I hear America singing …
It's Freya's day . . .
“Is” is not a “thing.”
Walt Whitman was born 205 years ago on this date in 1819 West Hills, Long Island, New York.
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear . . . Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day . . . – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass.
In 1921, here in my home town, the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 began. It lasted two days and left history with the mark of one of the most severe incidents of racial violence in U.S. history. The white community kept a silent secrecy wrapped around the event for many years. The first I heard of it, I was in graduate school in 1997 when an official state government commission was created to investigate the event. Mass graves are still being searched today, as I write this note.
“Black Wall Street” then and now.
We do not celebrate “infamy.” We do memorialize it. Yesterday will be remembered as the day when a jury of equals in a Manhattan courtroom returned a unanimous verdict of “guilty” in the trial of Donald Trump for his overarching cause of 34 crimes, in the felonious attempt to defraud the voters of New York in the 2020 election.
When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, that’s called enlightenment. Another word for this is freedom—freedom from the struggle against the fundamental ambiguity of being human. – Pema Chödrön
And as synchronicity would have it, Van Morrison has announced the release of a new recording: “Be Just and Fear Not.”
Another Street
Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter 2
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit … but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter 5
I walk down another street.
Why history? The best reason to learn history is not to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies . . .People are usually afraid of change becase they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes – Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Harper, 2017.
If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it? – Mary Oliver, “Singapore,” The House of Light, Beacon Press,1990.