Blog2.14.2021 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. Isaiah 11:6 Humble yourself and follow the lead of the child, but first teach the child to read. Reading narratives to the child while it is still in the womb is a project for preparing children who will be born in the 21st century for what they are condemned to expect: the heavy burdens of history as narrative prior to history's becoming equipment for daily life, instruments for probing inevitable uncertainties. Always discuss with the child the centrality of narrative in the state of being human. If this sounds to you like dream-work and platitude your hearing is accurate. As what we once knew as American democracy slowly becomes a fascist desert, we must arm ourselves and our children to do battle with inconvenient truth. ...
VIOLENCE AND AMERICAN MALE LIFE HISTORIES Our constructions of "reality" convince us, a bit too easily, that violence is an essential feature in the lives of American males and as "natural" as is the history of violence in the founding of our nation. The same constructions sponsor the myth of gender, allowing us to contend that women are naturally less violent than men. We are socialized in the United States to be gullible, to be worshippers of under-examined truths and full-blown lies. This seems to be our fate, our destiny, our normalizing of cowshit and bullshit . We can imagine relatively violence-free male visions, as did Clifton Taulbert in Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored and subsequent installments of his autobiography, but the aesthetics of hubris retard our doing so. The American majority has an unholy, acquired taste for the sounds of explosions and gun-fire and the lurid patterns of blood leaking...
A House Ponders "Death be not proud." The formality of it, the style of bullets dancing in Ballroom A to warm a winter afternoon. Goodness disappears. They told us this is the way a world turns, told us to define "acrimonious." Young and eager to learn, we did. We were loyal citizens. They told us that a random day might be cerulean or grass green or beet purple. We denied our ears and put faith in our eyes. On what summer door are sixty-five fragile retirements posted? When we come in old age to knowledge, we trust ourselves more to believe less of what the turning world creates. Jerry W. Ward, Jr. November 18, 2021
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