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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Poet X," by Elizabeth Acevedo.

In science we learned that thermal conductivity is how heat flows through some materials better than others. But who knew words, when said by the right person, by a boy who raises your temperature, move heat like nothing else? Shoot a shock of warmth from your curls to your toes?

Maybe, the only thing that has to make sense about being somebody’s friend is that you help them be their best self on any given day. That you give them a home when they don’t want to be in their own.

And I know people are probably staring, probably thinking: “Horny high school kids can’t keep their hands to themselves.” 

But I don’t care because when our lips meet for those three stops before I get off, it’s beautiful and real and what I wanted. 

We are probably the only thing worth watching anyways. Maybe we’re doing our train audience a favor. Reminding them of first love.

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Here is an excerpt from a book I recently read, "How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes: Science-Based Strategies for Better Parenting--from Tots to Teens," by Melinda Wenner Moyer.

 

At the beginning of her book It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, technology and social media researcher danah boyd (her legal name is uncapitalized) shared what she saw while attending a high school homecoming football game in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2010. All the teens at the game had cell phones, but they were not spending their time engrossed in their devices. Usually, boyd said, when they looked at their phones, it was to briefly share something with people around them. “Although many parents I’ve met lament their children’s obsession with their phones, the teens in Nashville were treating their phones as no more than a glorified camera plus coordination device,” she wrote. 

But some people, she saw, were glued to their devices almost the entire time. The parents. 

According to a 2016 Common Sense Media survey, parents spend more time on screens than their kids do—an average of nearly 9.5 hours a day, with more than 80 percent of that time devoted to personal screen use (not work-related use). And yet, this survey also found that 78 percent of parents think they are good media and technology role models for their children. Ha!

 

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Here is an excerpt from a book I recently read, "Brown Girl Dreaming," by Jacqueline Woodson.

The first time I write my full name 

Jacqueline Amanda Woodson 

without anybody’s help 

on a clean white page in my composition notebook, 

I know 

if I wanted to I could write anything. 

Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning, becoming thoughts outside my head 

becoming sentences 

written by 

Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

Where is the Hope

 

 

There's a meme that has been making the rounds in my social media feed of late, which of course I now cannot find, along the lines of "if two 80-something year old firefighters show up at a fire, and one has a hose and the other has gasoline, it's pretty obvious which one is more capable." The insinuation being that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both old but beyond that the differences could not be more stark. 

I realize memes are meant to be funny, and that political ones are not trying to be diplomatic or conciliatory when making their point. But that meme is, to me, so sad and so telling.

First of all, let me say where I am politically. I agree with what I believe to be the main premise of the meme. Joe Biden, while old, is reasonably capable. Donald Trump, also old, has the potential to be literally inflammatory for this country. So, now that it's likely these are our two choices, I have already figured out who I am voting and rooting for.

That said, the beauty of this country is its diversity, which by definition means that different people come from different perspectives and have different opinions. According to the polls, slightly more people plan to vote for Trump than Biden. I can't say how much of that is love for Trump, hate for Biden, desire for change, or preference for R's over D's, but the fact of the matter is that, when presented with the choice of two firefighters, there are lots of people on both sides of that choice. Which tells me that there are lots of people who would not characterize this presidential election as choosing between someone who brings a hose to a fire and someone who brings gasoline. Which tells me that characterizing it as such may feel good to some who like Biden but seems alienating to others who either like Trump, or are unhappy with both Biden and Trump.

I also imagine that many, when confronted with the scenario this meme describes, would react with sadness that, with the pressing need to put out a fire, the only two firefighters available are in their 80's. I have to think that younger folks in particular are wondering, how is it that we are the future of this country, and when we go to the voting booth, we don't see ourselves in the race for the top job in the land? I lament but understand the deep disillusionment many of our young people feel about a political process that leads to Biden and Trump being our two choices, again. I realize this is a bit circular, but I refuse to be a scold and say that if only young people were more engaged, they'd have more representation. The fact of the matter is that young people do seem reasonably engaged, and yet election after election it is not their candidate who emerges as the choice, and I can empathize with the amount of disillusionment that that creates.

It is also disillusioning that we are talking about having to put out a fire, especially if, to continue the analogy, some of us are feeling the proximity and damage of that fire while others of us are comfortably buffered from it. Whether it is economic inequity or a sense in which some of us have the privilege of opting out of certain social or political issues, there is a disillusionment that the playing field is uneven, such that some are able to navigate with comfort while others are faced with a raging inferno. That too seems terribly unfair and depressing.

Where is the hope for this generation? I realize it's just one meme, and memes are supposed to be sarcastic and biting and dark. So apologies if I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. But I feel like this meme is both indicative of and makes a mockery of a hopelessness that I sense among this generation, a hopelessness that I lament but have sympathy for.

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial," by Viet Thanh Nguyen.

 

Like many other immigrants and refugees before them, Ba Má become human sacrifices, throwing themselves onto barbed wire so I can walk across their backs into this strange new world. They work relentlessly, almost every waking hour, almost every day of the year except for Easter, Tết, and Christmas. Every day their own station of the cross.

The writer’s dilemma: be scarred enough to be a good writer, but not so scarred as to be truly fucked up. You have achieved the magic balance! Congratulations!!!

You laugh at yourselves because you have been laughed at so many times already. At Saint Patrick, one classmate asks, Did you carry an AK-47 during the war? Another classmate says, Ah-so, asshole! while bowing and clasping his hands. You remember their names and faces to this day.

Many of the Hmong resettle in poor Black communities, where neither is prepared for the Other. When poor people are forced together, they sometimes clash. But after [Minneapolis Police Department officer Jason] Andersen kills Fong Lee, Black activists rally. Lee’s sister Shoua says, "They were the loudest voices for us. They didn’t ask to show up. They just showed up."

Start with an easy question for the students. How many of you are refugees? Two, three hands go up. How many of you are immigrants? 

Everybody raises their hands. 

These students have already absorbed the message: AMERICATM is a nation of immigrants. Not a country of refugees.

You tell yourself: 

Don’t be a voice for the voiceless. Abolish the conditions of voicelessness.

You are thrilled to get as far away as you can from San José, even if it is only 330 miles to your Inland Empire. Only many years later do you feel a degree of shame. Ba Má sacrificed so much for you. And you repay them by fleeing.

You marry Lan. Although the most important thing about her to Ba Má is that she is a Vietnamese Catholic from a good family, the most important thing about Lan to you is that she is a poet, as well as beautiful. Your delighted parents pay for the very loud wedding, held in a Chinese banquet hall with the same elaborate ten-course Chinese meal served at every Vietnamese wedding, a bottle of Hennessy cognac on every table for the four hundred guests, most of whom you do not know. No one expects you to enjoy your own wedding. What a Western idea!

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Here are a couple of excerpts from a book I recently read, "We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity," by bell hooks.

Anyone who claims to be concerned with the fate of black males in the United States who does not speak about the need for them to radicalize their consciousness to challenge patriarchy if they are to survive and flourish colludes with the existing system in keeping black men in their place, psychologically locked down, locked out.

Significantly, Moynihan’s report came just in time to reinforce the notion that it was important for black males to fight in imperialist wars. Retrospectively, it is easy to see the reason the state helped stir up gender conflict between black women and men just as it was preparing to enter various wars around the world.

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life," by Amy Schneider.

 

 

One of the key points I want to make in this book is that I am open to being wrong, to reconsidering my beliefs. It is my hope that, in the future, I will come to disagree with, and perhaps even disavow, some of the statements I’ve made in these pages, because it is my hope that I will never stop learning. I look forward to your feedback. The next book will be better.

 

 

Jeopardy!, like sports, is an attempt to measure a natural talent via an unnatural competition. So you don’t just need to “know stuff,” you need to know the right kind of stuff. During my run, Jeopardy! aired a tournament for college professors, who are essentially professional knowers of stuff, yet their collective Jeopardy! performance was not particularly elite. Jeopardy! rewards breadth of knowledge, not depth, and as such rewards the combination of knowledge and laziness that’s been my hallmark from childhood.

A few months later, I got home from work and, in a routine that had become automatic, went to my bedroom to pick out which feminine clothes I would change into for the evening. As I was debating the merits of each outfit, something occurred to me: if I were to die suddenly, right then and there, I wouldn’t get to wear any of those outfits. I would be buried in a suit and tie. That’s how I would be seen at the wake, that’s how I would be remembered. And that last bit of eggshell dropped off. 

If I could only wear one outfit for all eternity, I needed it to be pretty. And the only way I could be certain of that would be to not have any outfits that weren’t pretty, never to dress in those hideous god-awful boy clothes that I’d hated my entire life. And if I did that, people would need an explanation. And the only explanation that would make sense would be: I am trans. I am a woman. I wear the clothes that were meant for me all along. I was going to have to come out of the closet.

Onstage, you can get away with anything. You can do the very things that frighten you the most, and not only can you survive them, but you can enjoy them. You can feel proud, even about the things you’re most ashamed of. It’s no coincidence that the LGBT demographic is wildly overrepresented among theater kids. Being queer so often means being ashamed of your queerness. It means feeling driven to express a part of yourself that is prohibited, a part you’re ashamed even to have. Theater gives you a chance to express that prohibited self, right out in the open, but in a deniable way—That wasn’t me violating my prescribed gender norms! I was just playing a character! *wink* 

Not only is acting a refuge from societal judgment, it can also be a refuge from yourself. I have not been a big fan of myself for most of my life. I kept a mental list of all my shortcomings, all my failures, everything I had to feel ashamed of, and I tended that list with great care, always on the lookout for opportunities to add to it. Which made it a relief simply not to be me for a while every night, not to have any responsibility for myself or my actions. Left to my own devices, it seemed like I always did the wrong thing, or said the wrong thing, and I always would, because I was fundamentally flawed somehow. But in a play, it’s not up to you. The script tells you what to say, the director tells you what to do, and for a brief period you don’t have to berate yourself for always making the wrong decision, because you’re not making any decisions at all. 

That’s a lot of what theater meant to me. But when you think of actors, you probably don’t think of shy, retiring, introvert types like I was back then. You probably picture big, brash personalities, always putting themselves at the center of attention. And for good reason, because those people are also drawn to the stage, and for reasons that are almost the opposite of the ones I’ve just described. The way I put it is that two types of people are attracted to theater: people who always want to be seen, and people who always want to be hidden. In theater, you can do both at once. Theater is a place where you can stand alone on a stage, with hundreds of people focusing their full attention on you, and yet still be invisible. It’s a place where you can say, Hey! Everybody! Drop what you’re doing and look at me! Notice what I’m doing! Stop thinking about your own life and focus on what I am feeling right now!, and yet somehow say it selflessly, humbly, as part of a communal project. 

Theater brings together people who, offstage, would find each other intolerable, and offers them each what they need. For the shy, it offers escape, concealment, safety; for the confident, it offers attention, freedom, validation. In theater, not only can you do the very things you fear the most, but you can do them with the very people who make you fear it. Putting on a play is like a massive simultaneous trust fall, with everyone involved in the production constantly falling, even as they constantly catch each other. If you do the thing you’re afraid of, and do it in collaboration with the people who make you afraid of it, then eventually you’ll start to realize that you no longer have anything to fear.

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Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Devotions," by Mary Oliver.

For Tom Shaw SSJE (1945-2014)

“Where has this cold come from?"

“It comes from the death of your friend.”

Will I always, from now on, be this cold?

“No, it will diminish. But always it will be with you.”

What is the reason for it?

“Wasn’t your friendship always as beautiful as a flame?”  



I Go Down To The Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do. 



How I Go to the Woods

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.