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But there are many kinds of travel, many reasons to move. Sometimes you travel so that the process of becoming that is your inner life has an external correlative in your movement across space. You may not know how to save your soul, but you know how to put one foot in front of another. You may not know the way to stop being so furious you can hardly sleep, but you can buy a road map of the American West. And then you can put the need on like a knapsack and wear it along your journey, wear it out, shed it, find that it belongs to someone you no longer are. This is pilgrimage, which is not as pretty as it sounds. It’s not running away, though: it’s running toward.

Rebecca Solnit, "The Art of Arrival"

#Rebecca Solnit #Travel #Adventure #Writing

I will tell you that even from a young age I avoided programming that didn't include me because I thought that I wasn't worthy of being a part of that conversation. I just twiddled my thumbs until Rugrats came on and I could appreciate Susie Carmichael. This is not to say I only enjoyed programs that included a diverse set of people; if that were the case, my television consumption would've been limited to five minutes a day, maybe less ifHey Arnold! had an Helga-centric storyline. But as rare as they were, I still sought them out and I relished the sight of a little black girl on my TV.

Let's all say it together: representation fucking matters.

#race #reading list #representation #The Hairpin #jazmine hughes #television #entertainment #nickelodeon

Johnny Cash “shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,” and we’re not scared. We just love Johnny more. But when the gun in the song is in the hand of a black man, things get weird. The song becomes less cultural artifact and more an object of fear. We reflexively object. We worry about what the children will hear. You think we have a little double-standard problem here? Yeah, me too.

http://bittersoutherner.com/killer-mike-ghetto-gospel#.VBdLFS5dXWE

#race #music #south #reading list #justice #bias

Cosmopolitanism, openness to other cultures, openness to education did not make the Cherokee pliant to American power; it gave them tools to resist. Realizing this, the United States dropped the veneer of “culture” and “civilization” and resorted to “Indian Removal,” or The Trail of Tears. ... The Native Americans of this period found that America’s talk of trading culture for rights was just a cover. In our time, it is common to urge young black children toward education so that they may be respectable or impress the “right people.” But the “right people” remain unimpressed, and the credentials of black people, in a country rooted in white supremacy, must necessarily be less. ... I came to Middlebury in the spirit of the autodidactic, of auto-liberation, of writing, of Douglass and Malcolm X. I came in ignorance, and found I was more ignorant than I knew. Even there, I was much more comfortable in the library, thumbing through random histories in French, than I was in the classroom. It was not enough. It will not be enough. Sometimes you do need the master’s tools to dismantle his house.

"Acting French" | Ta-Nehisi Coates for The Atlantic

#reading list #race #ta-nehisi coates #the atlantic #education #justice

All other things aside, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's coverage of the Michael Brown homicide and its aftermath illustrates that local newsrooms are often best equipped to provide intensive, deep and wide coverage when national news breaks outside of New York or D.C.

#Michael Brown #Ferguson #reading list #St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"The Body of Michael Brown" | Brent McDonald and Alexandra Garcia for The New York Times

#Ferguson #Michael Brown #police response #reading list #Alexandra Garcia #Brent McDonald #New York Times

Surveys of racial attitudes in the U.S. suggest integrated communities like Ferguson are vulnerable to a certain type of instability based on expectations, tolerance, class and the pace of a city's demographic change. Many whites say they would be happy to live in an integrated community, but define ideally integrated as around 10% black and 90% white. Blacks also say they are happy to live in integrated communities—but define that as about half black and half white, said Zoltan Hajnal, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego.

"Ferguson's Experience Offers Lessons on Integration: Moves to Stem 'White Flight' Only Helped Fuel City's Racial and Political Tensions" | Douglas Belkin and Matthew Dolan for The Wall Street Journal

#integration #Ferguson #reading list #poverty #justice #Douglas Belkin #Matthew Dolan #Wall Street Journal

A report issued just last week by the nonprofit lawyer’s group ArchCity Defenders notes that in the court’s 36 three-hour sessions in 2013, it handled 12,108 cases and 24,532 warrants. That is an average of 1.5 cases and three warrants per Ferguson household. Fines and court fees for the year in this city of just 21,000 people totaled $2,635,400. ... Impoverished defendants were frequently ordered to pay fines that were triple their monthly income. Some ended up with no income at all as they sat in jail for weeks, awaiting a hearing.

"Ferguson Feeds Off the Poor: Three Warrants a Year per Household" | Michael Daly for The Daily Beast

#Ferguson #justice #journalism #reading list #data #Michael Daly #Daily Beast

A Tumblr quote floated over to me about around the time of Trayvon Martin's murder, from a Jonathan Lethem book that I've never read (The Fortress of Solitude). At this point, I don't really need to read it, because it's already asked me the most important question I've heard in a long time: "At what age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?"

#Ferguson #Mike Jones #Jazmine Hughes #Gawker #reading list

The notion that violence within the black community is "background noise" is not supported by the historical record—or by Google. I have said this before. It's almost as if Stop The Violence never happened, or The Interruptors never happened, or Kendrick Lamar never happened. The call issued by Erica Ford at the end of this Do The Right Thing retrospective is so common as to be ritual. It is not "black on black crime" that is background noise in America, but the pleas of black people.

"Black People are Not Ignoring Black-on-Black Crime" | Ta-Nehisi Coates for The Atlantic

#Ferguson #reading list #ta-nehisi coates #justice #race #crime

betsyboodad

I am one who laughed at older people buying toys like convertibles, motorcycles and the like. I was one of the derogatory guys who called it a second childhood.

As it turns out I was correct, having the time and toys to play with give us who are no longer kids a second go round at childhood and...

oditor

Something totally light and encouraging about this. Hooray, adventure.

Look for the soft emotion: “One of my favorite pieces of advice come from an observation I once heard from two fellow Council on Contemporary Families board members, psychologist Philip and Carolyn Cowan,” Coontz tells me. ”They said to always look for the soft emotion that lies beneath the hard one.” She explains, “Since then I’ve tried to respond to the soft emotion — the fear, anxiety or embarrassment that is hiding behind the anger or accusation — rather than to the hard one. It helps in all sorts of relationships, not just marriage.”

From Salon's "The 9 Smartest Marriage Tips Ever," by Tracy Clark-Flory, which I will always reblog.

#advice #Salon #tracy clark-flory #marriage