It’s the birthday of Bob Dylan (books by this author), born Robert Zimmerman in 1941. He was born in Duluth, Minnesota, and grew up in nearby Hibbing, just off the road that ran all the way up from New Orleans and lent its name to his sixth album, 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited. He moved down to Minneapolis and studied art at the University of Minnesota, and though he’d started out his musical career with a rock ‘n’ roll band, he soon converted to folk, playing gigs at a coffeehouse, the 10 O’clock Scholar, in the Dinkytown neighborhood north of campus. Rock was catchy, but it wasn’t deep enough to satisfy him, and he later said: “I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.” He left Dinkytown for New York and became the darling of Greenwich Village’s folk community.
By the mid-1960s, he’d gone electric, forsaking folk and returning to his rock roots. It wasn’t a popular move among his fans, and at a show in England they booed him and called him “Judas.” He responded by cranking the amps even louder, never one to worry about a rapport with his audience.
His lyrics evolved too, from protest songs into more literary undertakings, influenced by Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and John Keats (to say nothing of Dylan Thomas, who inspired Zimmerman’s name change). He’s been called one of America’s great contemporary poets, and his lyrics are studied in college poetry classes, stripped of the music. Boston University lecturer Kevin Barents directs students to consider the iambic and ballad meter on Dylan’s album John Wesley Harding.
Oxford professor Christopher Ricks puts him on a par with Milton, Keats, and Tennyson. He’s been nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature every year since 1996. He wrote a volume of poetry and prose called Tarantula
in 1966 (published in 1971), even though he had famously proclaimed himself “a song-and-dance man” in 1965, when asked outright if he was a songwriter or a poet; The New Yorker published two of his poems from that period in 2008. Perhaps it’s best to draw the distinction where he did, in the liner notes for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan: “Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem.”
He’s also kept up with his art, drawing and painting to fill the time when he’s on the road. Some critics compare his style to Degas, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Matisse. Others say he is “spasmodically brilliant,” and one art history professor said he “paints like any other amateur.” The artist himself says, in his typically laconic style: “I just draw what’s interesting to me and then I paint it. Rows of houses, orchard acres, lines of tree trunks, could be anything. I can turn it into a life and death drama.” https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2013%252F05%252F24.html
Daryl Hall Talks New Solo Album, Elvis Costello Tour, and Confirms Hall & Oates Are Officially Over (EXCLUSIVE)
By Roy Trakin
“Say It Isn’t So” isn’t just the name of a classic Hall & Oates song —
it’s the much-headlined reaction to the news that the duo that practically defines duos had a nasty and seemingly final split last year. The two, who began singing and performing together more than 50 years ago over a mutual love of soul and doo-wop music, were almost impossible to imagine without each other — even more than Simon without Garfunkel or George Michael without Andrew Ridgeley, this was more like a final split between peanut butter and jelly. It’s actually hard to imagine. https://variety.com/2024/music/news/daryl-hall-oates-final-split-1235990460/
Alien Earths, by Lisa Kaltenegger, is an excellent book and was immensely enjoyed. The author is a female, which would have pleased Mother, who railed against the natural order ‘back in the day’, which was to keep women, “Barefoot and in the kitchen.” During my life women have certainly come a long way, baby, and it has been good to see. An example would be the fact that this is not the first science type book I have read that was written by a female. Another book, Warped Passages, by Lisa Randall, was devoured several years ago. Our country is better now that all the brain power is being utilized.
Ms. Kaltenegger begins the book with a question: So where is everyone? She writes, “Let’s assume, for a moment, that the universe is teeming with life. In that case, the obvious question is: Where is everyone?
After cogitatin’ for a moment I wondered if maybe we Earthlings were not fortunate that other entities had either not found us or had found us but wanted nothing to do with us, for obvious reasons.
She writes about where she began the path through life: My world began as a small town,
but it grew to encompass the whole globe, then reached into the cosmos, with new planets to explore in whatever way possible. The mysterious twinkling dots of light of my childhood have transformed into scorching ball of gas and the heavens into a celestial history book of the cosmos, but when I look at the night sky I still feel the wonder and excitement I felt as a child to uncover what is out there.
At home or on vacation, my mom was always there to listen to my stories. She also nurtured my growing love for books. When I was ten, the library gave up trying to put limits on the number of books I could borrow, and I happily carried increasingly larger piles home, sinking into worlds I could only imagine in those pages. Who could have dreamed that one day I would be the one filling a spot on the library shelf?
Here Be Bananas, Aliens, and Dragons
I once began a lecture in my introductory class by holding up a banana and asking my students, “Could this banana be an alien?” Let me be clear: I don’t think a banana is an alien-or at least I think it is extremely, extremely unlikely. To find life in the cosmos, we need to stretch our minds and search at the limits of technology. Not only do we need to work at the edge of knowledge, but we must ask the right questions and overcome our own biases. The human brain has evolved to spot patterns-a great evolutionary trait for people who were once hunted as prey. If your ancestors spied hungry lions in tall grass before the lions sneaked up on them, they survived. If there were a few false alarms and a bit of energy wasted in fleeing unnecessarily, that was not as bad as being surprised by lions on the prowl.
The Golden Record: A Message in a Bottle
When Voyager 1 and voyager 2 were launched in 1977 to explore the outerplanets in our solar system, NASA included a message from humankind on each spacecraft: the Golden Record. Inscribed with the words “To the makers of music-all worlds, all times,” it is a time capsule of life on Earth.
The Golden Record tells the story of our planet: a story captured in images, sound, and science: 115 images of life on Earth and 90 minutes of musical selections from different cultures and eras…
One song on the record always touches me deeply: “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” recorded in 1927 by Blind Willie Johnson, a Texas blues musician. In 1945, Willie Johnson’s home was destroyed by a fire, but he lived in the ruins because he had nowhere else to go. He contracted malaria but hospitals refused to treat him, either because he was Black or because he was blind-the accounts differ. We don’t even know where he is buried-but his song is aboard two spacecraft en route to the stars.
A Pale Blue Dot
Before Voyager 1 got the final push to leave our solar system, (Carl) Sagan convinced NASA to turn the spacecraft around and take a last image of Earth, its home planet.This spectacular photograph captured on Valentine’s Day in 1990, more than three decades ago, shows Earth as a tiny point of light suspended in a sunbeam on the dark canvas of space. The vast oceans and a medley of clouds combine to paint it pale blue. That picture changed how I think about our planet.
Our Sun circles the black hole, Sagittarius A*, in the center of our Milky Way. We are about 25,000 light-years away from Sagittarius A*, but like all stars in the Milky Way, our Sun and its planets are caught in its gravitational embrace. Monty Python’s “Galaxy Song” provides a fun and pretty accurate summary of our movement in the universe-and asks hopefully, in satiric Monty Python style, whether there could be intelligent life in the cosmos because, they lament, “there’s bugger all down here on Earth.”
Except for hydrogen, helium, and small amounts of lithium and beryllium, all the elements that make you were produced in the inferno found in the cores of stars or during their violent death throes in spectacular supernova explosions. Elements heavier than iron, like silver, and gold, are forged in the immense supernova explosion at the end of a massive star’s life. You can hold the leftover fragments forged in a star’s death throes in you hand. The calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, and the oxygen you breathe are all ancient stardust. In the vast expanse of the universe, you are part of the cosmos. You are made of ancient stardust.
Unfortunately, no one has managed to journey to the center of the Earth yet…
What colors can a sky be? It turns out it depends on what the air is made of and if there are particles like dust in it. Air on other planets could have a very different chemical makeup than ours, so the pinball effect of scattering would be different too. Pick a color to paint an alien sky. Imagine a pink sky or a purple sunset. It might exist on one of these new worlds. I would love to see that, but first, I’d make sure I was in a safe place on a spaceship or an enclosed base, because a sky painted in eerie colors means that breathing the air would probably kill you. So beware, future astronauts, of different-colored skies!
Worlds That Shook Science
A Winding Road
Since the start of my career, I have been propelled by my fascination with the question of whether we could ever find life on other planets-and how I might be able to play a role in that exciting research. But the road to scientific discovery is not without its potholes, especially for women.
Sometimes they are big enough to block your path completely, requiring creative maneuvering to find a new way to follow your dream. (I can recall numerous incidents where I was challenged or ignored, experiences that will resonate with many others, no matter what gender, and might provide a little help when facing these obstacles.)
“This is just crazy,” my Ph,D. student Sarah declared, outraged, upon bursting into my office. She was upset on my behalf because she overheard two men on the bus stating with conviction that I had been given my position as the leader of one of the highly competitive Emmy Noether research teams here at the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, only “because I was a woman.” The fact that the program, funded by the German Research Foundation to the tune of about half a million euros, is named after the famous German female mathematician Emmy Noether was probably lost on these men too.
There are thousands of empty seats-about 5,960 of them-around me. They will be filled tonight, but no one is allowed at sound check except for he musicians and a few scientists who are here for their own sound check later. The Starmus International Festival was found by the Armenian-Spanish astronomer Garik Israelian and the British musician Brian May, who holds a Ph.D. in astronomy, and the festival celebrates music, exploration, science, and art. It bring musicians, Nobel Prize winners, artists, writers, and scientists together to share their passions with everyone. In 2022 it was held in Yerevan, Armenia.
The night before, I had drinks and pizza on the rooftop of our hotel on the central square on the central square with the musicians of Sons of Apollo; we discussed life in the cosmos, the universe, and how scientists figured out that it is ever expanding, then we seamlessly switched from the mysteries of the cosmos to the mysteries of the music that connects us all. I wonder how many more kids would pay attention in math and science class if they knew that even rock stars are fascinated by the cosmos.
Exploring space allows us to gather the knowledge to save ourselves from asteroids, from pollution, and from using up the limited resources on Earth, our beautiful, incredibly complex yet fragile “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” as Carl Sagan so eloquently described it.
I like receiving questions from readers and try to reply to each and every one, such as the one above. This writer has enjoyed spending time watching, and reading about, the game of Go, or what is called Weiqi in most of our world. Yesterday the intention was to travel to visit the Atlanta May the 4th Tournament (https://www.usgo.org/content.aspx?page_id=4002&club_id=454497&item_id=2268284) but the back was barkin’ at me this morning, and that old dog will not stop barkin’ so the plan had to be changed.
I am not a good player and have grown old. Nevertheless, I am a firm believer in the axiom, “Use it or lose it.” I believe spending time with Go has had a beneficial effect on my brain. It is almost as if I can feel the synapses making new connections in my brain. Videos have been watched and much time has been spent watching games played online, most of it at this website (https://online-go.com/). One of the things I have noticed is that my brain has been seeing patterns, which caused me to consider something recently read in this book:
“That ability to discern patterns is still useful, but it can also make us think we see things that are not actually there.” Anyone who has sat at any kind of game board will immediately get my drift… Sometimes late at night when watching the chosen Go game I marvel at the beauty of the patterns.
I have gotten better and my understanding has become deeper enough to be able so see a “must” move. The following diagram is an illustration:
Black has just played a stone at L17, which is the black stone containing the white circle. Where would you place a stone if playing the white stones?
When the next stone was played it was exactly where I would have played if it were my turn to play:
Upon seeing the white stone played at J15 my fist was PUMPED as I exclaimed, “YES!”
For some reason I have found myself attracted to playing a stone a Chess “knight move” away for a set of two opponents stones, as in the following example:
Do you suppose all those years playing Chess has had something to do with my thought processes?
Stretched across counties, countries, the train Rushes faster than memory through the rain. The rise of each hill is a musical phrase. Listen to the rhythm of space, how it lies, How it rolls, how it reaches, what unwinding relays Of wood and meadow where the red cows graze Come back again and again to closed eyes— That garden, that pink farm, that village steeple, And here and there the solitary people Who stand arrested when express trains pass, That stillness of an orchard in deep grass.
Yet landscapes flow like this toward a place, A point in time and memory’s own face. So when the clamor stops, we really climb Down to the earth, closing the curve of time, Meeting those we have left, to those we meet Bringing our whole life that has moved so fast, And now is gathered up and here at last, To unroll like a ribbon at their feet.
I have always been fascinated by trains. The railroad tracks divided the city in which I came of age. The more wealthy people lived on one side and my family resided on the other side.
I crossed those tracks on foot walking to College Park High School for years until obtaining a drivers license and crossing those tracks every day taking my sisters to school in a small Volkswagen that had been hit by a drunken Delta Airlines pilot as I attempted crossing Virginia Avenue when taking my sister and a couple of my her friends home one Friday night. It was the first time I had driven at night. I waited until the light turned green. The cops said the pilot had to have been traveling at least eighty mile per hour. Fortunately, the injury was to my pride. My current roommate, the Legendary Georgia Ironman, when driving a dump truck, was hit by a train when attempting to cross those very same tracks south of town decades later. After spending time in a hospital bed he came out of it to play in a Chess tournament. Tim was all bandaged and there was blood dripping on the board as he sat there playing one of the strongest, and the first Georgia child prodigy, Randy Kolvick. The game has become known as the legendary “Blood Dripping Game.” Tim won the game, the only time he defeated Randy. Therefore, Chess has its own version of a “Blood Dripping Game” which is not to be confused with the famous Weiqi version called the “Blood-vomiting game.”
When young one of our neighbors, who lived next door, had a model train set in his attic and I was the only boy he allowed into his sanctuary. He even allowed me to help paint some of the small models. His wife would bring us sandwiches while we “trained.” Alas, they moved.
In the seventh grade I made a trip to Washington D.C. with my classmates to visit the sites. All I recall now is that Jerri Bickers walked up to me on the train and planted the first kiss from a girl on my lips. That was the first of more than a few kisses received on a train. I don’t know what it is about those tracks…
A stewardess, Cecil Jordan, from the left coast, came to Atlanta to work for Delta Airlines. Because of her I am a proud member of the “Mile High Club.” When she moved to New Orleans I took a train to visit. Decades later I took a job taking brand new Bell South vehicles around the South. None of the other drivers wanted the trip to Lake Charles, Louisiana, which reader readers will not be surprised to learn, reminds me of a song by my all-time favorite R&R band:
That, folks, was a brand new video to these old eyes, so you know today I am a happy camper.
There was a time when a vehicle needed to be transported to Asheville, North Carolina, and it was the week of the Land of the Sky Chess tournament held each year in Asheville, by Wilder Wadford. I drove up in one of those Bell South vehicles being followed by the legendary Rainbow Warrior, Tim Bond, with whom I returned to Atlanta.
One year a very nice young man who was attending Georgia Tech began working at the Boys Club, one of my ALL TIME favorite places on the planet. One day he was reading a model train magazine and after asking to see it he asked, “Do you have a train?” I told him all about the neighbor, and the small train set received from Santa one year. Although I cannot recall exactly when that occurred I can recall it was in the mid to late 1960s and I had not started driving. He was in the ROTC at Georgia Tech, and after graduating, he was sent to Vietnam, where he was killed. I had grown too old to cry, but after learning of his death, I admit to being unable to stop the tears from flowing. What a WASTE! From that moment on I HATED that so-called Vietnam “conflict,” and any and everyone who supported the “conflict” which, I believe, was the “official” name of that “unofficial” WAR. For the Generals to have that war a POTUS had to be assassinated in broad daylight on the streets of Dallas, Texas.
We are seeking Volunteers on Saturday, April 20th, and Sunday, April 21st to help collect signatures to get Mr. Kennedy on the GA ballot. Select from any of the shift options listed on the event page here.
Contact Angela@TeamKennedy.com to volunteer and receive a discounted ticket for $50. No ticket is necessary if you’d like to set up a table outside of the event.
The event begins at 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 20th, but we are asking volunteers to please arrive at 12 p.m. to help collect signatures as people arrive at the event.
Come out and enjoy good music, great food, live art, and a 420-friendly culture as we work together to get RFKJr on the ballot!
DETAILS
The Sesh Music Festival
183 Forsyth St SW in Atlanta, GA
Saturday, April 20th, and Sunday, April 21st from 12pm – 10pm
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band Lyrics “Blinded By The Light”
Blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night Blinded by the light
Madman drummer bummers Indians in the summer With a teenage diplomat In the dumps with the mumps As the adolescent pumps His way into his hat With a boulder on my shoulder Feeling kinda older I tripped a merry-go-round With this very unpleasing Sneezing and wheezing The calliope crashed to the ground The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night Blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night Blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night
Some silicone sister With her manager mister Told me I got what it takes She said, I’ll turn you on sonny to something strong Play the song with the funky break And go-kart Mozart Was checking out the weather chart To see if it was safe outside And little Early Pearly Came by in his curly-wurly And asked me if I needed a ride Asked me if I needed a ride
‘Cause she was blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night Blinded by the light
She got down but she never got tight She’s gonna make it to the night She’s gonna make it through the night
But mama, that’s where the fun is But mama, that’s where the fun is
[Solo]
Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun But mama, that’s where the fun is
Some brimstone baritone Anticyclone rolling stone Preacher from the east Says, “Dethrone the Dictaphone Hit it in its funny bone That’s where they expect it least.” And some new mown chaperone Was standing in the corner Watching the young girls dance And some fresh-sown moonstone Was messing with his frozen zone Reminding him of romance
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night Blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night
(Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat)
Blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night Blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night
(With a boulder on my shoulder feelin’ kinda older I tripped the merry-go-round With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground)
Blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night Blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night
(And now Scott with a slingshot finally found a tender spot and throws his lover in the sand And some bloodshot forget-me-not whispers daddy’s within earshot save the buckshot turn up the band.)
Blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night Blinded by the light Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night
(Some silicone sister with her manager mister told me I got what it takes She said I’ll turn you on sonny to something strong)
Tommy Orange’s ‘There There’ Sequel Is a Towering Achievement
“Wandering Stars” considers the fallout of colonization and the forced assimilation of Native Americans.
By Jonathan Escoffery
After completing the exceptional book I concur with the sentiment expressed by Mr. Escoffery.
Having spent time in the book world I know that, like the music world, there are many “one hit wonders.” Sometimes, somehow, the magic that was the first novel is lost with the second book. This is not one of those times. Asking which I like best would be like asking a parent which twin they prefer. These books will stand the test of time. Tommy Orange had something to say, and he wrote it beautifully.
Readers can find a plethora of reviews in many places, including the interwovenwebofallthings. This writer has previously been called “unconventional”, something I wear like a badge of honor. To be honest, I realize my words matter little, if that, when it comes to attempting to review books like There There and now, Wandering Stars, two of the best novels these eyes have ever seen. Therefore I have chosen to allow some of the words written by the author speak for themselves. The words chosen resonated with this reviewer. There is nothing that can be added to writing this good. If you are reading these words, obtain the books
pg 45
Stories do more than comfort. They take you away and bring you back better made.
pg 95
I need to tell you about your father so that you might come to know him. He is making his way over there, on his journey home, and the dead want to be remembered before they journey home.
And yes he will be gone once he goes, but the dead are never far. They find us in dreams,
and keep teaching us from the inside long after they go, so you might find each other, in some blue-white field, or overgrown underbrush, or beneath a forest home you’ll remember but have never known.
pg 103
I don’t know where the Havens got that crazy name from. Cholly. He’s one of these mutts you don’t know what kinds of breeds are in him and you don’t much care because he seems all his own in the eyes. Well he’s only got the one eye, but it’s got more life in it than I’ve seen in some men with two. And I’ve seen worse men than those with no life in their eyes. It’s worse when they know what they want and they’re hungry for it,
white men in this country, they come to take everything, even themselves, they have taken so much they have lost themselves in the taking, and what will be left of such a nation once they are done? My mother once said, “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is finished, no matter how brave its warriors, or how strong their weapons.” I wondered about American women. White women. Where were their hearts?
pg 132
You will begin to go to the library, become a member and read as much as you can about Indians. About Cheyennes. There won’t be much but you will read it all. American history, too. Even some world history. You will read Mark Twain and dislike him. Jack London will hold your interest for a while, and the librarian will tell you that he became a reader at Oakland Public Libraries. But you will hate the way Jack London writes about Indian people once you get to those books. You will ask the librarian what novels are written by Indian people and she will tell you that she doesn’t think there are any.
pg 143
But stories are for telling after the fact. And the one true fact about the afterlife is that nothing comes from there. Everything goes there.
pg 139
You will tell her you are bringing a new child into the world and you will begin to dream up the life you will all live together once she comes, as if she were bringing a bright future with her from that otherside, from the beforelife.
pg 198
A bad thing doesn’t stop happening to you just because it stops happening to you.
pg 221
Lony dreamed about dominoes. He dreamed that he was a domino tile, and that there were lines of dominoes as far as he could see, falling in rows that seemed to get closer and closer to him. In the dream he didn’t know when the line would come that would knock him over and end his life. He knew that being knocked over meant that, and that the line was his family line, that something had begun long before he was born that was coming to know him down, but that this was true of everyone, each family line falling down on top of the living when they die, all that they couldn’t carry, couldn’t resolve, couldn’t figure out, with all their weight.
pg 237
One thing you can do when it seems there’s nothing else you can do, which is to say when you feel restless, is to walk, move your body through space and let the wisdom of what comes from that be your guide.
pg 251
“Look it up. But tell me this, do you think Bob Marley’s American grandchildren living in America are trying to act like they’re real Jamaicans? Even Bob was half white.”
“Bob Marley’s American grandchildren?” Sean took a second to reregister the pill bottle. He wondered what Orvil was taking, if he was some kind of high. Orvil closed his locker and started to walk away.
“Hey, wait up though,” Sean said, and followed Orvil. He noticed just then that he was taller than Orvil by a good foot. “I mean I know who Bob Marley is, but I don’t know if I know what you’re talking about.”
“Bob Marley’s son Rohan grew up in Miami. He played football. Almost went pro. His kid ended up playing for the Washington Redskins. You know the buffalo soldiers were named because of what Indians called them because they thought their hair looked like buffalo hair?” Orvil was gripping a metal railing, kind of rocking a little back and forth.
“Buffalo soldiers? Oh yeah I know that song.
So you spend a lotta time on the internet.”
“Some of the Havasupai people, they’re the ones who live down in the Grand Canyon next to some waterfalls, they believe Bob to be the second coming of Crazy Horse. D’you know hella Native people love reggae music, love Bob Marley?”
“I mean. Everyone loves Bob Marley, but that is still pretty crazy,” Sean said.
“Horse,” Orvil said.
“What?”
“Well if you believe the Havasupai people, he was Crazy Horse.”
“Imagine. All these years. I don’t know why I been holding on to it, lord knows we don’t have the room for it, but we keep making room somehow, says every hoarder on those reality shows, ayyyy,” she said. Opal laughed a little at this, having watched some of those shows.
pg 268
Loother’s on his phone too. He’s playing chess, which he first started playing because he thought it’d make him seem smart and because Vee plays, so they play each other, but then he kept playing because he legit like it, like once he got past the beginning stages where he didn’t know what to move and he was just moving with no plan, it started to feel really full, like a really big game.
It was one thing to be grateful for the ancestors, and another thing to know them on the page. I always felt like we didn’t do good enough. That our family line was in some way weak. And yes weakened by the effects of history, colonization, historical trauma. But also not strong enough to pass down the traditions or language successfully. Because we lacked something. I hadn’t considered everything that had happened. How far back it’d been happening to us. We come from prisoners of a long war that didn’t stop even when it stopped. Was still being fought when my mom helped take over Alcatraz. I was part of the fight too. So were my grandchildren. But surviving wasn’t enough. To endure or pass through endurance test after endurance test only ever gave you endurance test passing abilities. Simply lasting was great for a wall, for a fortress, but not for a person. And yes it would be nice if the rest of the country understood that not all of us have our culture or language intact directly because of what happened to our people, how we were systematically wiped out from the outside in and then the inside out, and consistently dehumanized and misrepresented in the media and in educational institutions, but we needed to understand it for ourselves. The extent we made it through. The extent.
pg 312
School was a waste of fucking time. Literally. A factory farm for future office cows.
pg 326
“I don’t trust people who just believe, like without knowing anything or because they need to believe what they want to believe in more than they care about whether the thing they’re believing in is worthy of believing in, but I wouldn’t ever want to become a nonbeliever. Like how most adults end up. Kids know something you actively try to make us lose. You know that, right?” “Make you lose what?” “You know what I mean, Jacquie Red Feather.”
pg 352
I’m being asked to understand that with some people you love, they just won’t end up being a part of your life. I’m being asked a question that it seems I can answer only by living.
pg 366
And it’s inside myself that I must create someone who will understand. – Clarice Lispector
pg 378
As for my higher power, I never found my way.
pg 381
No one noticed us, but that was the point. Sometimes a good sound is just supposed to be good enough to not be noticed. Rarely is anything so good a crowd gathers. Not at this kind of gig. There’s this old French composer I love named Erik Satie who wanted to compose what he called furniture music, by which he meant background music, music not meant to be noticed but to kind of just fill the room, which would now be called ambient music, but this was in the late 1800s, so pretty far ahead of his time, I’d say.
Armchair Warrior 