Cycho Librarian

I’m amazed and heartened by the number of White people I see recognize Juneteenth publicly today. I’m trying very hard not to think “it took you all long enough!”, recognizing that I had no idea what Juneteenth was myself until I was well out of college. Once more, we White people were shielded from the lived reality of millions of our fellow citizens. But my greater worry about Juneteenth is that it’s another recognition of evils that we White people committed against Black people that gives us an easy out. “It’s terrible that those people were kept in bondage for two years after the Emancipation proclamation, but then the Union soldiers showed up in Galveston Bay and everything was made right!” Juneteenth, particularly for us White people, can fall too easily into the “White Savior” narrative that excuses what actually happened. So what’s much more on my mind today is Reconstruction. That is, the reason why there were Union soldiers landing in Galveston Bay. I came across this Twit...

Today I got to drive one of my favorite roads in Southeast Ohio, route 329 between Amesville and Glouster. 329 winds its way from the Hocking River near Guysville up the Federal Creek valley through Amesville and on to Trimble. It’s a beautiful farming valley that is filled with history from the coal mining era back to the early days of European settlement and on from there back to the mound-building cultures of North America before European contact. You can’t help but feel the weight of history as you wind your way through this unglaciated valley carved by water and time through the former sea bed that makes up our topography in this area. But today what was most on my mind was the tour I got of the area from a former Board member who is a historian and community activist with deep roots in our county. She gave me her Underground Railroad tour of Athens County, and Federal Creek features prominently in that story. Ever since then I can’t drive 329 without thinking of the stories of t...

We got out for a hike this morning, and we’re going to try to do that every morning weather permitting. I’m grateful that we live in a place where beautiful and wild places are minutes away. I’m also grateful that we don’t have a shelter in place order and most likely won’t thanks to the small size of the community and our low population density. I feel for my friends in New York and San Francisco who no longer have this outlet. But I think the most important thing I was grateful for this morning was some space: a break from being up to my eyeballs in news and updates and decisions related to the current situation. While social media has been a great benefit during this time in many ways-- up to date information, fun diversions, connection with friends near and far-- it has also created an environment where it’s very easy to begin to lose hope, fall prey to worst fears, and get sucked into pointless battles about which conspiracy is true or not. My advice for all of you, my friends, ...

So now we find ourselves with the fate of our democracy hanging on two old white men. Somehow or other we looked at all the options we had and managed to talk ourselves into the idea that either a) “other people” would only be able to vote for Biden, or b) no one else was as “pure” a progressive as Sanders. And let’s not even get started on misogyny. We had more than a couple female candidates who could have mopped the floor with Trump, and the only reason we’re not looking at Warren or Harris as a clear frontrunner right now is because they’re women. I am, honestly, fine with either of these men as the nominee. I can vote for either one with a clear conscience. But geez, we had to go and make it hard on ourselves, didn’t we? Here’s what I hope to Bog both of these candidates and their teams are thinking about, and I very much hope that you, my friends, are thinking about these things as well as we head toward convention. First off, these guys are old. I am not using that word pejor...