“Whenever I come out with a book, or anything that will take me before the public, the world, I am assailed as this person I don’t recognize,” she said when I reached her by phone. “If I tried to keep track of all the attacks over the decades, I wouldn’t be able to keep working. I am happy people are standing up. It is all of us. Not just me. They are trying to shut us down, shut us up, erase us. That reality is what is important.”
"Tennessee school board banned Spiegelman’s book on the grounds, at least nominally, that it contained naked cartoon mice — Jewish victims in a concentration camp and Spiegelman’s mother, who committed suicide, in a bathtub — and profanity as well (like that word “damn!”)."
"...and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid, So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive." "A Litany for Survival," Audre Lorde
Oh, blowing wind Where do we begin? Have you any answers now? Can you tell us how? https://youtu.be/biBHk6N8KLU Freedom Song Sara Thomsen Lyrics Oh, blade of grass Can I ask you Where is the road to peace? Tell me, please. Oh, singing bird What are the words To the freedom songs you sing? Oh, More
Children of the world, you have the right To sing and dance, run and play, let your dreams take flight. As the innocent die, you rulers carry the shame, And if we stand idly by, we share in the blame.
"We almost always run into some situations where people aren’t entirely comfortable with some of our songs. They’re very comfortable with others. And we invite the discussion."
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not, "The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d, And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d, And the armies that remain’d suffer’d."
There are prison cells and fields of flowers—even her straightforward descriptions of the moon demonstrate that something new and evocative can still be found in its age-old countenance.
"This wondrous planet, so full of mystery, is a paradise. All I want to do is give everything I have, my energy, my love, my labor — in gratitude for what we are given. " —Christi Belcourt, Native American Artist, about her featured art at the recent Minneapolis Institute of Arts exhibit of Native American Women’s art, Hearts of Our People.
An exhibit of war and peace posters at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota.
The moral life, as Hugo pointed out, is not pragmatic or rational. It does not guarantee that we as distinct individuals survive. And yet, it permits us, by living for others, to become our best selves. It allows us a bittersweet happiness.
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? — Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.
