I finished reading The Warmth of Other Suns last week. This history of the Great Migration almost reads like fiction, but Isabel Wilkerson’s research is as detailed as her prose is evocative. Evocative of the times, the people, and the moment. The book focuses on three people who took that journey at different times and from different places and ended up in three different cities: Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. It also pulls back and gives context to the different time periods covered, before diving in on specifics. Reading it, I really started to understand the source for many of the societal ills that plague us to this day. I’ll give you a hint: it all leads back to racism. I also came across this incredible passage.
I didn’t really start reading history books until I was older - maybe 10 or 15 years ago? It’s right before or around the same time I started watching documentaries in earnest. It makes me mad that we only get pieces of history in school, rather than these long, well-written, expertly researched works that give an overarching view of the time, and a close-up view of its people. I’m also adding more non-white non-male authors to my reading list - and more contemporary work mixed in with the classics. So many books to read, I’m not even sure I’ll get through all the ones I currently own, and that’s a good problem to have.
How about Cory Booker? I’ve been waiting for the Democrats to do something besides roll over and play dead, and Booker delivered with his 25+ hour speech, which broke the filibuster record set by segregationist Strom Thurmond, who was filibustering a Civil Rights bill. I hope to listen to the entire speech (or read it) soon.
I have an international friend visiting later this year, and with the U.S. having become very unfriendly to foreigners, I’m not sure whether I should tell her to wait, or what the situation will be like then. Of course, if Booker’s speech forces Democrats to grow a spine, and if Republicans also grow one and buck their fascist golfer-in-chief, then maybe the third impeachment will be the charm. The problem is that we have more problems than just the present occupant of the White House. We need to ban billionaires from existing (tax at 100% past $900 million or even $500 million), pick an economic system that actually allies with democracy (capitalism has to be constantly reigned in so its worse excesses work in favor of democracy), overturn Citizens United, expand the Supreme Court to 13 judges (to reflect the 12 court districts plus 1), restore generational wealth stolen from African-Americans and Native Americans in the form of reparations, and finally take a deep look at racism and white fragility in the U.S. so that we’re solving its root causes, not its effects.
I met Val Kilmer once. He was showing his Mark Twain movie at SIFF Uptown while I worked there. This was after his throat cancer diagnosis, so he couldn’t talk, but he seemed friendly, even waiving to all of us from the office, which he was given so he could do his meditation. His handlers told us (the staff) that we could get a photo with him after the end of the night. They even grabbed us when it was time. We didn’t even need to ask! RIP.1
While I’m pretty sure this went up on social media at the time, I’m blocking out my coworkers faces, just in case. Interestingly enough, only two people from this photo still work at SIFF, and they’re also the only two people I’m still in contact with.