Seek Comfort and Welcome Joy

Pure joy!!!

Some of you have no doubt realized already that many of my recent topics up to and including this one—courage, loving care, strength, comfort and joy—are not really separate or separable. True it is! Just as our desires are multifaceted and complex, not singular and “pure,” so it is with our emotions. Still, focusing on one aspect at a time can be helpful, and while comfort and joy are important parts of loving care and strength and courage, I want to focus in on the former pair today, because it’s all too easy, when we’re trying to be strong and brave and take care of ourselves and others, to narrow our gaze to difficulty, to all the challenges we face, and lose track of the importance of experiencing—letting in—ongoing comfort and joy. 

 

Joy helps reduce stress in your everyday life, and that’s a good thing, but if stress reduction is all we consider about it, we are selling joy short, judging it good because it’s useful to us, good for us, rather than inviting joy into our lives because we’re alive and because the world is basically beautiful and we are made, I truly believe, for beauty and for joy. 

 

Many people I know are grandparents, the fortunate ones able to interact with grandchildren on a daily basis. “The light of my life,” one grandfather told me of a young grandson, while another friend describes her new granddaughter (quite rightly! I’ve seen pictures!) as irresistible. Others of us, living miles from family, find comfort and joy in friendship, our companion animals, and in the beauty of nature. 

She gets me outdoors!

Spring and summer WILL return!

Music, whether playing it or simply listening to it, is important—and not only Beethoven. Klezmer music, despite the minor key, is joyful, and country music can be. Do you hear the blues as music of a sad sad, downtrodden people? Not if you are playing or singing it yourself or if you read the interpretation of Albert Murray. When the spirit lifts and lungs take in larger breaths, smiles wreath our faces, and laughter bubbles over—joyful responses!

 

Here is a site I found with “joyful literature for dark times.” I’ve read a few of the books listed on that site but have my own favorites, as I’m sure you must, as well. Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books is a series I find both comforting and joyful. Mma Ramotswe is such a kind, thoughtful person, and she loves her country of Botswana so much! 

I love these books.

Do you have a favorite book that you consider joyful and that gives you joy to re-read? Or simply comforting? Have you discovered a new book lately that fits the description? 

 

You might not think a presidential memoir would figure into this discussion, but I am taking a lot of comfort from Jimmy Carter’s Keeping Faith, even when the topics are grim. Reading of such an intelligent, capable, principled man in the White House, who never thought he knew everything but was always eager to learn more, and who did a lot more “politicking” than most Americans realize, makes me glad for the time I’ve had on earth.

 

In the middle of the night, though, when I wake to frightening reality, I turn to a different kind of book, and at present my middle-of-the-night reading is Breckland, by Olive Cook, an early volume in the series of “Regional Books” from Robert Hale, Ltd., of London. These postwar books on various regions of the United Kingdom describe landscape, agriculture, architecture, and so on in close and loving detail. They are not fiction: In these books nothing happens. What a relief! It’s as if you are on a walk, a stroll, a ramble with someone who knows the area intimately and points out what you might otherwise miss. After a day in the “real world” where all too much is happening, it is a great comfort to travel back in time to rural England when and where the horrors of the Second World War were finally over.

 

Online, Dana Frost with her “Forced Joy” project, an idea she had when her husband was diagnosed with cancer and one she had to work hard after he died, looks at how to find joy in grief and loss, and Valerie Kaur, a warrior for revolutionary love, writes and talks about how we can focus on love and joy in the midst of hatred and violence. 

Big pot of soup!

Batch of homemade flatbread --

I also watch a few short videos online, including Sean the Sheepman and chef Jacques Pépin. Dogs and cooking are important sources of joy for me, so watching Sean and Jacques at work is a quiet, comforting pleasure. Border collies are still working sheep, and Jacques is still glazing carrots. Ah, how lovely!

 

Painted rock, gift from a dear friend

When you do an online search for “joy” topics, one of the suggestions that comes up over and over is to look for joy in small, ordinary moments, something I’ve done for years. It was crucial back when the Artist and I were so “poor” (in financial terms) that going out for coffee was a splurge, and now cultivating gratitude for small pleasures in my life alone is just as crucial. 

Pleasure and happiness and comfort and joy are hardly interchangeable terms, but joy can be quiet and blend into comfort, don’t you think? Can’t we experience joy in silent contentment, as well as in glad shouts? More than gratitude, I see quiet joy as the realization of all we have for which to be grateful, a kind of overflowing fullness in the moment. 

 

Where do you find yours? Where do you look for it? Are you giving it a big welcome?

The sun was shining!

We played!

Valentine's Day, Then and Now

Here is a partial post I wrote sometime during the first week of February 2022 and never before posted:

*** 

[February 2022] …COVID. No kidding! Despite being triply vaccinated (both of us were), the Artist came down with one of the new strains. It was very early in the wee, dark hours of Wednesday morning, and he could not get a good, deep breath, no matter he tried. We were both scared, but COVID did not occur to either of us. He thought he must be having a panic attack. We waited, watched, tried different things. Finally I got dressed, and when he said he “felt better” having me dressed to leave the house, I knew it was time to call an ambulance. 

 

(This was four weeks after our farewell to Peasy, three weeks after the stroke that had previously sent sent David to the ER. I may need something good to happen on a Wednesday soon, or I might start getting superstitious.)

 

Tests were done, vital signs monitored, fluids given, oxygen administered, and by 3 p.m. my husband had been admitted to the hospital and installed in the COVID wing. Where I could not be with him! 

 

He was doing well the next day, however, and with hospital beds at a premium the doctor thought he could go home by Friday morning with supplemental oxygen. Good news! The hitch with morning discharge turned out to be that the oxygen supply people are in such high demand that they couldn’t get to the hospital until 8 p.m., so we had a long day of waiting and anxiety, all of which I could make into a very long story, except that I have other fish to fry here today. Bottom line: The Artist is home now, we are together again, he is doing well, feeling good, and we are looking to the future once more.

 

One of our top current obsessions and by far the most cheerful and pleasant, though I have good reason for calling it unbelievable, continued to be: “Will we ever love another dog as much as we loved Peasy?” The Artist thinks that won’t be a problem. I’m not so sure. But he and I are nothing if not fools for love, and who in the world can resist a puppy? -- And is there any other word in the English language as adorable and appealing as the word puppy?

 

We are not gods, but we must surely be crazy! I’m certain you think so! Or maybe you think that our love for Sarah and for Peasy could not have been all that deep, after all. Think what you will. I don’t care. We don’t care. We have welcomed into our life and our hearts a little Aussie girl from Tucson. She was named Juliet by the breeder, and I won’t drop that name but have added to it, so that she will be our Sunny Juliet, and we will call her – of course! – Sunny.

 

What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!

 

 

Unbelievably, it was only the day before the most recent medical emergency developed that I drove to Tucson to meet Juliet and her parents and her brothers and sisters and cousins and their owner, so the day after the emergency I was afraid to breathe the word puppy on the phone when the Artist and I talked on our phones, looking at each other through his hospital window as I stood outside in the cold shade, afraid he would say a puppy was the last thing he needed at this juncture. Not so! He brought it up himself! “I’ve been looking at pictures of the puppy,” he said, unprompted by me (I had texted him the photos on Tuesday), “and she’s very cute!”

I loved her looks when I first saw a picture but needed to meet her to assess her personality. She was not timid or fearful, but neither did she jump all over me, nipping and pulling at my clothes like some of the others. Instead she stood back from the fray and waited as the other puppies competed for attention. Then, after I had picked her up a couple of times, she was happy to come to me on her own. Calm and confident, she was also ready to engage in tumbling puppy play with the others, until they wore themselves out and collapsed into a puppy pile.  

 

Sarah was already four months old when we had the great good fortune to find her after she spent only a single night in the Cherryland Humane Society shelter. It was obvious that her previous owners, who couldn’t keep her for whatever reasons, had given her a good start in life. She already knew basic commands and not to make messes in the house. She was confident and unafraid. And her life continued rich and full and happy with us. She was truly a lucky dog! Nothing terrible ever happened to her in her entire life! 

 

Peasy, as you all know, was not as fortunate as Sarah. We have no idea how long little Pea was homeless and had to survive by his wits before those long, bleak months in the pound. That poor boy had hard knocks aplenty. 

 

We want to give Sunny is the kind of life Sarah had, the life we would have given Peasy if only it had been possible … a life where nothing bad ever happens to her … a life in which she is sheltered and feels secure and knows herself to be loved … a life in which she meets and makes new friends every day … a life of play and adventure but never want or fear … the kind of life every dog deserves to have … the life our Peasy should have had, right from the beginning.

 

When I asked the Artist that question about whether we would ever love another dog as much as Peasy, my next question to him was what Peasy would think of our having another dog. His response was that Sunny will be our “dog of atonement.” My sister (bless her heart!) didn’t like the sound of that. She feels we have nothing to atone for. Maybe not rationally. I’m pretty sure most people would say we made the right decision about Pea and have “nothing to regret.” But emotionally? It’s just not that easy. 

 

I heard on the radio today that Daniel Pink has a new book called The Power of Regret. Rather than chiding human beings for feeling regret, Pink looks at the emotion in terms of its positive value. His subtitle is How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. And that’s our idea with Sunny, our dog of atonement: going forward together into the happiest tomorrow we can create together.

 

A short while later, despite subsequent events (all very complicated), we were still moving ahead, negotiating the potholes in life’s road and looking to the future – for the Artist, making beautiful paintings and sculpture; for me, looking forward to my 29^th summer of bookselling and working on my small writing projects; for the two of us, integrating little Sunny Juliet into our household and social and public life. 

The two of us have had a lot of emotional and medical “rain” at the beginning of this new year – another siege since I drafted this post -- but our personal future is once again looking bright, and we look forward to seeing you in Northport sometime before Memorial Day!

***

 

That’s it. You know the sequel. On Valentine’s Day 2022 I gave my husband a book of Billy Collins poems, and he gave me (he was already hospitalized again, awaiting further surgery) his paperback copy of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. Storm clouds soon moved in again with a vengeance, and Sunny Juliet and I had to return to Michigan that spring without her “daddy.” It’s been almost three years now since he died, but “Love returns always.” 

The Subject Is Strength

Keep Yourself Strong

 

My previous post on loving care was a reminder to myself as well as to my readers that we need to take care of ourselves, and a couple images of meals I made with spinach pointed directly (with an indirect nod to Popeye the Sailor that younger readers, if any, might have missed) to the importance of building strength. Iron and vitamin D really do improve muscular strength, mass, and function in older adults as well as young people. These days, with every good meal I prepare, I tell myself I am building reserves of strength for an uncertain future. After all, outside of the certainty of eventual death for each and every one of us, the truth is that our futures have always been and always will be uncertain, so don’t wait for tomorrow to start taking care of yourself.

 

Physical activity, mental stimulation, and contact with others is nourishing and important, too. Sometimes when I’m feeling discouraged, it’s hard for me to call a friend, because I don’t want to spread my discouragement to anyone else. If I make the call, though (and sometimes it isn’t until the next day, I admit), before we’ve been talking long, my friend and I transition from commiseration to laughter, and laughing together renews our strength. 

Our playing field

Sunny Juliet and I had some physical activity on a cold Monday, the outdoors made more inviting by the presence of blue sky and sunshine. Frisbee is mental stimulation as well as physical activity for my girl, and often her dear little face makes me laugh with joy.

 

 

A Fable From Aesop

 

Book nerd that I have always been, now that I live alone there is always a book on the dining table, and these days I've been turning to Aesop with my meals. 

As you can see, the cover is attractive, page illustrations charming, but the book itself is falling apart, literally, so I felt no guilt for liberating this shabby treasure from a box of bookstore donations and calling it my own. My 1846 edition is also safely out of copyright, so I’ll be sharing a few more of the 300 fables and illustrations in weeks to come. 

For today, here is “The Lion and the Three Bulls.”

You might wonder where in the world lions and bulls both occur. Facts about Aesop are elusive, and many believe he was not a real person at all. Other scholars place him in the 6^th century BCE and identify him as born enslaved and eventually freed. While his birthplace (if he was, in fact, born) remains an open question, one possibility proposed is Ethiopia, and surely cattle and lions both are part of the fauna of many African countries. I’m content with that speculation. What is most important about Aesop, anyway, are the stories and their lessons.

 

“The Lion and the Three Bulls” is a very brief fable with an obvious and simple lesson. Three bulls graze together in a pasture and are safe as long as they remain together. The lion dares not attack one bull with two other formidable defenders on the scene. When the bulls separate, however, the lion easily takes them on one at a time, and all three lose their lives. 

 

“Union is strength,” is the way my old 19^th-century Routledge volume sums up the fable’s lesson. 

 

Running with that idea--

 

The phrase and general idea of “United we stand! Divided we fall!” has a long history, from the New Testament (Matthew 3:25, Matthew 12:25, Luke 11:17) to Abraham Lincoln (“a house divided against itself”) to the official motto of the state of Kentucky (since 1942) and the flag of the state of Missouri. Going back to pre-Revolutionary times, we find a song by John Dickinson, “The Liberty Song,” with the words “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!” 

 

Never a sports fan, I learned something new when looking for the idea that we are “stronger together.” Those of you who do follow sports will be familiar with the name Walter Payton, running back for the Chicago Bears. Apparently, Payton’s most well-known words are these: “We are stronger together than we are alone.” This site includes many other wonderful Payton quotes. I'm glad to have learned about him!

 

Similar words were adopted in 2021 by the International Olympic Committee to honor teamwork and the unifying power of sports: “Faster, Higher, Stronger—Together.” Labor unions use such slogans for obvious reasons, pointing to the very reason for their, the unions’, existence. Team sports were not my forte, to put it mildly, and I've never belonged to a union (my paternal grandfather did), but I did play in orchestras for nine years, and an orchestra cannot make music except by making it together. Orchestral music is an ensemble production.

 

Maybe talk of strength in union makes you nervous? Irritates you? You say you’ve worked hard all your life and earned everything you have, with no help from anyone? The truth is that the most rugged individualist who clawed his way up the ladder of success did not spring full-blown out of nowhere but benefitted from a surrounding culture of knowledge and skill and law and examples built up over generations, in this country and others. We all inherit what others gathered and treasured for us before we were even born. Community is a much broader concept than communism, and you can have one without the other. The motto E pluribus unum dates back to 1776. Here's a case for returning to it.

 

Current Events

 

No, I am not going to get into details of the past week’s outrages. The observation I want to make is general. 

 

Most 21^st-century presidential candidates and presidents have vowed to be presidents “for all the people.” Tragically, the candidate who now sits in the Oval Office was not in tune with that popular promise and instead, while yet on the campaign trail, was already vowing vengeance. Retribution, not reconciliation, is his theme song. Now in office, he has wasted no time in making good on his threats.

 

(What is a threat? What is a promise? Do you see them as different? Why or why not?)

 

Calling journalists and Democrats and all Republicans who don’t fall in line with him “enemies,” today’s president encourages his loyalists to follow him in hating and demonizing, dividing rather than uniting. Why? Because keeping us divided distracts us from what everything else he and his henchmen are doing. Because keeping American citizens fighting among themselves lets the gangster billionaires take over. Because keeping us apart in information silos makes us weak. If Americans came together in defense of the rule of law, which "ultimately depends on the citizens" (go back and follow that link!), we would still have plenty of disagreements and plenty to debate and a lot on which to compromise, but surely we could stand united against the threat of autocracy. We would have strength in numbers. —And if our democracy fails to survive, none of the other disagreements will matter, anyway.

Right now, in this cold Michigan February, it's hard to see if and how Americans will ever come together again, isn’t it? But what a tragic waste of human thought and innovation and effort it would be if this country of ours were to slide into “absolute despotism” after being founded expressly to avoid such a fate!

 

Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day, to cite the old cliché, and it didn’t fall in a single day, either. The current administration is less than a month old. The wrecking ball started swinging on Day 1, and there has been a lot of destruction already, but we don’t have to sit back and let it continue to happen. We need to remind our members of Congress, our elected representatives, that they took an oath to abide by and defend the Constitution of the United States, and they are not working for the people they supposedly represent if they are knuckling under to a president who would set it aside—or, worse yet, if they are actively aiding and abetting that set-aside.

 

So keep up your strength, lend your strength to others, and draw strength from others, too. I promise (or is it a threat?) more Aesop in the weeks ahead. Other books, too. And if you’re very, very good, more dog news and notes. That’s a promise.

In Need of Loving Care!

 

Eat a good breakfast!

Are you taking care of yourself? You need to. It’s been a rough week, and the road ahead doesn’t look any smoother. 

Dinner, too. Keep up your strength. (See that spinach?)

Now here, not that anyone asked, is my take on what’s going in in Washington: 

 

There is waste in every organization, and the federal government is many, many organizations, so of course there is waste. Serious, close, careful review of government programs with an eye to trimming budgets and reducing and eliminating waste would be make perfect sense, but that’s not what we’re seeing. 

Shutting down programs overnight is nothing but wanton, wholesale destruction. It’s as if you decided that an apartment building was inefficiently heated, so you immediately razed it to the ground and left its residents homeless. Shutting down foreign aid and medical research is a twin disaster-in-the-making, inviting world pandemics the like of which we have never seen before.

 

And to think that all this destruction is not being carried by responsible elected officials or vetted appointees but----! Well, if someone had written our current America as a novel even as recently as ten years ago, it would have been considered too wildly unrealistic for belief. 

 

***

 

But let’s shove that mess off the table and look for a minute at the soothing world of books. At least, I want to start with books, but it won’t take long for me to work in a metaphor and get beyond bookshops and libraries.

 

Books have always been threatened….

 

As time has gone by, threats to the survival of books have become more and more serious. The materials that make up books almost from the beginning and especially since the invention of printing have gotten progressively worse. Rag paper replaced vellum, paper made from shorter fibers replaced rag paper. Alum sizing of paper—a process which allows the paper to be printed on—replaced gelatin sizing and, in the process, made the paper highly acidic. Pasted-on endbands replaced sewn-on endbands. Binder’s board (a specialized cardboard) replaced wood for covers.

 

Accompanying the decline in materials was a similar decline in structure. Now the most common binding is the ironically named “perfect” binding. [The irony is unintentional. As a conservator, the writer sees irony in a term where others well might not.] It is an economical method of binding that unfortunately does not stand up to heavy use or allow for repeated rebinding. Modern hardback books are seldom satisfactorily rounded and backed and consequently their text blocks pull away from the spine even as they stand on the shelf. 

 

-      Saving Our Books and Words exhibit label, quoted in A Degree of Mastery: A Journey Through Books Arts Apprenticeship, by Annie Tremmel Wilcox

 

A beautiful story --

The quoted passage above calls up a series of thoughts for me. 

 

First thought: “Books have always been threatened” might seem to echo the challenging or banning of book content but actually has to do, we learn quickly, with the way the physical book is threatened by the physical world. It’s a specific example of the general truth of the law of entropy. Put simply, in time, things fall apart, order becomes disorder.

Second thought: Some things fall apart faster than others, and some books fall apart faster than others. As a dealer in used, old, and rare books, I see this on a daily basis. Cheaply produced novels from the early 1900s, e.g., much-beloved adventure novels collected by those who read and loved them when young, are often characterized by brittle pages turned brown with time. A cheaply made book is like an old, cheaply made violin: Quality not inherent at the beginning does not accrue over time. On the other hand, books originally printed on high-quality paper and bound with care can last for centuries. They are living messengers from past generations of human beings and can still speak to us today. What a miracle!

 

Third thought: My late husband, the Artist, could usually identify a book club edition right away when he picked it up, without needing to look for a blind stamp on the lower back board or checking the dust jacket to see if it lacked a price. He could feel the difference in the bargain edition’s flatter spine. He had both an eye and a feel for quality in materials and production in all manner of objects. It was the reason for his large collection of beloved Harris tweed sportcoats (34 of them!), and it broke my heart when local consignment shops had no interest in these garments because they were more than a year old. Well, yes, Harris tweed clothing is not “fast fashion,” to be worn a couple times and discarded! The garments are made to last! 

(Thank heaven one young Leelanau man, much taller than the Artist, was able to wear one of David’s sportcoats. He has a pair of the Artist’s cowboy boots, too. I’m glad there are some people who recognize and care about quality in all realms of human life.)

 

Fourth thought: In the story of book conservation, I cannot help seeing a metaphor. It is natural to me, personally, to see truths of inert materials naturally extending to the world of life, and it is natural to human language in general to work this way, but I’ll not be taking up that larger topic today. I’ll just tell a little story to illustrate my point.

 

Many years ago, editing a book on welding for a faculty member in a university school of engineering, I was struck by the way the writer’s facts about chemistry worked as metaphors for human connections. Some pairs of metals, I learned, can never result in a strong and lasting bond. No matter what degree of skill the welder brings to the task, that weld will always be weak. Different pairs when welded together, however, form a strong and lasting union. That is, some metals are, as it were, antagonistic to each other, like those little Scottie dog magnets—and others have such a natural affinity for each other that when welded together they are as strong as if they had never been separate. Think true friendship. Think strong marriage. Think soulmate. 

 

And so, as metaphor, I see in those quoted paragraphs on book conservation a truth applicable to American government today. It is not only the quality of human “materials” that is problematic (to put it mildly) in the current White House administration. Lack of experience is a problem, too, as is the abandonment of any criteria of qualification, other than partisan—no, more like personal--loyalty in crucial and essential government appointments. But beyond ignorance, inexperience, and lack of skill is the deepest, most chilling problem: These people have no loving concern for their work. They are not careful conservators of what has been laboriously constructed over almost 250 years “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Instead they seek to destroy what generations have built. Dismantle, if you want a gentler word, but there doesn’t seem to be any gentleness in an approach aimed at inducing trauma. This is the standard shock-and-awe approach employed elsewhere by our country but only now unleashed on the U.S. federal infrastructure.

 

I always seek to end each of my posts on a positive note, and that’s difficult this week, as a gang of unelected young men wet behind the ears has been given free rein to run roughshod through the financial data of every American, but maybe revisiting the Second Law of Thermodynamics can cheer us up. Did you follow the link to watch the video? If not, do it now. I’ll wait….

 

Okay, ready? At the moment, our country has pretty clearly descended into chaos, and chaos is a hallmark of despotism. In the interest of remaining calm, let’s step back and simply call it disorder. Our political system is horribly disordered at present. Things are not just falling apart,  but are being torn apart. Think vandals in a library. The destruction is intentional, not accidental, and order will not be spontaneously restored.

 

But there is still hope! Hope lies in the fact that the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to closed systems, and human beings are not a closed, isolated system. As a species, as a nation, as the population living in this present moment, we are continually drawing energy from other sources, and this energy is available for rebuilding and reordering society, as has been done in the past following periods of chaos and destruction. 

 

The arts are a source of energy on which we can draw, as are skilled craft, any manual work done with loving care, care for the earth and its creatures and each other, and so on and on. I have no plans to become a book conservator, but I do care for books that come into my little world, and I also care for the people who come to my shop seeking books, conversation, strength, and community. I try to use language with care, in this blog and elsewhere. Even if we are stumbling around in the dark much of the time, it’s important for us to do our best, whatever we are doing. Our poor, beautiful, irreplaceable gift of a world is so in need of our loving care!

 

Also, while this may seem a contradiction of the laws of energy, I find that when I expend energy in positive directions—when I focus on my writing (as I have been doing here) or contact my members of Congress or simply prepare a satisfying meal or play Frisbee with my dog—I do not feel my strength and energy depleted but renewed. And yes, the natural world around us is available as a source of strength.

Beautiful, life-giving sun!

This is the good news: I am not a closed system, and neither are you. The earth’s human population is not a closed system. We have sources of strength and energy all around us. Draw on them now! 

And that's my positive message for today from Northport. Bon courage, my friends!

Where all the women are trying to be strong!

The Subject Is Courage

Cold midwinter is the time to call on your sisu!

A good friend commented recently that citizens of the United States are now becoming “accustomed” to living with daily fear and uncertainty, adding, “Black people have lived this way for centuries.” The same can be said for Native Americans (and indigenous peoples in all parts of the world invaded by Europeans), certain (but not all) immigrant groups, gay people, etc. To survive and thrive under constant threat requires courage, and now is no time now for anyone to be fragile.

Former enslaved people who fled the South in the Great Migration knew fear both in the homes they fled and on the road north, and danger did not stop when travels ended. Whether the ultimate destination was the northern States or Canada, equality of opportunity was not granted upon arrival. Nevertheless, those migrants saw improvements in their lives. Perhaps most importantly, they gained hope. Courage they had all along.

Isabel Wilkerson‘s book The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration tells this story beautifully and is a good book to read, if you haven’t already, during Black History Month.

I am only about halfway through Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life (and less than halfway through Jimmy Carter’s presidential memoir, Keeping Faith), because at bedtime and in the middle of the night I turn usually to fiction. The King biography, however, is quite readable, and when I sit down with it in the late afternoon or early evening, the pages turn quickly. It is not, let me make clear, a hagiography. The author presents MLK’s flaws and self-doubts along with his courage and other virtues. (People often say of some admired person that he or she “was not a saint,” forgetting that those elevated to sainthood by the Catholic Church were all human beings, and none was perfect.) His personal courage inspired others.

 

King’s fervor lit a flame in many of those who heard him. Jesse Jackson, who was fifteen years old at the time of the 1957 Lincoln Memorial speech and would go on to become a minister, activist, and presidential candidate, said King’s emergence offered concrete hope that racism could be fought and beaten. Before King, there seemed to be two options: “You could go into a deep dark hole,” Jackson said, or “you could adjust—adjust to be the best pool player, adjust to be the best singer, the best barber.” Now King offered a realistic third option, Jackson said: “You could resist.”

 

A younger friend once asked me, “What were the Sixties really like?” I told her that depended on who you were, how old you were, where you lived, and what was going on your life. The Sixties were not the same for everyone, and neither were the Fifties.

 

Many historians would describe the 1950s as a time of tranquility, a time of prosperity, a time when the gap between the Left and Right narrowed and Americans, for the most part, agreed that they were fortunate to live in the greatest and most powerful nation on earth. But such descriptions overlooked many who did not feel so fortunate. Once those who were overlooked began to express their discontent, once they began to yearn for more, the picture-perfect image of America in the 1950s showed cracks. Where would the fight for real freedom spread next? It would spread almost everywhere, including Mongtomery.

 

When Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a sermon or spoke at a rally, people were inspired by his fervor. No demagogue, King was also persuasive in his reasoning and offered a hopeful vision of the future. 

 

Fear is contagious. It resides in the most primitive part of the human brain, always ready to be activated by threat, real or perceived. Survival of the prehistoric group depended on the contagion of fear. 

 

But fear can be overcome, and courage, like fear, can also be contagious. 

 

Courage was contagious in Mongtomery, Alabama, in 1963. It was contagious during World War II in the French village of Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon, where villagers took a united stand. I’m sure everyone reading my words today can come up with examples from personal experience, as well as from history. Real leaders are courageous and inspire others to be brave. 

 

“Courage is like a muscle,” in the words of John McCain. “The more we exercise it, the stronger it gets.” Before he died, McCain worried that America’s cultural courage muscle was growing weak from lack of exercise, and that, he warned,

 

…means trouble for us all, because courage is the enforcing virtue, the one that makes possible all the other virtues common to exceptional leaders: honesty, integrity, compassion, and humility. In short, leaders who lack courage aren’t leaders.

 

--Here I want to shift gears, so hold on! Let’s take a look at standup comedy! What? Yes! 

 

Historically, jesters in a royal court, besides telling jokes and performing acrobatic tricks, were permitted to speak their minds freely, even going so far as to criticize the monarch. At times they were trusted advisors to kings and emperors, while at other times speaking truth to power meant they risked their lives. Their courage provided both a safety valve and a warning. 

 

And so it is fitting that in a country whose government is supposedly “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” comedians all over our land provide criticism of nominal leaders (I really do intend that adjective), along with more general entertainment, and my favorite these days is Josh Johnson. This young man is both brave and funny! He makes me laugh! 

 

Laughter—how subversive! We are never thoroughly beaten down if we can still laugh. (Do you think Winston in Orwell’s novel 1984 ever laughed?) When someone tells important truth in a way that provokes spontaneous laughter, our courage can get a big boost.

 

Where do examples of courage in our world today, in the United States, give you inspiration and hope and make you feel a little braver yourself? I take heart from the examples of U.S. House of Representatives minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, California governor Gavin Newsom, and others. Even Senator Mitch McConnell—and I am no fan of his political views in general; quite the contrary—managed to locate his cojones and speak out against January 6 and vote against the abominable Hegseth nomination. The City of Brotherly Love has stood out en masse. Who stands out for you?

 

As for those of us who are not in Congress, not governors or mayors or ministers with large congregations, we can still spread the contagion of courage among ourselves and to others. Yesterday morning an old song came into my head, something my sisters and I learned as a hymn in Sunday school when we were little girls. Take a listen, and tell me if this doesn’t strengthen your resolve to do whatever you can, day by day.

 

Another Sunday school song: "Open up your heart and let the sun shine in!"