Things I Learned This Week

Renee Good, Heather Cox Richardson, Chris Barton, Jessie Buckley, and Robert Smalls

If you take your head out of the sand long enough, things are pretty rotten and scary. Am I sad that it took a white woman getting shot to matter? Absolutely. I am exhausted, and I’m not even in the thick of it.

Over the last almost TEN YEARS, all of us, collectively, have been emotionally abused by everything that’s been going on in this country. I realize America has had it pretty good over the last hundred or so years, despite the fact that we’ve continued to experience generational trauma over slavery and poverty and sexism and globalism and capitalism…and…and…and, but this looks nothing like the country I grew up in. Like pretty much everyone else, I’m not sure what to do except stand up for people, support artists, help where I can. And keep learning. That said…

I am not smart enough to debate politics or history, but Heather Cox Richardson is. I started reading her on and off nine years ago at my boss’s urging, but if you are not reading her daily now, you are missing out. She is smart as shit, knows her history, and is doing the hard work of educating millions of people every single day FOR FREE. Subscribe to her Substack here.

Now, on a local level, there are some things you can do. Recently, my school district, the Alamo Heights Independent School District, canceled an author visit. For those of you who don’t have kids, that’s when a writer visits several schools and gives a presentation to usually hundreds or, in this case, 1,600 kids. New York Times bestselling author Chris Barton has been to our district before and is awesome. He writes great books for children about the history of things and other fun stuff. A tiny handful of parents complained because Chris has a book called Glitter Everywhere, which is, quite literally, the history of glitter. The book has a single page that mentions glitter and drag queens, BUT, GET THIS, that’s not even one of the books he was going to be presenting on. He was simply going to show the cover and say one sentence about the history of a craft supply. Chris spelled it all out very eloquently here. (A few years ago, Houston did this same thing to Emma Straub because she hates gun violence or whatever. That said, of course, the local indie has to step in to right this absolute insanity. So if you have kids or grandkids or love democracy, head over to Nowhere Bookshop this Wednesday, January 14, at 6 pm and support this man and his new book about DOGS. Or buy some copies for all your friends’ kids here. And the damn glitter book.

How can I call myself a child of the Carolinas and have never heard of Robert Smalls? (Special shoutout to Jim Clyburn for writing the book The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation that tells the story of the Black congressmen who were elected in the aftermath of the Civil War and why it took nearly a century before the ninth—Jim himself— was elected.) Mr. Smalls was a Civil War hero and abolitionist who famously stole a freaking Confederate ship to escape slavery in 1862. He went on to serve multiple terms in the U.S. Congress, advocating for Black rights. After the war ended, he bought the plantation where he was enslaved. According to the innerwebs, his example and persuasion helped convince Lincoln to admit Black soldiers into the Union Army. Why have they not made a movie about this guy?

And speaking of movies… Go see Hamnet because art matters, and Jesse Buckley gives the best performance of anyone all year. Honestly, the movie is very good—based on the excellent book by Maggie O'Farrell which really just fanfiction very (very) loosely based on Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife—but Jesse, she is a marvel. I loved her in I’m Thinking of Ending Things (one of my all-time favorite movies) and Women Talking, but this one’s her moment. One to be reveled in.

Now, I don’t know if protests work or not, but if you are feeling helpless, there’s a protest at 2 pm in San Antonio today, as I imagine there are all around the country. Get out and make your voice heard, and while you are at it, get on the phone for an hour or so and let your own congresspeople and senators know that this bullshit will not stand. People in DC need to start growing some balls, ASAP.

Quote of the week?

“Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing—marketing for power. It is recognizable by its need to purge, by the strategies it uses to purge, and by its terror of truly democratic agendas. It is recognizable by its determination to convert all public services to private entrepreneurship, all nonprofit organizations to profit-making ones—so that the narrow but protective chasm between governance and business disappears. It changes citizens into taxpayers, so individuals become angry at even the notion of the public good. It changes neighbors into consumers—so the measure of our value as humans is not our humanity, our compassion, or our generosity, but what we own. It changes parenting into panicking—so that we vote against the interests of our own children; against their health care, their education, their safety from weapons. And in effecting these changes, it produces the perfect capitalist, one who is willing to kill a human being for a product (a pair of sneakers, a jacket, a car) or kill generations for control of products (oil, drugs, fruit, gold).” ― Toni Morrison

‘Til Tuesday, friends.