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“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”

— Desmond Tutu

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When I work in downtown Minneapolis, I drive home past a boarded up store spray painted with: “REST IN POWER, GEORGE FLOYD.” Invariably, I read it aloud to myself, alone in the car, and it gives me some hope. After the inhuman, brutal, cruel murder of Floyd in May, I was so relieved to see a national and then international series of protests. Judging by their duration, intensity, and organization, this could be what it looks like when the baton from the Civil Rights movement is taken up again to continue and escalate the fight against the inextricably intertwined institutions of United States racism and United States policing.

This is a picture of the smallest protester from a trio: Mykala, Essie, and the My Little Pony Pinkie Pie. When Mykala and Ess went to a Black Lives Matter rally in June, Essie wanted Pinkie Pie to come with and to hold a sign, so Mykala made this just wonderful little sign, a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. for her to hold. Notice she also wears a mask.

Living through history is exhausting. Mykala is making sure Ess knows which side we’re on.

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The Proper People summarize yet another expedition into a crumbling, roughly century-old building:

One reason I love this power plant so much is because there’s no reason it had to be built with all these intricate details and grandiose architecture. It’s just a power plant, after all; all it had to do was create electricity. I think that demonstrates a fundamental change of philosophy in the way we construct the world around us.

To me, the world is feeling more and more disposable. Everything is created as cheaply as possible, and it is simply a means to an end. But, when Port Richmond station was built, the builders thought they were constructing something that would serve future generations for centuries, and when we’re creating something permanent, it’s only natural for us to want to inject art and creativity and craftmanship into it. It’s part of what makes us human — and that’s what lacking from so much of what we build today.

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In the style of Glennon Doyle…

Essie,

There’s a time in your life when you’ll be striving, reaching, seeking. Every new subject, every new interest, every new person will crackle with the possibility of sparking and bringing alive a part of you that you didn’t know existed. It’s the kind of ride you’ll know you’re on when you’re on it. It needs no label. And what’s more: by definition, you’ll enjoy it. It feeds the ego. For most, it occurs in late teens, early twenties. For some, it’s delayed by loss but ignites later in life, when there is time and space. For still others, tragically, it never happens.

You’re going to go go go. You’re going to push push push. You’re going to do things, that, when you look back on them, seem superhuman.

Fire burns hot, but it consumes. You’ll burn days, nights, entire semesters, money, connections, friendships, loved ones, girlfriends, boyfriends, with fire. And you must, because you’re forging your tools, and you are casting the alloy of your Self.

You’ll be burning fuel — how much do you have? How much time, how many friends? Don’t throw everything in; this needn’t continue forever. Because after a fire, you build.

To grow a garden, to go out and pull the same weeds and add the same water each day, trading your time, your boundless possibility, for the kind of hope for gentle weather that a gardener must have — that’s building. To have a child, to change the same diapers and make the same food, trading your time, your boundless possibility for the kind of hope for a gentle universe that a parent must have — that’s building. The plant grows up, the roots grow down, and building requires a commitment to sameness that you must freely choose. Only if you wish.

Know when you’re burning, and know when you’re building.

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“I must honestly confess that I go through those moments of disappointment when I have to recognize the fact that there aren’t enough white persons in our country who are willing to cherish democratic principles over privilege.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr., Anaheim, 1968

“We were partially liberated and then reënslaved.” Although black people had been fighting for freedom “for more than a hundred years,” the only thing that was “explicitly certain is that the struggle for it will endure.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr., Carnegie Hall, 1968

“Perhaps even more than the death itself, the manner of his death has forced me into a judgment concerning human life and human beings which I have always been reluctant to make,” [James Baldwin] wrote. “Incontestably, alas, most people are not, in action, worth very much; and yet, every human being is an unprecedented miracle. One tries to treat them as the miracles they are, while trying to protect oneself against the disasters they’ve become.”

All of these, from Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.’s piece The History That James Baldwin Wanted America to See at The New Yorker.

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I just said this tonight:

“Essie, I’m going out to vacuum the gutters, and I want you to have your jams on when I come in.”

And I have never sounded more… ADULT… in my life.

Honestly, if you had told me seven years ago I’d be talking about pajamas and gutter vacuuming, I’d have said — whose pajamas, and I don’t have any gutters NOR any interest in gutters. Life moves pretty fast.

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