Dear friends,
When I was growing up, my family was very active in the Meresman Family Circle. This was my mom’s father’s family, and they gathered weekly in NYC from the 1930s through the 1950s, and less frequently as the family dispersed to suburbs and other parts of the country.
We kept minutes of the meetings. As each child came of age, they took a turn being the secretary. Needless to say, I loved this job. I actually dreamed of being a secretary, until I realized that minutes would not be handwritten in the real world.
There was a category in our meetings and our minutes, called health and welfare, in which we reported on how this cousin was faring after surgery and those cousins were doing after moving to a new house. There were always many reports of graduations and academic achievements. Anyone who married, gave birth to, or adopted a child became the newest member of the membership committee.
This morning, this all came rushing back to me for reasons I can’t fully explain. It may have been the email I got from College Action: Research & Action (CARA).
The email from CARA reported on the opening of a new Student Success Center at Richmond Hill High School, which engages youth leaders to do peer-to-peer support when young people are planning for life after high school.
Not everyone has a family circle to guide them into higher education, military service, or business. Support CARA!
State residents are uniting in their churches, parks and homes to learn about the history of Black Americans, including drawing on material from books that have been removed from school shelves.
What DeSantis is doing is not okay. What people are doing is inspiring. Popular education is not new AND it is the way of the future.
My partner, who was raised by teachers, went to school throughout the 1968 Teachers’ Strike because there was a free school staffed by striking teachers at Beth Elohim synagogue. He remembers reading Nine Stories, by JD Salinger, author of one of the top 50 banned books.
Two years ago, the Brooklyn Public Library started the Books Unbanned initiative to counter the regressive and repressive efforts around the country to deny people access to books about certain topics — gender, sexuality, Black history, among other high interest topics.
This is Banned Books Week (October 1-7). San Diego Public Library and LA County Library have joined the Books Unbanned initiative, along with BPL and the public library systems of Seattle and Boston.
Join LeVar Burton tomorrow @banned_books_week on Instagram at 8 PM. He will be in conversation with the Youth Chair, Da’Taeveyon Daniels.
I love the irrepressible spirit of readers, librarians, teachers, and all people devoted to learning and freedom of thought.
Emily Drabinski, the president of the American Library Association, was recently interviewed by Tressie McMillan Cottom. When they were discussing book bans, Cottom summarized Drabinski’s remarks in this way:
[T]his is about some larger idea about who is included in the political project, for whom the legal provisions will acknowledge. So not those books, not those people.
Listen to America’s Top Librarian on the Rise of Book Bans. Drabinski also talks about knowledge and how we organize it. Blew my mind!
As we organize ourselves (and ideas!), our goal is to be inclusive, vibrant, and joyful.
The congregation is particularly disturbed by the state legislature’s recently enacted law that bans healthcare providers from treating trans kids and has launched a program to help families get their children the healthcare they need.
The not-for-profit doesn’t require religious beliefs or church participation from applicants. The only qualification is that families must live in the 19-county northern Texas area and have a trans or gender-diverse child.
Tell me that isn’t moving.
On Friday, in the absence of leadership from the Department of Education, the office staff at Queens school distributed socks and sweatpants that the school keeps for young people who live in temporary housing.
It wasn’t the intended purpose of the supplies AND it was the right move. A wet miserable day was transformed into a good-humored pajama-party as students donned matching socks and sweats.
Chalkbeat reported on another school, under worse circumstances, that did something similar.
At the Lafayette Educational Complex in Gravesend, Brooklyn, which is in a flood zone, students and staff had to wade through thigh-high waters to get to the schools housed there, said teacher Elizabeth Fortune.
“We gave away all our school logo pjs to students and some were stuck in wet clothes or barefoot at school,” Fortune wrote in an email.
Many of our larger institutions are struggling because of the increased demands on them, poor leadership, and the divisions in our society. We are going to need to fill gaps ourselves as we pressure them to prepare.
Tell Mayor Adams that we need better communication and planning for future climate emergencies, in addition to comprehensive climate action.
The Meresman Family Circle no longer meets with any regularity. My cousin Susan, the president of the Membership Committee (with four adult children and a handful of grandchildren), did organize a Zoom gathering in 2020. We are on four continents now, and we are losing population.
We are going to have to turn to each other — our neighbors, friends, and local organizations — to come through these challenging times.
If the Meresmans were still meeting, I’d tell all my cousins about ARLO market, the brain child of my child, Lena Greenberg, who works as Food Access Coordinator for the Intervale in Burlington, VT.
ARLO is a bulk market of Affordable, Reliable, LOcal food, that can be purchased with cash, credit, or food subsidies. A pricing guide lets those without subsidies pay full price or 75% of full price, depending on what they can afford.
Resourcefulness, vision, kindness, and common sense may save us yet.
with love,
L