Happy Friday everyone!
Our book club starts on Monday. I know several of you have gotten the book. I know at least one of you has already finished the book (*cough* overachiever *cough*). I'll be sending out a discussion thread next week as well as a finalized date & time for our monthly meeting.
We start the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, on Monday.
It feels like the perfect time to start.
Tomorrow is July 4th.
There will be lots of flag-waving, fireworks, and barbecues. All of this will look different set against a pandemic and protests. The 4th of July is a day meant to celebrate our country.
I don’t feel much like celebrating this year.
Instead, I’ll be using this time to reflect.
I’ll be using this time to reflect on what it means to be an American. I like to think about what I can do to honor the memory of those who have fought and died for this country. To make the American experiment possible.
I’m using that to drive my engagement with the book.
The question I’m asking myself as I read this book is:
What does it mean to be a good citizen?
Part of that involves being fully and accurately informed about our past. It means having the ability to hold competing ideas in mind at the same time. It means taking the time to educate myself, to learn and grow and expose myself to new ideas. It means exploring what ideals like Freedom, Justice, and Equality mean to me, where we, as a people, have gone wrong, and what I - what we - can do better.
I’m still figuring all of that out. It’s a process and a journey.
Thank you for being on it with me.
Here’s what I have for this week.
Potent Quotables
History is not a set of facts but a series of arguments, issues, and controversies.
- James W. Loewen
The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.
- Tim O’Brien
The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order later to rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.
- Franz Kafka
Thought-Provoking Finds
Fake News Fake Life by Bizarro Comics - A meditation on play, connection, consumption, and creation, all against the backdrop of Aliens losing a hubcap and a robber working from home.
Tim O’Brien’s Goodreads Quote Page - I took a short story class in college. One book from that class, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a story about his time in Vietnam, has stuck with me more than many books I’ve read. The notion of “story truth” as a way to make you, the reader, someone distant from an experience, feel the felt, raw emotions of an experience (the “real truth”) has followed me since my first read through. It pulls on the notion of Truth and truths. It hints at the messiness of war. I reference it often. This page of his quotes will give you a great sense of his writing style and message.
Da 5 Bloods (Netflix) - This is the fourth of Spike Lee’s films that I’ve watched since watching Malcolm X a few weeks ago. It’s a weird flex, I know, but I share that not to impress you (or flex on you, as the kids say) with my voracious consumption but to highlight how incredible his films are. There are many war films (many of which document Vietnam) but few explore the intersections of race, patriotism, and war quite like this.
Be forewarned, there is gratuitous violence. There is footage of the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém and photographs of Vietnamese victims. Several people step on landmines. Plenty more are shot or stabbed. It is hard to watch but the privilege to look away is one we must be keenly aware of. The film poses really difficult questions about the lasting impact of war. Part of that is confronting these difficult images.
It’s a long film - over 2.5 hours - but don’t let that deter you from watching. Split it up if you must.
A Reminder
Milton Glaser, the 91-year old graphic designer responsible for the "I ❤️ NY" logo, died last week.
This is the design, his final, that he was working on. He was thinking about ways his work could benefit his city until the very end.
He wanted to remind people "that we have something in common” and perhaps that we are better together.
I’ll leave you with that for this week.
Happy 4th.
Be safe.
Wear a mask.
Be good to each other.
Until next time,
KB