Monday Musings

I don't mean to get political on this Monday morning but this article from Rolling Stone is too good not to pass along. The purpose of this blog and my writing isn't to disguise a hippie agenda or push my ideals on anyone at all - I just thought this article offers up some unique information and gives you different perspectives to think about. What I found particularly interesting was how the author defines "change" in America:

"They plant their flag in an uncompromising position, and wait for the world to come around – which, quite often, it eventually does. This is because in a media environment based on the ideology of "balance," in which anything one of the parties insists upon must be given equal weight to whatever the other party says back, the party that plants its ideological flag further from the center makes the center move. And that is how America changes. You set the stage for future changes by shifting the rhetoric of the present."

As a future teacher, I would take this into my classroom...

"You might be locked into a world not of your own making, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities." 

                          - Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father

Insightful

 via hemingwaycool 

Some might say that I'm introspective to a fault, so it's no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed reading Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father. My boyfriend recommended that I read it and I honestly couldn't put it down. To dispel all contrived notions, this book is not about pushing political jargon down your throat or about a secret liberal agenda. This is a book about accepting where you come from and how that influences where you find your place in this world. I found so much to relate to in this book and I still find myself going back to passages that I marked, reading over his well-crafted words and thinking that they could be my own. I in no way want to belittle or discredit Mr. Obama's struggle - I can certainly not imagine how hard it was to grow up with your feet in two separate worlds, each of them seeming to try to tear you apart at the middle. But I do believe that when he speaks about the "fluid state of identity - the leaps through time, the collision of cultures" we can all relate. His vulnerability and perception is something that any writer can admire and any reader can find enticing. On a side note -- Imagine reading this book when it was first published in 1995? Thinking to yourself, "This guy is an amazing writer, I hope he writes another book." And then he runs for president?

Happy reading.