4/12/23

 Wednesday, April 12, 2023

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:15, but 5, maybe 6 pss.  57℉ now, hard to believe high of 75℉ forecast, SW wind at 13 mph, 7 to 19 mph during the day, gusts up to 33 mph  Sunrise at 6:14, sunset at 7:31,  13+16.

"An Incalculable Crime"  I subscribed to Yair Rosenberg's The Atlantic newsletter Deep Shtetl" this morning after reading his informative article "The Three Biggest Misconceptions About Israel's Upheaval and How to Better Understand the Protests There."  In scanning earlier newsletters I saw one from January 27, 2023 on "What to Read on Holocaust Remembrance Day: A Few Selections on the human, statistical, and moral dimensions of an incalculable crime." That term "an incalculable crime" caught me eye as not only descriptive of the Holocaust but also of chattel slavery in America.  For some time I have thought about the magnitude, the enormity of the crime against Blacks that was America's slave-based economy and slave-owning culture, how its effects are so visible, so tangible from the time of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment 158 years ago through today.  The word "incalculable" at least hints at the element of persistent effects, the continuation of the criminal effects through history.  We are reminded of it every time we see on our TV screens the images of young Black men arrested or convicted of dreadful crimes, usually against other Black men, or Black women, or increasingly Black children, victims of stray bullets.  Continuing results of race-based chattel slavery, of Jim Crow and segregation, of invidious  racial discrimination, of continuing unwillingness to share the wealth ('income redistribution=socialism/communism"), to share electoral and governmental power ("voter fraud"), to share neighborhoods and schools and real economic opportunity in our "Christian nation."

Toni Morrison - Writing Before Dawn.  “Recently I was talking to a writer who described something she did whenever she moved to her writing table. I don’t remember exactly what the gesture was—there is something on her desk that she touches before she hits the computer keyboard—but we began to talk about little rituals that one goes through before beginning to write. I, at first, thought I didn’t have a ritual, but then I remembered that I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark—it must be dark—and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come. And she said, Well, that’s a ritual. And I realized that for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular . . . Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense.

I tell my students one of the most important things they need to know is when they are their best, creatively. They need to ask themselves, What does the ideal room look like? Is there music? Is there silence? Is there chaos outside or is there serenity outside? What do I need in order to release my imagination?”—Toni Morrison, The Paris Review

Dinner: Fried cod, slivered carrots, brussels sprouts, small potatoes, vanilla bean ice cream w/ chocolate sauce.