Good Sunday morning from my cozy basement burrow! The opening picture is from a late night (late night is a relative term) reading session on Tuesday. My head has been spinning for a million different reasons this week and the sleep score my watch gives me reflects that fact! I’m here today to give you a quick update on our week. I’ll be focusing on home stuff and reading; I started knitting a sock but don’t have a picture, so I’ll hope you’ll take my word for it. Perhaps I’ll have photographic evidence by next Sunday?
Home Stuff:
We have had a busy week with school! It feels so good to be mostly in the swing of things. I’m still working on Tuesday mornings but there are only two more before I go back to just Saturday mornings. So we’re fitting five days worth of learning into four and making sure we take Dawsey on some good, long walks in the Town Forest.
Last week I shared that my Thinking Hour has been hit or miss, but I managed it every day this week. I’ve mostly been counting my early morning time as my thinking hour. That’s not how I envisioned it, but that’s okay. Last week I used that time to practice Latin (3x) and to finish my book of Hannah Arendt essays (more below in the Reading section).
Over the last couple of days I’ve used it for planning my personal curriculum. My learning goal this fall is to study the history of race in the United States. I’m most interested in a topic that bubbled up for me while reading Jubilee by Margaret Walker this summer: why do poor white people continue to vote against their interests? My hypothesis is that it’s rooted in the systemic racism that our country has perpetuated since before its founding, so I’m reading books that explore that topic in more depth.
I have four major books that I’m hoping to read through December:
- These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore
- White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
- The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
I’ve been spent time roughly breaking those books down into time periods with the aim to read them all in some sort of chronological order. It won’t be a perfect overlay and that’s okay. I’m interested in seeing what the different historians have to say about roughly the same historical events and it feels more like a history curriculum when it’s laid out like this. I’m also planning to read Hell of a Book by Jason Mott at some point during all of this to round things out a little bit.
This has been a fun project for me! Now the trick is actually doing the reading. I’ve used Notion to divide the reading into four different eras and am hoping to be able to finish it all by the end of December but there’s no real time limit. I am happy to share if anyone is interested in using my outline – just let me know.
Reading:
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
(Amazon | Bookshop.org)
“Now that I’m dying it seems much simpler than it ever did before. Living, I mean. There is no parallel universe. There is no ‘what would have been if only.’ In some ways, this has brought me a great deal of peace. In other ways, it is bitter. How cruel life is only this long. Now that I see clearly I’d like more time.”
This is a collection of letters to and from our protagonist, Sybil Stone Van Antwerp. She’s a retired woman in Maryland who primarly communicates through letters, which she’s done since girlhood. Through these letters, we learn so much about her life and how she became the person she is. We watch her grapple with personal relationships and so much regret in her life. I laughed, I cried — it was just fantastic!
(This is not the cover of the edition I listened to but I loved it so much that I had to use it!)
Katabasis by RF Kuang
(Amazon | Bookshop.org)
“Even the Oxbridge credentials, which Alice’s ex had assumed were solely what she was after, were not the point. Those were only instrumentally valuable to secure what Alice really wanted, which was unhampered time and access to the necessary resources to THINK.” p262
Alice is a graduate student at Cambridge University studying Analytic Magick. When her advisor dies a gruesome death, she decides to go to Hell to bring him back so she can graduate. This book was heavily inspired by the many stories of sojourners into Hell written by classic authors. There’s also quite an Alice in Wonderland theme running throughout, along with (I would argue) Peter Pan.
Last week I said that this is one of those books that has inspired me to read more classic literature and philosophy and I still stand by that. There’s so much to learn!
On Lying and Politics by Hannah Arendt
(Amazon | Bookshop.org)
“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lies will now be accepted as truth, and the truth be defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world – and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end – is being destroyed.”
This tiny book containing two essays took me a couple of weeks to read and then a couple of additional days to figure out how to share it with you. It includes two essays: Truth and Politics (1954) and Lying in Politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers (1971).
The common thread between the two (as I was able to understand it), was the importance of apolitical organizations who believe fiat veritas, et pereat mundus: let there be truth even if the world perishes. She identifies a few of those organizations: the judiciary, universities and research centers, and a free press. She argues that politicians are going to lie to paint the picture they want us to see in order to remain in power, but we need unbiased truth seekers to create an informed public.
What would she think of our unbiased institutions today? And how would she perceive our social media landscape and how it forms so much of our daily debate? It’s a frightening thought.
As I finish writing this, I have all of Sunday stretched before me! I will be putting away a metric ton of laundry, figuring out some football food for the day, and hopefully taking Dawsey on a super long walk through the woods before football starts. I also hope to find a little time to get lost in a book before the week starts all over again.
Whatever your Sunday entails, I hope you find some time for something you love. Take good care.
The Cozy Burrow 
Hello to you! I enjoyed hearing your update and will think about The Correspondent. I will spend the day taking a walk, reading, and doing some fall decorating. I am still waiting for some fall weather, although we have had a hint of it here and there.
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I am glad you are finding some time to carve out for yourself, even if it is in the early hours of the day! I was profoundly struck by Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s recent telling of history, We All Want to Change the World. It is history that I lived much of as well and yet… and yet. My view and his were frequently very different. I quickly found myself in the category of people (white) who believed that the election of Barak Obama was something big. Silly, silly me. I relearned much of what I thought I knew. Perspective is everything, isn’t it? I believe it was LBJ who said: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you”… true facts, such true facts. I might join you in some of your reading into December. Thank you for sharing your list!
I Hope your week is one that is full of more reasonable moments for you! XO
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You continue to inspire me with your reading and your commitment to learning/personal growth. I loved The Warmth of Other Sons; it reads like a novel, even though it’s nonfiction. I have The 1619 Project on my Kindle shelf and really should read it. I shudder to think what Hannah Arendt would think about the current state of our country — after all, she lived through Hitler’s Germany.
I hope you and Dawsey got in a good long walk and you all had a great Sunday!
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I love your new topic of study and have added a few more titles to my list. I read Warmth of Other Suns a few years ago and listened to the 1619 podcast. I look forward to hearing what you learn.
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Amen. There is so much to learn and many different points of view. I learned a lot from The Warmth of Other Suns. I listened to part of the 1619 project. I admire your commitment to personal studies. I hope you got a good walk in this past weekend.
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I started These Truths and paused it because I had also simultaneously started Stamped From the Beginning and I realized I can’t have so much nonfiction going at once. But I want to come back to These Truths – it was very good. The Warmth of Other Suns is an amazing book. Good luck with your project. Learning our history is SO important.
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