Inspire/Expire

It is snowing!

I see it through a hole

On the paper door

All I can think of

Is that I am lying

In a house in the snow.

- Masaoka Shiki, d. 1902

John Green has written a beautiful book about a horrific reality, namely that we have let 150 million people die of tuberculosis since a cure for the infectious disease was discovered in the 1950s.

"Your pleasure signals our death."

- Sukanta Bhattacharya, d. 1947

Adulting

 

It's been a minute since I was in my twenties, but becoming an adult is hard. That truth is forever.

The Middle Passage

 

Over 12,000 ships crossed the Atlantic Ocean carrying approximately 12.5 million enslaved Africans to the Americas. 

Of those kidnapped people, an estimated 1.8 million died on the journey west, their bodies consigned to ocean waters. 

The Slave Wrecks Project unites institutions and people from around the world-- scholars, archeologists, photographers, divers.

Their efforts help bring this history up from the depths and into the light.

Spring, But Feels Like Summer

 

 

It's rare to find a children's chapter book that slays. This is one (by an author who wrote a brutal, magnificent memoir prior to this tonic). Pairs well with a rhubarb shrub on a warm day with a light breeze and the smell of lilacs in the air.