Self-care comes in many ways, and you generally learn, as you get older, or most of us do, how to psychically survive. Grief is part of life, and it's hard, but part of life, and you go through it. Reading and writing are for many of us a kind of balm, but maybe also forms of inspiration, a way to sort of right the ship in a storm. Important work, and not just escape. And we are in a storm now in the US, post-election; or maybe it is more accurate to think of it in terms of the new normal hurricane season, with the dangerous winds are just beginning to blow.

And blow they indeed will. In my lowest moments I fear the big bad wolf will blow all of the houses down. The aftermath of the 2016 election was a kind of chaos we had not heretofore seen, but it was for a time seen as a fluke. Surely this madness will be regretted! But this recent election--a landslide?!--is a deliberate embrace of chaos, and we now expect a dismantling of the government like we have never seen before. The end of any pretense to acknowledging climate change, the end to the Department of Education (I'm a teacher), the release of all the January 6 "heroes," the disappearance of any and all criminal charges, and the revenge tour.

I know what to do, though; I read, write, listen to music, run/walk, teach my heart out, help prepare a new generation of English teachers, huddle close to family an friends. I join others in coalitions to spread kindness and love in the world especially as greater hate is unleashed. I try to do good. And fight the powers of greed and lies and corruption and hate as I have always done. I do not give up, we do not give up, even if the light appears at times to be going out.

So last night in an effort to "right my ship" in these rocky seas, I went with my super-fan friend Jenn to see Patti Smith at the Chicago Humanities Festival upon the occasion of the release of her new book with photographer Lynn Goldsmith, Before Easter After, a book set up to reflect the present moment.

Okay, it's mostly photographs of Patti over the years by Lynn (the Smiths, Patti said last night), but the foundation of the book is survival, the early Patti, then her disastrous fall--her back and neck damaged, though not broken, not paralyzed--for many years, and recovery, reflected in her Easter work.

As art is supposed to work, I was inspired, somewhat rejuvenated, and came home and read it all through, the book including Patti lyrics, poetry, reflections. I was a folkie, not a punk fan, but I appreciated her poetry and early work on Horses. But I am in a later crowd who has become a huge fan of her memoir work in such books as Just Kids. And this is mainly a fan's book of photographs.

I might have included the captions on the pages rather than in the back pages, but I know, this way you get the full photos, uninterrupted. I get that, I'm a comics guy, preferring wordless stories, and these pics tell a number of stories. I might have asked for more Patti writing, but this is essentially Lynn's book about Patti.

The book opens with a poem written to Patti by Sam Shepherd, and ends with a poem/song Patti and the love of her life Fred Sonic Smith, which opens this way:

Where there were deserts
I saw fountains

and ends

I commit my dream to you.
That the people have the power
To redeem the work of fools
Upon the meek the graces shower
It'sdecreed the people rule.

I know, this all may seem naive at the moment, and may seem almost cruel in the face of the slaughter of the innocents in Ukraine and the middle east, but this experience helped me to reorient myself to the future, to hope, to the important work we must continue to do.