Beneath all the grumbling, nervous questions, and smug, tsking disapproval runs an undercurrent of love. Grammar’s fans know that following (or thoughtfully breaking) certain rules of usage can add meaning, edge, emphasis, beauty.
Neither The Lyrics nor The Beatles Illustrated explains the mystery of the Beatles—how did these four guys from Liverpool create so many remarkable songs in such a short period of time?—but both books, but especially The Lyrics, allow us to once again marvel at the work itself and gain a bit of insight into the imagination that helped create it.
The essence of this well-crafted, highly engaging, and readable text is that African women are the persons that should be centered as foundational to where societies form knowledge. This is especially true if societies aspire to be just and humane.
If I had grown up with a father, even for a few years, maybe I would have been bold enough to separate more from my mother in my teens, go a little wild, stop worrying so much about her feelings. If I had grown up with a father, maybe I would have felt free to admit how much I missed having a father.
Given the loss of the Foucek farm, which would have helped serve all these goals, a funny but familiar feeling rises—that as priorities change something worse can always happen to the landscape. Are these towns a good model for conservation in American suburbs in the age of sprawl? Or are they creating a situation that fosters more conflict and justifies more development?
Attitudes toward unexpected change often run parallel when you are assessing risk or luck. Again, that locates luck squarely inside temperament. Are some of us lucky because we feel lucky? Would our “luck” change if we began to dwell on all we have missed, been prevented from doing, been cheated of by life’s vagaries? Does it increase because we give it more chances?
Corporate lawyers make a fortune tying the courts up with lawsuits over color trespass. Graphic designers lose their minds trying to figure out what colors are still fair game. Not even the speed of light is infinite, and the points along the spectrum will be used up pretty fast. We will run out of colors.
Rather than argue about the precise, magical moment that cells become a being or morality c % licks in a different direction, Japanese Buddhists simply accept the occasional need to stop new life before it develops further. They then turn to metaphor.
Even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortions were hard to find or afford for many women, and the chance of losing abortion rights has loomed for decades. The most obvious difference between now and the years before Roe v. Wade, though, escaped me until I spoke with Heather Booth, a social justice activist who initiated the Jane Collective.
Many of you may not quite realize that Independence Day for many Black folks is more important than you know, signifying the price paid for and memory of a paradoxical fate.