Gina Harris's Blog, page 52

Reading about education

My aversion to bigotry and fascism was reason enough for me to have been appalled by and focused on the school board elections.

Looking back, though, I can see where my earlier education-themed reading may have played a part.

It started with reading about residential schools, and also some references to decolonizing education and academia, but also with really responding to bell hooks.

There ended up being seven books:

A Third University is Possible by La Paperson

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope by bell hooks

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire 

Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and Schools Closing on Chicago's South Side by Eve Ewing

(And then also I read two comics collections and a book of poetry from Eve Ewing and five children's books from bell hooks but those were not specifically related to education.)

Things don't always work out the way you think.

Let me just mention that La Paperson is an occasional pseudonym for UC San Diego's Wayne Yang, who was an editor on a book on decolonizing education that I read as a part of my Native American Heritage Month reading. The title was mentioned in one of the sections, and I found it intriguing.

I expected that it would be about distance learning, especially in response to residential schools. That seemed logical based on the material that referenced it, but it was not. It did still have information about rethinking education. 

In retrospect, the timing is also interesting. I finished the first three before the pandemic started, but only just before. Then, as I was reading more, education had been turned on its head. Now I reflect back on it after widespread attempts to move schools back to more racist and sexist and fascist.

It has been good to know that more is possible, and discouraging to see how determined some are to limit and crush.

Ewing's work was especially chilling, as so many of Chicago's school closures end up erasing history and diversity, trying to revert to a pre-Civil Rights Movement status quo. That is shown even in the names of the schools that get chosen for closure, and the names that go on the new schools.

Yes, we have people with that same goal right here. They are organized.

Then, with Miller's work, it is disturbing to see how many programs work to actually discourage learning and reading and intellectual development. I can't swear that's the goal, but it's alarming.

Fortunately, it was all balanced with hope. Regarding the ability of other people to learn and change -- even later in life -- Teaching to Transgress and Pedagogy of the Oppressed were probably the best. For those who seek to make things better, there was a lesson in A Third University is Possible as well.

When we break and repair systems, the new systems will also have flaws; we will not get everything right. So you address that, and you find new flaws.

As much as we keep getting wrong, we just need to keep trying. 

It does make sense to clarify goals. Some goals are incompatible, and some people with those goals will strenuously avoid admitting that.

Regardless, for all that has gone wrong and been wrong, I still believe in the chance to do better.

Accidentally, again, Black History Month

When I decided to focus on Black directors for 2019, it took a lot longer than I had planned, stretching well into 2020.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/11/black-history-month-2019-black-directors.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/02/black-history-month-2019-overview-black.html

That was a great project, and I am fine with it going over. I did read some things at the same time, and I actually wrote an update about it in February of 2020, as well as some other events:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/02/black-history-month-random-readings.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/02/black-history-month-2019-and-2020.html 

It felt like I wasn't really getting anywhere on books relevant to Black history that I intended to read, but as I started tracking works by Black authors and read by me, I realized there was more than I had thought

It mostly came out in ways I could not have predicted.

For example, I did a brief reading list related to education that it looks like I never blogged about. Given the times when I read the books, and how much farther apart than intended they ended up being, that makes sense. However, that involved reading from Eve Ewing and bell hooks.

With bell hooks, I specifically wanted to read two that mentioned teaching, but then I looked to see what else she has written, and saw a handful of children's books. I won't rule out some day reading everything by bell hooks, because her work inspires me. Without having the time for that then, I could still read the children's books.

Then, there wasn't just the one book by Eve Ewing, but also I'd read something about her writing for Marvel, so again, let's just see what all is out there, and there was poetry, as well as comics. I can read all those!

(Though two of the comics compilations are still on hold with the library, after a really long time. Still, The Crow finally came, so I am sure they will too.) 

It was reading about issues of fatness that led me to read Fearing the Black Body by Sabina Strings and Thick by Tressie Cottam McMillan.

It appears that my reading has become fairly integrated. When I am looking into any topic, I am aware of Black authors who have written on the topic. I like that.

I also still have enough that I still want to read and target that I am not ready to give up the months. Clearly they have become more than months, but that's okay.

It is questionable how much since it makes to go over a year's worth of reading as if it is for one month, but that may look different given the amount of time where I could not blog.

For now, tomorrow I want to go over that educational reading.

In June, for Black Music Month, I will request I Tina, The Beautiful Ones, and Le Freak from the library. These are technically from my music biography list, not my Black History list, but it works. 

Because of availability, I will also read A Promised Land and watch Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. I should try and watch One Night In Miami.

I will do an update after that. 

Then, I plan to focus on other lists, but pull in at least one book from the Black History list every month. 

Ideally, I will get caught up on the other lists by February 2022, and then I can really focus on that very long list. 

Things never go as planned, but sometimes the surprises and corrections are pretty good.

So I go on. 

Related post:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/12/an-accidental-black-history-month.html

Native American Heritage Month 2019 and 2020

Here is another one where it is totally possible that I will do a great job with the 2021 reading, because it hasn't happened yet, and sometimes I have optimism that borders on delusions of grandeur.

As it was, the relevant books were read between October 11th, 2019 and December 16th, 2020. I was reading around the correct times. I probably could have done reasonable write-ups for at least 2019, but I was not blogging a lot at the end of 2020. It was probably more that the reading felt incomplete.

This is also an area where the lack of inter-library loan has greater impact; the amount of books on Native American history or issues that I want to read and that are specifically in the Washington County library system has less overlap. They are better for some of my other areas. But again, a lot of the books I end up wanting to read are Canadian. Canada has very similar colonization issues, but the books published by their university presses are less likely to end up on library shelves in the United States.

In this case, there are about 26 books that I will need to request through inter-library loan. However, I have gotten my second ILL book since the library reopening, and things look possible again. If I wait until November, will I be able to get them all requested and read that month? For sure no, especially as only five can be requested at a time. 

However, I don't have to read them all in one month. I will sort that out. 

I should note that I also have six URLs to check out for more books and authors to consider, but that will represent a transition to focusing more on contemporary works, and not just the history. It is part of the plane, but that is for 2022.

So, here are the books that did get read.

Children's books:

Young Water Protectors by Aslan Tudor, Fry Bread: A Native American Story by Kevin Noble Maillard, Birdsong by Julie Flett, When We Are Kind by Monique Gray Smith but illustrated by Nicole Neidhardt, When I Was Eight by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton and illustrated by Gabrielle Grimard.

Great pictures in Fry Bread that cast a wide and inclusive net. Aslan Tudor has been a young water protector, so that could be very empowering for some older kids, to know that they can participate and tell their own story. You may remember the Fentons, a mother/daughter-in-law team, from Margaret's stories of her time in residential school. I had missed one of the books previously. Kindness is a more obvious theme in When We Are Kind, but also an important part of Birdsong.

Young Adult:

I Can Make This Promise by Christine Day and Bear Walker by Joseph Bruchac.

I ended up really enjoying both of these. There were issues of friendship and family, with some heartache but plenty of happiness and connection and growth. It occurs to me that for adults who want to read more diverse novels but are not sure where to start, YA books can be a great point of entry.

Comic books:

Anthology One by Native Realities, This Place: 150 Years Retold by multiple authors, and Marvel Voices: Indigenous Voices #1 by Jeffrey Veregge and others. 

This Place was the award winner and deserved it. Not only were the individual segments good but they were tied together well. At the same time, most of those seem unlikely to be parts of continuing stories, which is not the case for the other two. Currently I am most interested in seeing more on Dani Moonstar and Jonesy.

Adult Fiction:

House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday.

The funny thing about this is that I really meant to read Medicine River this time around, but I got the titles mixed up. I would have read it sooner or later anyway. It is definitely more poetic, but also harder to be sure of how anything will turn out.

Non-fiction:

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz and You're So Fat: Exploring Ojibwe Discourse by Roger Spielmann.

You're So Fat is pretty thoroughly a linguistics book. While it is not totally inaccessible for non-linguists, it can be challenging. There is nonetheless a lot of interesting room for thought on the connection between the language we have and the thoughts we think, and it is also why I was familiar with "culturally relevant teaching" when that came up in the school board elections.

As for the history book, it was great. It is a better addition than Zinn, and could work well with Lerone Bennett Jr.'s Before the Mayflower. 

There you have it. It's not a lot to show for two years, but for one year's reading it's fairly respectable.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2019/09/native-american-heritage-month-2018.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2019/09/native-american-heritage-month-2018_17.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2019/09/native-american-heritage-month-2018_19.html

Catching up on reading lists

This week I am doing some catch-up on what happened with my various reading lists. 

I have written about how my mother requiring more care affected my music listening and reviewing. In fact, the care giving had an impact on almost every aspect on my life, including reading. 

Beyond that, the pandemic interrupted library service for a time. Even after it restarted, I guess they were willing to process inter-library loans sooner than I felt comfortable asking. That doesn't affect everything, but often the books I plan to read are somewhat obscure, possibly for being academic in nature, or having been printed in Canada, or something like that.

I did some panic buying. It was only on discounted books, but it was mostly wasted because I haven't read the majority of those buys yet. For some it will help.

This week -- as I sort out some other things -- I am going to go over the months that have gone by, what I have managed, and what is next.

Prior to the bottom dropping out of everything, I had expanded my ambitions. It felt like I was always behind. I decided to read everything on the existing lists, regardless of how long that took. Then in the future I could look for newer things. 

I mean, I did know it wouldn't go as planned, but I didn't know how badly.

And yet, what I find is that I did still read things, and I did keep track, and I have kind of been heading in the intended direction.

I have notes on books that would relate to Black History Month (February), Native American Heritage Month (November), and Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month (May). The next few posts will go over the books that were read, and also the future direction, which is sometimes more complicated than others.

I do not appear to have read any additional books for Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15th through October 15th; I had initially thought it was just September), but that time period for 2021 has not happened yet, and I did keep it pretty well in 2019. 

As it was, I read almost everything that I meant to, plus a few extra things that came up. The book I didn't get to was one that had not been officially published yet, but was floating around as an academic paper. It should actually be out now for September 2021.

I added some books of course, and then I still have a lot of names of both writers and musicians from reading Sandra Cisneros that I do want to explore more.

So the plan starting this September 15th is to read that one that had not been published, plus four new books that I have learned about in the time since, and I want to find some good biographies for Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. I will probably read Caramelo by Cisneros, but save the rest of her writing and the long list of her inspirations for 2022. Perhaps I am not quite caught up, but it feels manageable.

Separately, on my project to look at all of the Caldecott medalists, I only have about fifteen left. Some of the honors books were also pretty popular.. I have noticed and learned a lot going through the medalists, so I have thought about going through the honors books as well. The problem is that some of the medalists have been so badly written (even with good art) and so racist that I can't quite summon the enthusiasm for it.

I wrote once about a list of various awards and organizations promoting diverse books. I have explored some of those resources, but did not come close to finishing, so I think I will be turning my attention there again.

There are still about 16 post 2016 election books, and 8 economics books plus a movie.

It is all still being worked on.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/01/national-hispanic-heritage-month-2019.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/01/national-hispanic-heritage-month-2019_14.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/01/national-hispanic-heritage-month-2019_15.html

Review retrospective: Bands 501 - 600, 2018

This was my last full 100 reviews. I was definitely getting more tired, and I had technical issues, but I nonetheless managed to mostly get two reviews a week and to listen to lots of new bands. 

Looking over the names, one of the first memories that popped up was how much I hated Stever. That hatred means more to me now.

As I was trying to incorporate more diverse artists, using key months as a guideline, I did focus on some women artists for the last two weeks of March, Women's History Month. Two of them were great, and had come from recommendations through a feminist web community that I really liked. The daily songs will start and end with them. Another was not terrible, and then there was Stever.

It was not merely that I didn't like her music; I didn't, but that wasn't really the problem. 

It was not even completely that she was trying to do great things without apparently having much of a clue or realizing that a clue was lacking. That would merely be annoying.

No, it was really the way she took her inspiration from autism -- without studying autism -- so it could just be her metaphor of how she thought things should be.

There are real people who have autism. There is lots of bad information out there, that often corresponds with abusive treatment of real people.

I bet Stever loves Sia.

It is perhaps important to note that I was starting to become better versed in ableism at this time. I started caring deeply about racism and sexism fairly early. It took me longer to get there on homophobia and transphobia, and longer still on ableism. 

That doesn't mean it was previously okay with me, or that I would not have responded to blatant discrimination. For me, it was just a matter of learning more and listening to more voices. It was learning more about the kind of harm that happens, and how and why.

If I had reviewed Stever in 2014, I still wouldn't have liked her, but her name wouldn't still make me mad. I would just shrug.

Therefore, perhaps it makes sense that for those other two artists that were great, well, the songs have very progressive themes, let's say. Also, something I have learned, and I think I got there around 2018, is that you can't fight bigotry while still holding on to some. It just doesn't work.

I should mention it was not convenient that I was becoming so much more radically aware while my life was falling apart, but really, there is no way for either of those things to be convenient. In some ways, my life falling apart did highlight a lot of inequities, but that was more 2019.

I will say that when I was physically assaulted at a concert that I really needed for respite, I was completely aware of the socio-political roots of that specific interaction, but it didn't help. 

Daily songs:

“Fight Like A Girl” by Emilie Autumn -- Electrifying. That was my first reaction. There is also a version where the song is combined with Rowan Farrow's reporting that also works well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvOXuZwOEvM

“Song That Needs to be Sung” by Songs That Need to Be Sung -- It was never clear if this was supposed to be one band or many bands working together. They clearly wanted to have a channel of protest music, and they got two songs. I get why they wanted it though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I8HkL5GpmQ

“These Train Tracks” by The Alpacas -- I appreciated the emphasis on coming together and reconciliation via nature and for the purpose of growth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYv5kws2wd0

“Bang the Lid” by Delta Deep -- I love the guitars and rhythm on this. It's not always deep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zoet081rbsY

“Believe” by Palaceburn -- I felt like I should have known about the band sooner. Very powerful. Glad I found them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ORFuNGANaE

“Superficial” by Sharp/Shock -- I started listening to them in advance of the concert, and really liked them. Somehow it is just a relief that it didn't ruin my liking them, because I still like Alkaline Trio, but what happened is always at the back of my mind with them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVgk2XAScxg

“Antipatriarca” by Ana Tijoux -- Theoretically, I could choose this for the title alone, but there is more to it than that. Rhythmically great, but great message.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoKoj8bFg2E

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/03/band-review-stever.html

https://www.newsweek.com/music-sia-movie-autism-controversy-maddie-ziegler-1569289 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/10/concert-review-alkaline-trio.html

Different potential directions

I really need to start writing about things other than school board elections, despite their continued importance.

These past two weeks have reminded me of many political and social issues, their connections to each other, and how the pandemic changed many things but not everything. It would make sense to write more on those topics.

The Sunday blog got hijacked by the school board elections too, but it had been working on individual paths for fighting white supremacy. (White supremacy trying to take over school boards was very legitimately related.) I know I will be picking up on that again.

Prior to switching to election coverage, I was writing about my own personal healing and growth. There is more to write there. It would make sense to get back to that.

I am also getting closer to the conclusion of the retrospective of my music reviews. That might be a reason to get back to doing new reviews. That is especially tantalizing in that two artists that I have intended to review will be performing soon. 

Jake Shimabukuro will be doing a live stream next week, though watching it would require registering for AARP; I am not sure that I want to see him enough for that. In addition, Redlight Romeos have a show in a month, in person but with restrictions. I haven't seen live music since early March 2020. It's tempting.

That reminds me that I have not kept up with my various reading months, though I have tracked the books I have read. Perhaps it is a good idea to close out May with some focus on Asian American heritage.

Of course, I am still in transition. I don't know what my new job will be, or how much time it will allow for listening to music, or how much it will take out of me mentally. I needed this recovery phase, but I want out of it now.

Getting back to writing about personal growth may be the fastest path to that.

Without writing more, it seems that self-care will be my final frontier, and that a lot of that will be focusing on rest, and planning for adequate sleep. 

Accidentally sleeping in is too stressful to be self-care, and not helpful when you have a job to get to.

I know tomorrow will be the retrospective for bands 501 through 600. Beyond that, I am not sure.

School Board Elections: Results

I have spent most of my day on hold (not related to this), so just a short update.

I did find an article about how weird this year has been, election-wise. I think it is missing a lot, but it is something:

https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2021/04/the-strangest-election-in-america-right-now-is-this-portland-school-board-race

Nonetheless, the Portland School District candidate who was known for promoting QAnon stories, Margo Logan, lost by a large margin. That seems worth celebrating. 

One of the pro-bigotry candidates did win in Roseburg for sure, and it looks like one for the Portland Community College Board too.

It is impossible to track it all. However, the better candidates swept Beaverton School District. I do feel good about that.

Hillsboro currently shows as 2 and 2, with margins so close that I imagine there will have to be a recount. 

One thing the PDXMonthly article pointed out was that this past time period, between the pandemic and Trump presidency and attempts to continue that presidency despite the will of the majority of the votes has really tired people out. It has also made people of color more wary to come forward.

I understand that completely, but the bigots appear to be indefatigable. They will keep putting more candidates forward, and continue spreading lies.

That means everyone else needs to step up.

We need to understand our own issues with racism, sexism, and homophobia, but also ableism and every other way that some try to exert power over others.

We need to step in when abuse is being directed against people of color.

We need to support good candidates. Sometimes that may mean being candidates.

I cannot adequately express how tired I am all the time. I would really rather not have to think about this. 

Because I care about people, I have to think about it anyway, but if we all do it together, maybe it won't be so bad.

School Board Elections: At the deadline

The deadline for ballots is today at 5:00 PM. Realistically, most people have already voted and turned in their ballots. I will still say it one more time:

For Beaverton School District, please vote for Susan Greenberg, Karen Pérez-Da Silva, Sunita Garg, and either LeeAnn Larsen or Ugonna Enyinnaya.
For Hillsboro School District, please vote for Erika Lopez, Mark Watson, Nancy Thomas, and Jaci Spross. Here are some personal thoughts on this election day. Obviously, I have taken this election to heart.  I would like to think that tomorrow will show that the not aggressively racist candidates won, bringing a sense of relief. That is not really a possibility.  That is not a sense of doom about these specific candidates, because it is so much bigger than two school districts. I know that other nearby school districts also have candidates running on the same platform, but I have not been able to keep track. Another person had posted information for fifteen districts, but it is not clear if they had complete candidates in every district. I also know that there are more districts, and other states, and a level of organization that we do not have.
There are two specific problems there, beyond people who are not actively malicious forgetting to expect it of others.
One is the weakening of the press, where there are fewer resources for local issues, and possibly less interest in covering them. When a Trump booster is traveling to multiple states teaching followers how to win local elections, it goes beyond a local story. Someone still has to notice and track it down and have the support of editors. There are several weak points there, and more than one issue influencing that, though there are some important economic issues. 
I am proud of the writing I did, but my resources are limited, as is my reader base. I would have loved to have been able to link to well-written news articles about what was going on, and that gave a better idea of how far it was spreading. 
The lack of press coverage was not nearly as disappointing as seeing the bigotry be welcomed with open arms by members of my church. Trying to reach out -- even to people I know -- was so ineffective as to be heartbreaking in its scope. What is wrong with my people? Primarily whiteness, insulated by privilege, and fragile to cracks in their insulation.
I mean, I do know the answer, but I hate it.  Hopes for this election needed to reside not in appealing to the kindness and goodness of those who claim to follow Christ, but in hoping that other people can be mobilized to protect queer kids. I will be horrified if that did not work out, but even if the election goes better than expected, the disappointment in church members has cut deep.
There is some satisfaction in feeling like I did what I could. I have acted with integrity and been true to my values.  I clearly need to be better connected if I want to really do good. At this transitional point in my life, that requires some thought. 
 Moving forward, for well-meaning white liberals, we need to do better. We need to be more organized. We need to deal with our own racism, and make looking at systemic and structural racism a normal part of conversation. (Critical Race Theory can help with that, which is why they hate it so much. Don't forget.)
 We may all need to spend the next few years fighting school boards, and bringing in state and federal government and the ACLU if necessary.  Those are things that can be done. You can fight elected officials if you need to, but it is so much better to at least have elected those who intend to do good. There are enough obstacles with budgets and habits getting in the way. 
We don't need recidivists.

School Board Elections: Still lying

There has been one other common talking point among the anti-Critical Race Theory, anti-sex education, "Get those kids back in school no matter what!" candidates:

I keep seeing references to Oregon having the worst schools; we don't.

Granted, a ranking a 37 is nothing to brag about, but most of the schools below us (except for Nevada) are in the South. Moving to a more racist, sexist, ignorant curriculum seems unlikely to move us up in the rankings.

Also, in the most recent reports, Oregon was among the most improved states. If we are heading in a good direction, how do we know that these candidates won't disrupt that?

Beyond that, it can become a very complex subject. Even if we agree on what counts as a "good" education, there can be a lot of room for disagreement on how to deliver it and how to measure that delivery. Bush himself might not defend "No Child Left Behind" now.

I was very interested in a Twitter thread a while back, expressing that where we are in our knowledge of public education is equivalent to where astronomy was in the time of Ptolemy. It is a relatively recent thing to have public schools where any child can get an education and is expected to have an education.

We don't necessarily know the best way of doing it. That's worth taking some time to think about.

A fairly recent trend was to gear everything toward what will make children grow into good workers, but that ignores how quickly technology changes. Teaching them how to learn, and how to be healthy and how to spot disingenuous rhetoric might be more valuable.

What did you learn in schools? What has retained its value? What do you wish you had learned, but didn't?

Remember, for a long time the lesson of public schools was that Black people weren't worth as much, based on school funding. Then the attempt to correct that sent a lot of white people to private schools and charter schools, or at least neighborhoods at a significant distance from any communities of color. That resulted in a need to fight hard against busing.

There is a reasonable discussion to be had on what "good" schools should be, and how we will know when we have them.

But here should be no surprises that some people will still go hard for racism, or that they get offended when you point that out.

Besides, while some candidates are trying to use coded language and vague answers to avoid admitting it, we know what they want:

Children should not know anything about sex that their parents don't tell them (technically not possible, regardless of school policy), including knowing how to get help in case of sexual abuse.There should be no affirmation or validity for anything but straight, cis, students.The students we affirm should also be white.But we need these wonderful white kids out of our houses during weekdays, even if it spreads disease.We must not have any discussion that leads to understanding the root causes of these ideas.
This is not the future that our students deserve.
 
For Beaverton School District, please vote for Susan Greenberg, Karen Pérez-Da Silva, and Sunita Garg, and either LeeAnn Larsen or Ugonna Enyinnaya. (Some voters really resent not having a suitably racist candidate for Zone 5.)

For Hillsboro School District, please vote for Erika Lopez, Mark Watson, Nancy Thomas, and Jaci Spross.

Ballots are due May 18th. There's not much time.

Review Retrospective: Stevie Wonder

I first reviewed Stevie Wonder in February 2017. He was among the artists reviewed for Black History Month that year:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/02/band-review-stevie-wonder.html

Wonder was definitely releasing songs during my youth, though he'd had a long career before that. Even now a lot of the songs that I respond to most are from about 1985 to 1995, but an important part of listening to everything was finding out how much more there was.

In that first review, I mentioned about twenty songs. I knew I would have to do more.

The next step was spotlighting him with the daily songs. Starting with "Happy Birthday" on Martin Luther King Day 2019, I gave him all of the slots through Valentine's Day, for a total of of 25 songs.

I knew that eventually I would need to listen more, and started to realize that what I really needed was a playlist. That way I could easily periodically refresh my memory on how many songs I liked, and which.

So, even though he has had many song of the day, it was clear that he needed his own post on the retrospective.

Getting here was a lengthy process. I had listened to the whole catalog -- or at least thought I had -- back in 2017. When I went back to do it again, I started with The Complete Stevie Wonder, over 39 hours, and containing 579 songs.

I was sure that I had not heard some of it before, especially some of the live tracks. What I remember most was that I had no memories of "Tomorrow Robins Will Sing", even though I had definitely listened to that album. Maybe I just needed it more later. I played it on election day 2020, with hope.

Then I went through the studio albums again, taking notes. This week I have been going through the notes.

One thing I find is that there are songs that I want to highlight that are not necessarily my favorite, but I still feel their importance. Maybe I don't even want them in the playlist, but I want to remember they exist, because there will be situations that they fit. Perhaps listening to all of Stevie Wonder every few years is just a necessity for me.

Listening this round built on to the earlier review, expanding my understanding from before. 

It struck me in 2017 that "Sir Duke" was a tribute that came after death prevented them from collaborating. That should feel mournful, but it is such a joyful song. Putting that with "Happy Birthday" for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., maybe a part of Stevie Wonder's genius is to face a loss and be able to celebrate what was gained from that presence. Sometimes I have a hard time not focusing on the loss, so I can learn from that.

Another thought was that once again listening to "Don't Drive Drunk", that is a weird song and feels like completely the wrong tone. I wondered if it were a misfire, but it is on the soundtrack to The Woman in Red, which I suspect would be a very annoying movie. Is the song a misfire if the things that are weird about it work with the movie it was supposed to?

I probably should watch at least one of the movies he composed for, to better appreciate that aspect. 

The daily songs for this week will not include a lot of my favorite songs, but they have already been songs of the day, in 2017 and 2019, and it felt right to focus on some of his message songs.

Daily songs:

”Happy Birthday” by Stevie Wonder -- It would make so much sense to pair this with "Sir Duke", but it also makes sense to pair it with these historical songs, even though the next one was not yet about history when it came out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcVZfJO01NI

“It's Wrong (Apartheid)” by Stevie Wonder -- Released in 1985, nine years before it would end, Wonder was also arrested that year for protesting at the South African embassy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbG3zIs4Q4E

“Black Man” by Stevie Wonder -- There are still so many people who will try and erase history, and then complain about history being erased.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCX2o7zOzg8

Then, there is kind of a shift from the past to the future, with songs focusing on hope and love. But not "Positivity"; I thought that might be over the top.

“Take Up A Course In Happiness” by Stevie Wonder -- I didn't think this one was going to stick, but it kept coming back to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doUSykutK1w

“Tomorrow Robins Will Sing” by Stevie Wonder, featuring Edley Shine -- Using it for an election again, this time for local school boards. Speaking of people who want to erase history!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzgP0xlycz0

“Conversation Peace” by Stevie Wonder -- Preparation for war does not bring peace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNzCj5ZiU14

“A Time To Love” by Stevie Wonder featuring India.Arie -- Is it time yet? Are we ready for this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WtI2kcywM4