Lizzi > Recent Status Updates

•War on Drugs was declared as illegal drug use was on the decline, soon after arrests of AA for drug crime spiked unnaturally.
•US has highest incarceration rate in the world.
•people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at similar rates, white youth more likely to engage in drug crime than POC. Black men charged with drug crime 20-50 times more than white men.

“In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires. Gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness, but the economy needs emptiness.”

Witch hazel chapter is so touching

Really liking the Cal finding mother arc, both the changes in him and changes in Cathy

So insightful and inspiring. Native culture is ingrained in the symbiotic relationship with nature and the sense of community, so much that “please” doesn’t exist in Potawatomi because everything is meant to be shared and things from nature cannot be commodified. All cores are anti-capitalism&Christianity: no over consumption; holistic view of nature compared to Christian government’s science superiority.

The Samuel and Lee dialogue is strangely insightful given the frequent casual racism in this book since it was written in 1952

Getting more of Call’s backstory. He leads men and takes on responsibilities to overcompensate the sense of failure because of Maggie, turning away from regret and guilt, but he’s only a man.

“But some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread”

Noticing a theme, everybody wants to run off for freedom, and everybody is chasing something far away they don’t know what it is. Call decided to go on the long journey to Montana on a whim; he loves the smart and alert mare that plans for opportunities to run off; Elmira, Clara, Lorena and the little girl.

The part where Charles was writing the rambling letter to Adam painted such a vivid scene of loneliness and evoked a very emotional feeling in me that reminded me why classics are considered good books despite many “smart” books out there. Simple sentences from a character’s perspective can create raw emotions in a way that contrasts intellectualized depiction of emotions, and this book does both.

•heavy public mourning of Lincoln’s death was a substitute for the funerals of soldiers regular people could not attend
•published funeral sermons

•denial and difficulty of realizing deaths until physical proof is presented.
•women were expected to mourn longer—widow mourned 2.5 years, widower 3 months.
•”sorority of grief” in the south because of high death toll.
•mourning attire became a huge part of fashion industry.

Intelligent observation of human nature. A little disturbing how Cyrus reminds me of my dad.

Behind the bitterness you can understand why the women have become so cold and distrustful of men. If life in the Wild West was dreadful, it was even more hopeless for the women—little agency of their bodies and no financial independence. Elmira and Lorena both despise the norm and feel drawn towards men who do not crave women, not because they love these men, but because it gives them a sense of freedom.

If I read this book 5 years ago I wouldn’t understand as much what she means by “shaping God” and “God is change”.
The prediction of the future from the time this was written is also scarily close to reality. Privatized land, corporation owned towns, illiteracy, drug epidemic, the need to self-arm…

•many uncounted casualties of noncombatant civilians by disease, stray bullets, slave/owners, and white northern citizens protesting against going to war for emancipation.
•Slaves were encouraged by disruptions to challenge masters and masters became paranoid and “witch hunted” those suspected of planning uprising, as well as retribution toward wives of runaway male slaves who joined the Union army.

•popularization of social media is shaped by neo-liberalism/libertarian ideals, as well as a new-age individualist Utopianism and the New left.
•social media companies utilize this reputation to profit by showing “anti-systemic, vaguely countercultural quests to save the world”.

•the “Tahrir model” inspired protests in Spain and Greece but ultimately did not lead to collapse of the government, because their institutions were stable enough and life was easy enough, compared to the global south where more livelihoods are on the line.
•”Unless society actually ground to a halt, and the reproduction of the economic system became impossible, the institutions could survive”

The price of the liberation of the white people of the liberation of the blacks.

If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring.

White Americans have thought of [concept of color] as their shame(…)white Americans have supposed “Europe” and “civilization” to be synonyms(…)and have been distrustful of other standards and other sources of vitality(…)if we(…)persist in thinking of ourselves as [a white nation], we condemn ourselves(…)if we could accept ourselves as we are, we might bring new life to the Western achievements.

(…) the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never be relied upon to deal with hard problems.

It is the responsibility of free men to trust and to celebrate what is constant—birth, struggle, and death are constant(…)to be able and willing to change(…)But renewal becomes impossible if one supposes things to be constant that are not—safety, for example, or money, or power.

White Americans have contented themselves with gestures that are now described as “tokenism”(…) White Americans congratulate themselves on the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in the schools; they suppose (…) this was proof of a change of heart (…)[we] do not believe that this immense concession would ever have been made if it had not been for the competition of the Cold War.

In order to change a situation one has first to see it for what it is: (…) [black Americans] has been formed by this nation, for better or for worse, and does not belong to any other—not to Africa, and certainly not to Islam.

I am also concerned for their dignity(…)must oppose any attempt that [black Americans] may take to do to others what has been done to them(…)Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

One cannot argue with anyone’s experience or decision or belief.

(…) looked back at Elijah, who was saying that no people in history had every been respected who had not owned their land (…) only [black americans] who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised, in a nation that has kept him in bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognize him as a human being.

[black people] cannot risk assuming that the humanity of white people is more real to them than their color (…) this leads (…) to a state of mind in which, having long ago learned to expect the worst, one finds it very easy to believe the worst.

When he realizes (…) the attempt of white people to destroy him (…) is utterly gratuitous, it is not hard for him to think of white peoples as devils.

[black soldier] knows that the white G.I. has informed the Europeans that he is subhuman(…) watches German prisoners of war being treated by Americans with more human dignity than he has ever received at their hands(…) far freer in a strange land than he has ever been at home.

Why were they hearing it now, since this was not the first time it had been said? (…) it is not he who has done it but time. Time catches up with kingdoms and crushes them, gets its teeth into doctrines and rends them; time reveals the foundations on which any kingdom rests, and eats at those foundations, and it destroys doctrines by proving them to be untrue.

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.