Notes

A thing I need to get used to about the working-from-home lifestyle is utilizing the time in between commitments to be more productive. When I was teaching full-time in Mauritania, I was more carefree on breaks between classes. I considered them downtime, a space to breathe, to rest the mind, and prepare for the next lessons.

Now, I have things to do around the house, errands, and other projects I want to complete, like writing or reading. Sometimes I have hours between classes and I need to make the most out of them.

Now, Democratic Socialists of America will start the endorsement debate process amongst chapters and the National Political Committee. It’s democratic.

Matt Breunig’s People’s Policy Project’s Family Fun pack sets the priorities straight for socialists on family life and childcare policy in America. We are totally behind every other industrialized country.

I read this poem in Leaves of Grass ten years ago and have never stopped thinking about this one part:

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.

Steven Pressfield in his book The War of Art:

Fundamentalism and art are mutually exclusive. There is no such thing as fundamentalist art. This does not mean that the fundamentalist is not creative. Rather, his creativity is inverted. He creates destruction. Even the structures he builds, his schools and networks of organization, are dedicated to annihilation, of his enemies and of himself.