For So Many Reasons

My heart is breaking today.

I cried watching the town hall coverage on CNN. I can only think of the Jefferson quote, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." I can't believe the levels of insensitivity and selfishness and outright callousness people are displaying on this issue. And then I realize that I can believe it, and that hurts more--when did I stop expecting people to care about one another?

A one-time friend is also having a difficult time (she's been diagnosed with the same disorder that killed her brother two years ago), and although it's a manageable thing, I know she is terrified and hurting. Yet with the circumstances between us being the way they are, there is nothing I can do. I called her and offered help if she needed it but was, as expected, brushed off with a "thanks but I'm ok." I am sad about the schism between us, and about what is happening to her. I don't know how to tell her how sorry I am. I don't think she'd be able to forgive me, even if I did.

I am also trying very hard to formulate ideas for my graduate application essays, and am stuck between getting all feminist and going into information access and literacy education as a means of empowerment, and just being all trope-y and saying the "right" things. If I do the former it's bound to be a less coherent essay, for sure, because I'm going to be stretching into new ideas, but it will also be much more potent. The latter will be smoother but less impressive in content. I know that both matter.

Also I was up until 5 again talking to the fellow about everything under the sun (and moon), and I'm tired, and just PMS-y enough to realize it. Bugger all.

The Cradle of North America

I love localized history. In college, I took the Illinois history class even though it was technically part of the social studies educator curriculum, simply because I was fascinated (and I knew the teacher would make it a trip worth taking). I've visited Cahokia twice now, and was the only person in that class, teacher included, who had been there. It's definitely a disorienting experience, because due to the simplified history given in public schools in this country we have a tendency to think of the North American native people as either hut-inhabiting or nomadic. The presence of this massive city (speculations are that it was approximately the size of MODERN London) down in the mid-western bottoms--just northeast of St Louis-- is really pretty mind blowing.

Which is probably precisely why it's so interesting. History book history is so bereft of the truths that history can show us, and the American narrative especially so.

New discoveries indicate even more complexity to this society that completely dissipated (died out or assimilated, but certainly collapsed) long before Europeans showed up around here. By the time any white person was here, the city was nothing but a few (admittedly massive) mounds of earth and a perplexing circle of deep holes that had mostly filled in.


Sacrificial virgins of the Mississippi | Salon Books