Alisa > Recent Status Updates

“I am interested in America,” Rosenwald said. “ I do not see how America can go ahead if part of its people are left behind” (183).

“We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that possibility of goodness” (167).

“Why must we treat what are obviously systemic problems as failure of individual morality?”

Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past.

“We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand” (76).

Joshua Jackson is one of the narrators. That’s the whole reason I’m listening to this book. 😎

We do not raise the flowers for the blooms, but for their tough roots

People who live only in networks, rather than communities, or less likely to thrive. Chapter 8

“ Even as more of us are shopping according to our values, economic justice does not seem to be among our top priorities” (60).

“Complexity is the refuge of the powerful” (44).

“Our vulnerability to exploitation grows as our liberty shrinks” (43).

“At the end of the day aren’t “systemic“ problems – systemic racism, poverty, misogyny – made up of untold numbers of individual decisions, motivated by real or imagined self interest? “The system“ doesn’t force us to stiff the waiter or vote against affordable housing in our neighborhood, does it?” (42)

“We could follow suit by investing in programs to help single parents, balance work and family life programs, such as paid family leave, affordable,l childcare and universal pre-K. instead, we’ve increasingly privatized daycare and summer programming, effectively reserving these modern-day necessities for the affluent” (36).

“Countries that make the deepest investments, in their people, particularly through universal programs that benefit all citizens have the lowest rates of poverty, including among households, headed by single mothers.” (36)

“You cannot nourish the soul with data!” (43).

I’ve come to realize that there’s a difference between history and nostalgia, and somewhere between the two is memory.

“Because you are not yet who you will one day be.”

You were not born that person. You were born to become that person. And that is why you must best yourself every time you get on the court. Not so that you beat the other person—”
“But so that I become more myself,” I finished.

“The problem with history was that it was written by the survivors, and they usually wrote in the sunshine, on harvest day, from victory stands” ( 242).

“Words are like stories, don’t you think, Mr. Sweatman? They change as they are passed from mouth to mouth; their meanings stretch or truncate to fit what needs to be said. The Dictionary can’t possibly capture every variation, especially since so many have never been written down—“

Hate is a virus.
A virus demands a body.
What we mean is:
Hate only survives when hosted in humans.
If we are to give it anything,
Let it be our sorrow
& never our skin.
To love just may be
The fight of our lives.

Are we good?
The First World War was once called “Great,”
So named “The War to End All Wars.”
Ha.
What is called “great”
Is often grievous & gruesome,
But what is good is worth our words.
Good trouble.
Good fight.
Good will.
Good people.
To be good is to be larger than war.
It is to be more than great.

Cont.
across the country & globe. Fire barrel of the throat. Words, too, are a type of combat, for we always become what we refuse to say.

Wartime censorship also slashed communication & truth-telling; the US Sedition Act of 1918 outlawed speech or expression that damaged the country’s image or war effort. Fearing punishment, newspapers minimized the threat of the virus, often refusing to print doctors’ letters warning the public not to gather or travel. This censorship & misinformation only contributed to the further communication of influenza..

I had predicated my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I’d come to realize that extraordinary is everywhere.

It was impossible to make it through the tragedy
Without poetry. What are we without winds becoming words?

We now have data showing they are more narcissistic than average. So they are caught up in their own worldview. They lack the ability to see what they do from the perspective of their victims. Ch 10

That’s what’s so great about art and poetry—right when you think you “get it,” you see something else. You can find a million hidden meanings.
Ch 3