This week, Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia signed a bill that ends state tax exemptions for several Confederate organizations, putting a stop to more than 75 years of state support for efforts to romanticize slavery and glorify the Confederacy.
Know your history!
From the article:
In 1953, Iran’s socialist prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, was overthrown in a coup d’etat instigated by Britain’s MI6 and the CIA in order to protect British oil interests from nationalisation.
www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ap...
Goddess of Discord
This post is an excerpt from my memoir From Where I Stand, a story of love across time and race. The place is Wake Forest, North Carolina, a small town of about 4,000 people. The time is 1967-1968, about three years before the total desegregation of Wake County schools.…
Entre nosotras el mar
La Vigia: a story of Cuba Photo by Lynn Farmer A poet and an artist walk into a bar. Not a promising beginning to a story—particularly when you consider the time and place. The beginning of this story takes place in Cuba during what Fidel Castro called “the Special Period in…
The Cloisters Museum, New York City - photo by K Bryant Lucas
I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal.... The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room. -- May Sarton
“Real greatness is rarely loud. It does not need a jet, an island, a fortune, or a headline. It does not need to be seen to be real.
“It only needs to be faithful to its call.” - Patti Digh
open.substack.com/pub/pattidig...
Pledging allegiance
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash I stand up behind the podium. I am addressing a meeting of the Rotary Club of Wake Forest, North Carolina, in the back room of a local cafeteria. The people in front of me are mostly white. They sit along the sides of long rectangular tables…
Three rules in FBI firearm training:
1. Always point your weapon downrange
2. Do not point your weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot
3. Don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to shoot
Guns are not for threatening compliance for unarmed people doing things you don’t like
The Slaughter of Innocence
Photo by Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash I was not there for the Slaughter of the Innocents. I was with the rest of the cast in the lounge that served as a green room—sitting on a comfy chair or on the floor with my legs stretched out in front of me. Doing homework, studying…
Wrote a thing:
The carnage associated with fossil fuel is why speeding the transition to renewables is good for international stability as well as everything else. Fossil fuel is inseparable from violence, and dependence on it it has created a brutal world order....
The November sun thru the tree in our front yard. Nothing more. Something to focus my weary mind on the way life goes on.
#Booksky
Reading and sweaters
15 Novels You Need to Read This Fall
flip.it/uOLlj6
I'm planning to attend the No Kings's event, “NO KINGS Wake Forest, NC” - sign up now to join me! www.mobilize.us/nokings/even...
Who knew that ant bites—black ants, not red—could make your foot swell and walking a pain in the foot.
I, for one, did not know. But now I do.
"Any book worth banning is a book worth reading."
Isaac Asimov
BREAKING: VETERAN'S
BEGIN A SIT-IN IN WASHINGTON DC AND WON'T STOP UNTIL THE MILITARY LEAVES TOWN
You and me BOTH.
Walz: "It boggles my damn mind that in the midst of a military takeover of our cities, the flaunting of the rule of law, that the press finds the need to talk about, 'Oh, there's a division in the Dem Party.' There's a division in my damn house & we're still married and things are good. That's life"
History isn’t a warm banket designed to make you feel safe and comfortable. It’s a cold rainstorm that should drive you to learn how to avoid getting wet the next time.
In case anyone's confused, yes, slavery was bad.
