James Baldwin.

advice from dad

So, my Dad is a 73-year-old Mexican man who has lived here since he was 16. He was in Watts during the riots in 1965; in 1992, when I was in LA, as soon as the Rodney King verdict was announced, he called me, told me what was coming, told me how to stay safe. He has survived horrible living conditions, being kidnapped, physical abuse, prejudice, discrimination. He learned English, got his green card, pays his taxes, works hard, and has three daughters. 

I thought he would be devastated today.

But he wasn’t.

He saw that I was sad and angry, and he asked me why, pretending he had no idea. I almost started crying. And then he said, “no se me chicopale.” 

It means, don’t lose heart. Don’t give in to despair.

I asked him why he wasn’t upset.

He said, basically, “The world has always been this way. There are always people who are afraid, who are racist, who are awful. This is not new. And it will never go away. He won. We can’t do anything about that. All we can do is what we can do. Fight for what matters to us. Take care of each other. And don’t lose heart. And here, I got these unsalted cashews for you and a bag of jamaica drink mix and can you show me how to use the new washing machine because it’s not working.”

And, for reasons I can’t articulate, I feel a little better. 

As a Jew who just spent two hours talking to a rabbi for the first time in thirty years, please give your dad a hug from me.

Tikun olam, the rabbi reminded me. Literally, it means world repair. It means we live in an imperfect world, and instead of looking to the Heaven of the next world, it’s our duty to be a light in THIS world – to protect those people who need our protection, to work for social justice, and to improve the world as a whole.

The world needs our light.

That is such an inspirational quote for such a dumbass thing to do

"Growing Around Grief"

Lois Tonkin, 1996

This is the most important thing I’ve learned about grieving. It never goes away. Time doesn’t make it smaller. Time, if you do the work, makes you bigger. Self expansion is key. Self expansion through creativity and passion and communication. My grief used to be all of me. Now it is a part of me. An important part, but just a part. I love this visualization so much.

James Baldwin.

whenever i'm trying to talk myself out of buying something i don't need i always hear my old russian professor's voice echoing in my head: "WHAT??? WILL YOU DIE THE RICHEST MAN IN THE GRAVEYARD?" and then i make an unwise financial decision

I’ve always liked this quote. “Do not be daunted by the greatness of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

[ID: three images. the first reads “remember that you can’t save everyone” next to an unchecked box. the second one, with a checked box, reads “remember that you have to try.” the third is a quote from Pirkei Avot, with hebrew on the left side of the page, and the right bearing its english translation: “he [rabbi tarfon] used to say: it is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it; if-” it cuts off there. /end ID]

“In one of the most notable moments in sports history, Kenyan runner Abel Mutai was just a few feet from the finish line, but became confused with the signage and stopped thinking he had completed the race.

 A Spanish athlete, Ivan Fernandez, was right behind him, and after realizing what was happening, he started shouting at the Kenyan for him to continue running; but Mutai didn't understand his Spanish. Fernandez eventually caught up to him and instead of passing him, he pushed him to victory.

A journalist asked Ivan, "Why did you do that?"

Ivan replied, “My dream is that someday we can have a kind of community life where we push and help each other to win.”

The journalist insisted “But why did you let the Kenyan win?" Ivan replied, "I didn't let him win, he was going to win.” The journalist insisted again, “But you could have won!”

Ivan looked at him & replied, “But what would be the merit of my victory? What would be the honor of that medal? What would my Mom think of that?” Values are transmitted from generation to generation. What values are we teaching our children? Let us not teach our kids the wrong ways to WIN.”

Anna Haifisch

Babe are you okay I saw you reblogging "here's the life I've always longed for"

for anyone curious there is a follow up image:

An important message from the National Lawyers Guild - Detroit & Michigan Chapter

source

<older man and older woman chatting amiably at a table, their conversation is just on the edge of intelligible>

Denise: Oh, hello!

Bill: We were just talking about you kids.

D: I’m Denise Heberle (HEB-er-lee)…

B: And I’m Bill Goodman.

D: Together we’ve been fighting fascism for over 50 years.

B: And so much has changed over those 50 years, such as the ingredients to a successful firebomb!

D (cheerily): And the glass that bank windows are made of!

B: But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed over 50 years, something that is so important to tell you kids who are new to this movement.

Both: Shut the fuck up.

D: You’re sitting in the police transport van after a protest?

B: Shut the fuck up. In a holding cell, with your comrades?

D: Shut the fuck up. Cop knocks on your door?

B: Shut the fuck up.

D: Texting on an unsecured device?

B: Shut the fuck up. Pulled over by the cops after a protest?

D: Shut the fuck up. Cop just asking about your day?

B: Shut the fuck up. Feds call your mom?

D: Tell your mother to shut the fuck up.

B: Now. Repeat after me. When the cops come calling, what do you do?

(Cut to Bill standing with eight kids)

Kids: Shut the fuck up!

(Cut to Card:

“Shut The Fuck up A Public Service Announcement from

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD

Detroit & Michigan Chapter”)

kurt vonnegut, being good at things is not the point of doing them.

I feel like some people need to relearn Genre Expectations... "Man, this tragedy sucks!!! Why didn't they just do XYZ, then everything could have ended happily!!" well, then it wouldn't be a tragedy, would it. "Man, this lighthearted teen romcom is terrible, it's so sappy and unrealistic!!" Well, yeah. If it had been gritty and dark, it wouldn't have been a lighthearted romcom, would it. Is the writing actually bad or are you just trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depot

Wisdom for the Day: Ask yourself, "Am I trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depot?"

James Baldwin.

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.