Jamie > Recent Status Updates

I’m trying to read this series in real-time week by week for the entire year. Who knows if I’ll actually be consistent with that…

"Deserve...Why does that word make me question if any of us deserve that which we do not earn? And then...How does one measure what one deserves if they earn it?"

“Fear accompanied the possibility of death. Calm shepherds is certainty.”

"Anna, we're the bad guys."
"That doesn't mean we're inconsiderate dicks."

"What if we fuck with them."

Protagonist is drafting a calculation for damage made by heroes in lifeyears. I love this nerdy book so much!

Dealing with a co-worker's loud, lame pop song ringtone when they leave their phone on their desk every day...I have lived this. I feel seen.

"I believe in questions--and, like Paul, growth. The possibility of restructuring one's frame of mind, a sunny sliver of hope in a misguided world. Imagine being a spiritual leader who instructs only defense, and never creation." -- I am going to buy this book just for this essay!

"As do most self-righteous white men who have only ever been granted authority. Bob Jones has absolutely no handle on the concept of subjectivity."

"Freedom is a dangerously ambitious slogan to apply to a nation, and a hypocritical ideal to apply to a religion."

"The languages of words and bodies and actions and looking can be the dearest gift--a pathway to empathy and love." -Morgan Parker
This is hands down my favorite essay in this collection.

"Anyone can use the Bible to prove anything. Much like a poem, its interpretation may be subjective. Its authors are consistently debated, and either way, long gone, so the text is fair game. Words don't mean the same thing for one person as they do another." -Morgan Parker

RBG and Weisenfeld stories making me cry while reading.

“security... lies in the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.” - Judge Murray Gurfein

“One man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric” - Justice John Marshall Harlan II

"Read the Constitution, and see how many times it mentions law and obeying the law. The one thing the Constitution talks about, which the Negro do not have, and when we get that we will have no more problem with the law, is justice. Until you give me justice, you can't talk to me about disobeying the law. Once you have proper justice, the law takes care of itself." - Dick Gregory

"Perhaps the mainstream press lost interest in Dick Gregory because he continued to show up in places where the need was as persistent as he was--in black communities where so many of the promises of the civil rights, enshrined in law, have yet to be honored." -Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

"they might be able to learn that laws can and must change to reflect the indelible realities of human life and love." - Aleksandr Hemon

"Yes, the image still causes pain....But pain is better than the ineffable, unsustainable fantasy of the anesthetized opium dream. Our pain, in the end, is what provokes us to seek healing." - Geraldine Brooks

"Our failure is the history of the world. But our humanity is in the fact that we never cease to try." - Ann Patchett

I am enjoying how each essay humanizes the case showing the details and reality of the circumstances.

Reading Chabon's essay on 'United States v. One Book Called "Ulysses"' shows how malleable the law actually is. The text can be manipulated and twisted to suit preference or progress.