A Bit of Morning News
photo; Ana Lucía Torres
Plop drops the newspaper on our mossy brick front stoop, an inviting thud on lazy weekend mornings. Grownups with coffee or tea handle the paper in their special ways, some creasing pages precisely, others shaking out a section full length. I love this ritual and play along until I can slink away politely with the sports pages. My mother ambles through every section—usually back page to front—mentioning elections and music, jotting down movie times, clipping gardening tips and poems. My uncle slowly lowers the newspaper, clasped in both his hands, below eye level. Ahem. He clears his throat and begins reading aloud to his loyal audience. He pauses and looks up occasionally, checking on our attentiveness as he highlights major points.
Time passes. Today a mix of news wings into your inbox—politics and music, legal verdicts and poems, film and history.
Poet Wendell Berry remembers those timeless feelings that satisfy completely. Treasure “Goods” such as love and gayety and rest. Exult in “the green growth the mind takes / from the pastures in March.” Our minds green like springtime as April nears.
Tennessee’s Gloria Johnson displays grass-rootedness at its best in her inspired, inspiring campaign for US Senator. A public high school special education teacher for 27 years, Johnson experienced a shooting take a child’s life. She was nearly banished from her job in the state legislature for demanding gun reform in April 2023, standing up then and now as one of the “Tennessee Three.” A tall woman awarded a closet-sized office as retribution for her growing political stature, she states: “I feel like the big windows around the Capitol burst open and sunlight poured in, and all of Tennessee got to get a really close look at what was happening in their legislature.” She advocates on behalf of the marginalized. Johnson’s own painful experience motivates her pursuit of universal abortion access. “You just have to stand up and speak up. And if we don’t do that, nothing’s going to change.”
The Tennessee Freedom Singers gather in a Nashville studio and record a spirited anthem in support of Johnson’s Senate candidacy. “Go and make yourself known.” What an exuberant group—what a grateful Gloria. “Tennessee Rise” honors her “lasting statewide grassroots movement for change,” and all artists will donate streaming proceeds for social justice and equity campaigns. “I got joy in my heart this morning,” no matter how much work awaits.
Letitia James, New York’s first woman and first Black Attorney General, grew up in Brooklyn where she attended public schools, earned her law degree from Howard University, and first served as a public defender. Recently she oversaw a team of lawyers in the 11-week civil fraud case against a mega-grifting bankruptee. Watch her televised response to the verdict, a $464 million judgment against the defendant compounded by daily interest. James speaks clearly and deliberately in the measured tones of an utterly appalled citizen as well as a lawyer. Finding the scale and scope of his fraud as staggering as his ego, she reminds the bloviating Ponzi-schemer that the “rule of law applies to all of us.” Further, his lying and cheating for personal gain do not constitute victimless crimes. He’s guilty and accountable despite the NY appellate court yesterday granting the criminal an extra 10 days to post a reduced bond amount. The judgment stands. In her 2019 inaugural speech as Attorney General, Tish James foresaw her fearless prosecution of this case: “The law is the great equalizer and the biggest pillar of our democracy. I will shine light into the murkiest of swamps and act as a steward of justice.”
How far have we come since 1963 in promoting nonviolence, erasing racism, ensuring LGBTQ+ rights? Why did the gripping film “Rustin,” starring Colman Domingo and produced by Michelle and Barack Obama, introduce me to Bayard Rustin? Rustin’s story belongs to all of us—it is US history. An openly gay Black man, he braved multi-pronged opposition as he organized the 1963 March on Washington, including initial worse-than-ambivalence from Martin Luther King. It was at the culmination of this huge August 28th civil rights rally that King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. We get to know Rustin personally in a recent interview with his partner, artist and photographer Walter Naegle. “Bayard loved the arts, spicy food, and doodling.” Awarded posthumously the Medal of Freedom by President Obama, Naegle accepted on Rustin’s behalf: “Being black, being homosexual, being a political radical, that’s a combination that’s pretty volatile and it comes along like Halley’s Comet.”
Lenny Kravitz and his band perform the “Road to Freedom” featured in the film “Rustin.” Those trombones and the drum—amped guitars and soulful choristers. We’re on the road indeed, but as the Tennessee Freedom Singers belt, there’s so much work ahead. Without compromise, we walk on together. “If you’re broken, I’ll carry you / When I’m weary you’ll see me through.”
A poem and a song to end. The same poem and song to begin.
Your car dropped off at the shop, then a package left with a clerk, finally the check dropped in the night deposit box. What now? “Sometimes the best thing to do is trust,” concludes poet Thomas R. Smith. “Trust” in your life’s deliverance to the exact right place. Breathe the freeing power of trust.
“Nothing that’s easy is worth it / Nothing that’s worth it is perfect, yeah.” Yeah. All in and forever, “Let It Be Me” sing the Backstreet Boys. Meet four people included in this rendition—grieving, rejected, fearful, lonely—and watch love work its magic on the foursome. Hearing someone say “I would take it all for ya.” Yeah. Saying to someone “I would take it all for ya.” Yeah.