Word of Mouth: Really, Truly, Almost Spring

Featured

Musical: A Sign of the Times Lindsay Hope Pearlman, Richard J. Robin, Gabriel Barre, JoAnne M. Hunter, Joseph Church.

Extrauterine Children: The IVF Ruling Is About Who Gets to Raise Your Children — Dahlia Lithwick in SLATE.

Novel: Lady in the Lake — Laura Lippman

Podcast: The Wars in Ukraine and Gaza Have Changed. America’s Policy Hasn’t — Richard Haass on the Ezra Klein Show.

Podcast: Trump and the Age of Disinformation — Barb McQuade on Stay Tuned with Preet.

Double Standards: Israel, Gaza and Double Standards, Including Our Own — Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times.

TV: Avatar: the Last Air Bender — Albert Kim.

Movie: Shortcomings — Randall Park.

Idea: Dobbs was never self-limiting to abortion—it was a save-the-date card for the religious right’s plan to come for the rest of our reproductive freedoms. …

This is the two-step wherein the state forces women to have babies they cannot raise, does nothing to help support them, then swoops in to seize the babies when their parents are seen as endangering them—a phenomenon that of course predominantly hurts poor women and women of color. The state also ensures that adoptions flow in the direction of more “worthy” parents, which means heterosexual and Christian parents, a regime also built into the legal framework. The list of people who cannot assert autonomy and control over their potential children has, in the course of a few weeks, now expanded from LGBTQ+ parents, single parents, poor parents, and parents of color to anyone who has started the process of IVF in Alabama.” —The IVF Ruling Is About Who Gets to Raise Your Children — Dahlia Lithwick in SLATE.

WORD OF MOUTH: Mid-Winter

Featured

NONFICTION: DOPPELGANGER: A Trip into the Mirror World — Naomi Klein

YES! A Handy Manual for Republicans Commenting on Mass Shootings — Jamie Raskin

TV: Schmigadoon! Season 2 — Ken Daurio, Cinco Paul

TV: The Brothers Sun —Brad Falchuk, Amy Wang, Brian Wu

MOVIE: The Woman King — Gina Prince-Bythewood

PODCAST: “Chaos Theory Explains It.” Brian Klaas, author of  Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters, on the Brian Lehrer Show.

SPIRITUAL REWIRING: Train Yourself to Always Show Up — Rabbi Sharon Brous

IDEA: “The spread of lies and conspiracies online is now so rampant that it threatens public health and, quite possibly, the survival of representative democracy. The solution to this informational crisis, however, is not to look to tech oligarchs to disappear people we don’t like; it’s to get serious about demanding an information commons that can be counted upon as a basic civic right.” Naomi Klein

IDEA: “It’s time to pass the universal background check and restore the expired ban on military-style assault rifles, which was constitutional and effective. Weapons of war are unnecessary for hunting, recreation or self-defense in the home, which are the purposes of individual gun ownership outside of military service protected by the Second Amendment.” — Jamie Raskin

Making real the promises of democracy

Featured

Sixty years after the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the nation still needs to be reminded of what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now.” My husband, the brilliant and thoughtful Alexis Romay, recently had the honor of translating Dr. King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech into Spanish. The book has a forward by National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, also translated by Alexis. 

Tonight, Monday, January 16 (at 7PM), on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Alexis will be reading and reflecting on the experience of translating this important work at Watchung Booksellers, in Montclair, NJ. The event will be in Spanish. You can register here. 

New, this fall: Politics + Haiku = PolitiKu

1

Senator Ted Cruz:

Corrupting justice
is only the first item
on your To Do List.