Last night, as a cool breeze attempted to disperse the hot sticky air making room for cooling rains, I sat on the porch reading When the Jasmine Grows, yet my mind wandered into diverse thoughts about what is worth fighting for as well as right and wrong. My thoughts were far too complex for a Friday night after a long, emotionally hard week with many worries. Yet, I returned to the book, set in North Carolina during the Civil War, compelled to find if/how the family found peace and a future. I finally climbed into bed, eyes exhausted, mind still reeling, finding sleep in bits and spurts making many text to real life connections between life then and now, in a country divided by conspiracy theories, court challenges, and debates on human decency.
I woke up exhausted, still thinking about Joetta and her proclamation that the war was not her fight and about the danger in ever-changing labels to describe people and ideals (Karen Fredricks). I cannot write a song to express my thoughts (Billy Joel, Pete Seeger) nor can I create or capture and image that people will long remember. Yet, even though I should be running the vacuum, I cannot be silent. So here is a short poem with lines borrowed from a quote by Mel Young in today's (7/26) NYTimes article about a trip to Scotland as today's attempt to share concerns of not-just-Americans.
I’m horrified by
The normalization of cruelty, corruption,
Mass disinformation.
Mel Young, Scotland
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