I’ve been home and catching up with myself for a week now, got my covid booster and am ready to start writing postcards to remind Voters to Vote. I’m reading a fascinating book by Azar Nafisi titled Read Dangerously: the subversive power of literature in troubled times. I’ll have more to say about that next week and I’d love to talk about it with you on zoom. In the meantime you can watch the author’s interview (she wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran in 2003 and The Republic of Imagination in 2014) with NPR here.
» Azar Nafisi, Read Dangerously: the subversive power of literature in troubled times
When I think about Hispanic Heritage Month, I always go to Richard Blanco’s beautiful poem “America the Beautiful Again” from his book, How To Love A Country, published by Beacon Press in 2019.
with my mother, her Cuban accent scaling-up
every vowel: O, bee-yoo-tee-ful, yet in perfect
pitch, delicate and tuned to the radiant beams
of stained glass light. How she taught me to fix
my eyes on the crucifix as we sang our thanks
to our savior for this country that saved us—
our voices hymns as passionate as the organ
piping towards the very heavens. How I sang
for spacious skies closer to those skies while
perched on my father’s sun-beat shoulders,
towering above our first Fourth of July parade.
How the timbre through our bodies mingled,
breathing, singing as one with the brass notes
of the marching band playing the only song
he ever learned in English. How I dared sing it
at assembly with my teenage voice cracking
for amber waves of grain that I’d never seen,
nor the purple mountain majesties—but could
imagine them in each verse rising from my gut,
every exclamation of praise I belted out until
my throat hurt: America! and again America!
How I began to read Nietzsche and doubt god,
yet still wished for god to shed His grace on
thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood.
How I still want to sing despite all the truth
of our wars and our gunshots ringing louder
than our school bells, our politicians smiling
lies at the mic, the deadlock of our divided
voices shouting over each other instead of
singing together. How I want to sing again—
beautiful or not, just to be in harmony—from
sea to shining sea—with the only country
I know enough to know how to sing for.
» Listen to the author reading his poem
I also hope you’ll also take a few minutes to read today’s Garrison Keillor column. I’m with him on this one … mostly! In it he says things like “If a saw that someone’s hair was on fire, I would give up my own double latte to douse the flames and not ask four bucks in compensation. It’s how I was brought up.” (While it may not be exactly how I was brought up, I would too!)
And then there’s this.
“I look at the upcoming midterm election and I see candidates running for Congress who believe that gravity is a hoax and Caesar salad dressing causes strokes and the CIA caused Ian using Infrared Atmospheric Nuclei and the polls show them ahead and come January we may have a House with a large Dementia Caucus, but I am not dismayed. Call me a fool but I believe the old amiable America I’ve known is still functioning.”
And this: “I believe that if you want to see America clearly, don’t read the paper, go to a state fair.” Let’s go together!
» Garrison Keillor: Lighten up, he says, and he means it
Just in case you need an extra little lift, here’s a bit of Chocolate.
And finally, “let us meet as equals and do our best for each other.”
Wishing Us All the very best week we can make it,
Sulima
