Book completed

The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin. This 1963 book consists of two essays - a letter to his nephew, which I imagine is what Ta-Nehisi Coates modeled Between the World and Me on, and a much longer essay on the Nation of Islam movement and what it takes for white and Black people to co-exist in America.

My favorite part was in the first essay. Baldwin is talking about how difficult his brother's life has been made by the conditions of Black people in America. He says, "...this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. ... it is not possible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime."

Day 299: Lively Friday

I was delighted with my energy level today and wished there were more hours in the day so I could get more done with it. I made more progress on cleaning the kittens' room, then I dragged J. away from his work day to do a longish walk up Donald Street before it got dark. Many others seemed to have a similar idea, especially women walking dogs, so we had to be selective about where and when to cross people's paths. Mostly it involved us or the others leaving the sidewalk for the street for a while.

After that, I wrote a new blog post on the psychology of order versus chaos and how it applies to the Trump insurrection situation. I'd been thinking about the topic for a while, and it seemed timely, but I'd have liked to have had more time to get other writing done today too.

J. and I then ate dinner, delivered by Agate Alley Bistro, and watched this week's Friday evening movie, the 1984 version of Dune. I hadn't seen it for quite a while. I had a lot of insights about its failures in narrative transportation, compared with Star Wars and The Fifth Element, so I was taking tiny notes on a paper scrap the whole time. Afterwards I found graphics for my blog post and posted it, and then I found a better image for the blog overall - a colorful crowd of medieval-dressed people listening to a speaker, which is nicer than black-and-white Castro addressing a crowd.

One distracting aspect of Dune was thinking about other places I'd seen the actors more recently. The actor playing Paul Atreides had been Daisy's father on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. I'd forgotten the existence of Linda Hunt altogether. And the actress playing creepy little St. Alia of the Knife had been in a recent commercial for a Hallmark Christmas movie!