Today, I chose

Follow-up bit on the previous post (It's...puzzling): Finding puzzles right now is harder than finding a chicken with teeth.  Also, I like a certain kind of puzzle and have spent probably far, far too long trying to land on one that is actually available, especially when it takes a sweet forever to sift through the hundreds if not thousands of entries on an indie bookstore's site when you search for "puzzles."  I haven't yet figured out a better way to do this.

Now, a brief spot of happy(er) news: My library is open again for curbside pick-up!  Oh the joy that thoroughly filled my hands, heart and soul as I (first) danced enthusiastically around the room with The Elder and (second) quickly added almost 30 books to my holds list.  The joy that oozed out of that email announcing I had books to pick up was real and true and good.  The timing of this was also primo as I was rapidly, rapidly adding more titles to my To Be Read list following all of the everything that my eyes, ears and brain have been grappling with of late.

Good timing, indeed.  By happenstance when the library opened again, I had Beloved by Toni Morrison up next in my physical hands to read.  And then I quickly had several necessary books available to me immediately from the library.  Book serendipity is truly magical and while the content has not been exactly what I would call "a delight," it has been a delight to immediately follow Beloved with Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper and then Me and White Supremacy: Combat racism, change the world, and become a good ancestor by Lalya F. Saad this week.  The serendipity grows deeper because all of these threads came together at the same time as I had a couple of days a-l-o-n-e in the house.  Let me repeat it for those of you who think you misread: I had a full 54.5 hours alone by myself and in my house where my favorite reading places happen to be.  I wedged another book in  there as well (a bit of recon work that was a laughable clunker), but all in all was able to focus and spend honest-to-goodness time with reading.

I did virtually no work around the house in that time, which just goes to show that sacrifices were made to ensure that I had optimal reading time.

Good inter web folks: It was mind boggling how immediately relevant Beloved struck me.  This is a book about escaped slaves set in the mid-1800s.  Woe unto us that this book is still needed as part of our cultural conversations.  Both Cooper's and Saad's books discuss events that should be outdated.  But are not.  WOE UNTO US THAT THIS IS THE CASE.

My heart has been heavy and beyond words.  My heart has been convicted in reading Cooper and Saad...convicted in the best, most necessary ways.  My heart needs to learn more.

I have been taking notes and looking ahead to the start of the next school year when we will in some capacity come together again to talk race and lenses and Otherness in my literature and writing classes.  It has always been there.  I'm anxious to use my time right now to find more and better and applicable tools to use RIGHT NOW with my students.

I strongly urge you to read Cooper and Saad.  To seek out Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward and Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson and Motherhood So White: a memoir of race, gender and parenting in America by Nefertiti Austin and Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson and The Nickel Boys: A Novel by Colson Whitehead.  To read along with me and challenge me and convict me.  To do better.

Saad makes a point that we are none of not racist.  Rather, the goal is to chose anti-racism each day.  We have a lot of work to do and this seems like the right time to do it.  Today, I thought consciously about it and chose anti-racism.  I invite you to do the same.