Thursday, December 24, 2020
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
I JUST BOUGHT THIS BUNCH OF MAGAZINES for the twin grandchildren here. I sent a similar stack to the Wyoming grandchildren. You wish kids who don’t read well could get to pick out mags they were attracted to. That’s why you learn to read so you can read about stuff that grabs you. Sports or music or whatever.
Friday, December 18, 2020
POET NIKKI GIOVANNI in a review of her new book of poems in today’s Times:
‘There is no / way not to like Black Americans,” she writes in “Lemonade Grows From Soil, Too.” “We try to practice love. / We use the chicken feet to make a stew; we take the scraps of / cloth to make the quilt. We find the song in the darkest days / to say ‘put on your red dress, baby, ‘cause we’re going out / tonight,’ understanding we may be lynched on the way home / but knowing between that cotton field and that house party / something wonderful has been shared.’
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
‘I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use---silence, exile and cunning.’
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man







