months, her lyrics are so good.)
I'm with you on the cars and traffic. Bangkok sounds pretty difficult, but it's just so hard when too many people who make policy and budget and infrastructure choices build for cars instead of people. I'd always rather take transit. Anything that allows me to watch the scenery or take a nap has my vote!
You're right about voter apathy. It's not that I have a ton of patience for it, it's just knowing so many people who don't and why. It's not just how little they feel their voice or vote matters, it's that everyone and everything around them has always reinforced that view. It's almost like being in the opposite of a cult? I wonder a lot how you bring people out of that, if you could even just make voting easy and fun and get it to be habitual.
In my time working on this kind of thing, I've gotten ONE friend to start voting. He's still a bit disgruntled about it because things have only gotten worse in Montana. But it's a step. I do get tired of hearing that it doesn't make a difference. I think it was Ta-Nehisi Coates who said, in response to people saying you were just choosing the lesser of two evils, "And? Yeah! In that case I'm going to go for less evil."
It does seem like younger people are taking that power more seriously. I'm really glad to see it. Having half my family live in Russia, and hearing what it's like to cast a vote there and literally watch workers stuff ballot boxes, it makes me sad that people take the right to vote for granted.
Also, thanks for the (expensive) book review. Whenever I think I have an original thought, I am aware that I will, if I scrounge around, find out that Dewey got there first.
I have that EXACT experience. I started reading that piece and quickly got to, “Oh, of COURSE, Dewey.” I started running into him when I first homeschooled over a decade ago and everywhere I turn now, there he is.
Could it be because our official stories, our myths, are all about individual action, not collective?
I think that’s a big part of it. This is part of a larger unformed thought, but I’ve been increasingly sobered by the depth to which everyone I know believes that individual effort is what makes the most difference in their lives, rather than structural forces. Not that individual effort doesn’t matter, of course it does. But I’ve been amazed at the degree to which almost everyone I know discounts the effect of the structural and systemic forces on individual lives.
Your aurora photo reminds me of one of my favored descriptions for why one lives in MN. There is one very BAD REASON for living here but hundreds of wonderful little ones. The aurora just happens to be one.
I am going to listen to the Planet Critical podcast as it seems to align with the program I mentioned that I'm currently taking.
Music, especially live music, remains an experience that brings people together. Can we call you a Swiftie going forward?
Seeing as how Spotify saw fit to inform me last year that I was in the top 1% of Taylor Swift listeners (which … honestly, that seems outlandish; I know I had Midnights on a lot but I do listen to lots of other music!), I’d say Swiftie is a fair characterization!
I need to write you back about that program, but it did come to mind while listening to this. There were some things she said that I didn’t quite agree with but it resonated enough to make me want to read the book.
And those hundreds of wonderful little ones aren’t all mosquitoes, are they?!
Well Swiftie it is going forward :) -- Mosquitoes are a challenge for sure and mostly a pest. While it is going to be controversial, it seems CRISPR is on deck to deal with the scourge of mosquito-borne illness. It seems in our lifetimes, life will be TRANSFORMED in Africa especially as a result. I think, it will surface the importance of system thinking and understanding the secondary effects of manipulating the reproduction of mosquitoes. Your average Minnesotan would certainly like less of them. When it is all said and done though, having more coastline than any other state and all the lovely lake activities makes it a worthwhile trade at least IMO.
I'll take it. ;)
I thought they'd already released those in Florida? I'll have to look it up.
And the lakes ARE lovely. I was just being facetious. When I was in college in St. Paul, my boyfriend at the time was from northern Minnesota and I learned to appreciate the beauties of the state pretty quickly. Just the trees alone, even in the Twin Cities -- coming from Montana, I'd never seen a full fall foliage show like that. I still remember the first one. So dazzling.
For those on the fence Northern MN is losing its boreal forest. Last in the US retreating north with temps and ecosystem shifts
:(
Yay! I’m glad. I’m looking forward to it, too. Definitely a switch to more fun reading, and I’ve been working on finding all BIPOC, women, and non-binary writers for the short story selections, which is EXTRA fun because the writing is just *so good.* Next level from what I grew up with. The first read will be Hao Jingfang’s story “Folding Beijing” and the essay she wrote about it, “I Want to Write About Inequality.”
Short stories are hard. For me, anyway. I don’t read many short stories in general, but for this circle we agreed it was better because the readings are usually excerpts of 10-25 pages and it doesn’t really work for sci fi novels where the worldbuilding is such a big part of it all. Like how on earth would I excerpt N.K. Jemisin’s Fifth Season trilogy? So this was a challenge. But I asked for suggestions in a couple of reliable places and have gotten some really good ones and that’s exciting because now I have a very large pile of books to read! Rebecca Roanhorse and Octavia Butler are already in the queue for the reading circle.
I like how you put it about what’s available for kids. I loved fantasy and sci fi so much growing up, but, as much as I still love many of those books,what was available feels scant in comparison to what they have today. The Warrior Cats series alone is actually good and well-written and has like 50 or 70 books or something ridiculous (I only read the first series). Not to mention the countless other YA and related series and standalones. So much to enjoy!
That is certainly one way to learn that dictionaries don’t necessarily reflect people’s lived experiences!