Last night I wrote a Facebook post that was very personal for me. The Mother of two of my students, an alumna of the school I teach at, shared a very simple drawing and I was floored.
The words. There was a rushing feeling, so urgent I could not think. Tap-pity tap tap tap and I posted it. (but I spell checked! I’m quite sloppy!)
But then I cried. And I am still crying.
This hilarious video captures perfectly the chaotic, hyper-derivative state of the internet today. This is: navyseal copypasta as lyrics to an imitation delta blues song by way of YouTube played by a white man with a tinfoil hat, a national guitar and slide.
Or is the artist’s words
Navy Seal Copy Pasta Blues. Hey someone had to say it. (Note Bene), If this is more odd than you are used to, This is called copypasta and this is about Reddit. Reddit is like the youtube and the facebook but like Susan is to the mortals, God. Like.
Here’s my favorite part of Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks in response to Ted Yoho’s comments. Such dignity! Such precision! I challenge you to find a more powerful response to foolish behavior.
Had a lot of fun with my first long form twitter thread. I think I screwed it up somehow, but it was one of those things that I just needed to get off my chest. The argument? The Sun is a god. (Isn’t that obvious?)
If you're looking for a neutral, more sensible #religion, or and easy-to-worship god, you really can't do better than the SUN.
Here's why:
— ThomV (@twentymiglia) July 14, 2020
If you can handle the gorgeous formality and erudition, this text is worth listening to, especially now.
With these words I should like to draw the reader’s attention to the main difficulty he has to face. The horror which the dictator States have of late brought upon mankind is nothing less than the culmination of all those atrocities of which our ancestors made themselves guilty in the not so distant past. Quite apart from the barbarities and blood baths perpetrated by the Christian nations among themselves throughout European history, the European has also to answer for all the crimes he has committed against the dark-skinned peoples during the process of colonization. In this respect the white man carries a very heavy burden indeed. It shows us a picture of the common human shadow that could hardly be painted in blacker colors. The evil that comes to light in man and that undoubtedly dwells within him is of gigantic proportions, so that for the Church to talk of original sin and to trace it back to Adam’s relatively innocent slip-up with Eve is almost a euphemism. The case is far graver and is grossly underestimated.
It’s hard to speak these days. It feels best to be silent, and let others speak. But sometimes we have to enter our name in the Book.
I have spent many hours in white spaces. I have known what it is to be invisible. If there was inequality, I got the better half. The blessings of my life occurred while others suffered. Any missed opportunities by me came because there were simply too many to count. I am a product of racism and I am complicit.
I had to think today of that poem by John Donne, “No Man is an Island.” It came to me in the middle of some tense family moments. It was quarantine o’clock and, as usual, my wife and I were being the worst parents ever.
Then, quite out of nothing, the poem popped into my head and I was taken back to my memory of those solemn lines. I said them loudly to inject a little absurdity into the family din.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,Every man is a piece of…
When I first read this passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson ‘s “Self-Reliance”
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
This weekend we went to see our parents in the airy state of PA. I say airy, because of the space. It’s almost like six feet was always too close for the people of Pennsylvania.
Everywhere I looked, I saw people with the same expression on their face. What was it?Confusion? Numb bewilderment? It’s almost as if we got wiped out by the junk food virus.
I’m not making claims about Pennsylvanians, mind you. I see the same look in the eyes of my Marylanders and my New Yorkers. I see it on the TV people. I hear it in the voices of the NPR reporters.
Recent Posts
- Coming Soon…
- A Prayer for the Panther
- Meme Level 10
- “You Can Have Daughters and Accost Women without Remorse.”
- The Sun is a god. Isn’t that obvious?
- Worth Listening: Carl Jung’s “The Undiscovered Self”
- We’ve Got to Fulfill the Book
- No (Wo)Man is An Island
- Self-Reliance
- A City and A Tower
- Monday is no time for Rumination
- The Gas Line
- The Genius of an Age
- Replace the Word “God” with “Monday.”
- A Time for Garrison Keillor
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