Silence

There’s been so much happening in the world.  A few years ago, when this blog was new and the only outlet for my mental energy besides everything I was doing at home, you would have heard from me about it regularly.  Indeed, a lot of posts have winked into potential existence in my mind, responding to this that or the other thing, but deprived of mental sunshine and nutrients (because those are going other places), they never even sprouted a first set of leaves.

One thought has been growing, though.  How quick we are to throw people away.  How much we focus on punishment instead of help or understanding.  How afraid we are.

Some related things, since I'm out of time:

Ta Nahesi Coates, interviewed by Diane Rehm, with (among other things) a poetic understanding of the fear that underlies toughness and which drives violence against others, which can even channel love into violence.

A clarifying political science look at why xenophobic racist politicians seem to take off with terrifying ferocity at certain points in time.  The question they don't answer is how to put out the fire, which is where I hope a discussion can continue.

And my Twitter feed full of brave people standing up for the right to bodily autonomy and stepping away from shame in front of the Supreme Court this morning.  Having experienced pregnancy, childbirth, and raising several children, I am quite convinced that in a moral world, each person must have control over what happens to their uterus.  And cannot be allowed to control anyone else's.  That does mean that people without a uterus won't get to decide anything about any uteruses, but that will be ok.  Really.  (This one is harder to provide a link to, so I'll just put the Twitter hashtag #StopTheSham, which of course means the full mess of humanity on all sides of the issue, fair warning.)