Monday Walk
Saturday Walk
Great Expectations
Just finished Great Expectations. First time I’ve read it since the fall of 1982. I have little memory of the book save for the charismatic English teacher who walked us through the early portion.
My highlights courtesy of kindle…
Tuesday Walk
Or someone already has and I should buy that book.
Great Piece on G Whitmer
The whole article/interview is excellent. I particularly appreciated these paragraphs near the end of the piece:
How did America arrive at this moment? Ronald Reagan famously cracked that the nine scariest words in the English language were: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” What started as a joke about federal overreach metastasized across the decades; government was not only inefficient, but unnecessary, suspect and even dangerous. This antigovernment posture was embraced by many in government itself. Bill Clinton’s 1996 declaration that “the era of big government is over” became self-fulfilling: The less trust Americans had in the ability of government to take care of them, the less government was in fact able to do so. Failure bred cynicism, which bred disengagement. Big government became all government. By the time the pandemic hit, America had elected a president who was himself openly contemptuous of the very notion of good government.
The next paragraph begins with this sentence:
It did not take long to see that the challenge presented by the virus could only be met by strong federal leadership.
Rewritten:
It did not take long to see that the challenge presented by racial inequality could only be met by strong federal leadership.
It did not take long to see that the challenge presented by educational inequality could only be met by strong federal leadership.
It did not take long to see that the challenge presented economic inequality could only be met by strong federal leadership.
It has taken so long.
Two other pieces address this notion from a historical perspective. Why, with so many issues, does it apparently take a long, long time?
One, Nikole Hannah-Jones on reparations.
Two, Jill Lepore on commissions formed after civil disorder.
Saturday Walk
How to teach, how to teach
This might be the most powerful essay I’ve read in a long time. I’m going to spend the summer thinking about how to best teach with this piece.
Caroline Randall Williams, “Opinion | You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument,” The New York Times, June 26, 2020, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html.
Protests and movements
Taylor Branch from yesterday’s paper:
“A movement is different from a demonstration,” said Taylor Branch, a historian of the civil rights era.
“It’s not automatic — it’s the opposite of automatic,” he said, “that a demonstration in the street is going to lead to a movement that engages enough people, and has a clear enough goal that it has a chance to become institutionalized, like the Voting Rights Act.”
Here is Ibram Kendi from How to be antiracist:
Ibram X Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist (New York: One World Books, 2019), 215-216.
Recent Reads
The Guardian on the work of historians during this time.
Dwight Garner on indolence: any article that concludes with this line “You’ll have plenty of opportunity to be miserable later, so why not enjoy yourself now” deserves attention.
Friday walk
Intersection of 49th and Grays’ Ave 
Giant stand of Tree of Heaven 
The enemy is gathering
Good news: we cleaned up our mess.
