Susan

“Due process, I said to myself. Amos was entitled to due process. For the first time, the words sounded in my head more like “bureaucratic process.” In any case to which I was appointed, it was my job to defend, the DA’s to prosecute, the judge’s to referee, and the jury’s to sort the facts. This system, in which I had been trained and in which I believed, provided justice only if all played their roles well. It wasn’t my role to jump the rails and determine right from wrong, guilty from innocent.”
― Rebecca Wright Stevens, Sisters of the Midnight Sun: A Murder in Arctic Alaska

“The story that results is often a disheartening one. Though the various parts of rural America differ in important ways, as a whole, they are weighed down by their struggles: resource economies where powerful interests extracted wealth and left the people who toiled to remove it with little or nothing to show for their decades of labor; manufacturing jobs that fled overseas; inadequate healthcare and physical infrastructure; limited opportunities that push talented young people to leave; and much more. And all this exists within a landscape of political emptiness in which a lack of real competition leaves Democrats believing there’s no point in trying to win rural votes and Republicans knowing they can win those votes without even trying—and give the people who supply them nothing in return. We”
― Tom Schaller, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy

“the Saint Jacques Hotel. Revolving doors led into a stark white lobby with an artificial fireplace that took up almost the entire length of one wall; on the other wall a concierge desk stretched forever. Janice asked the doorman where the business service center was and disappeared, heels clattering, down”
― Brendan Slocumb, The Violin Conspiracy

“He say to me but if I free you who will play for me at nite. I say to him I will play for you master Thomas sir. I wont leev you. I will play for you as a free man. He thot about that and he took out some papr and he rote out what he tol me was my freedom paprs and he gav me them with my fiddle. I never let them paprs out o my site. Them papr and my fiddle kept me alive. I beggd him on my hands and nees to let my momma be free too and she wood stay here and hep him. He tol me he coodnt do that. I went to tell momma that I was free. I tol her I was goin to find work after master Thomas past and that I was comin back for her to buy her freedom when I made enuff money from my playing. You no what my momma tol me? She tol me dont Never come back to this place. You go be free and dont you Never look back. Master Thomas died in his Bed. The Missus made me play that song he loved. I lef a few days later. The nex yeer I did come back to find momma but she was Gone. You no why I tol you all this and made you rite it down? Because Master Thomas was a teribl man. He did teribl things to my momma and to my brother and to many other slaves. Even tho he did all that I still lookt him in the eye and treetd him with respekt. No mattr how mad I was. No mattr how bad things got. I was always respektfl. Even when I didnt get no respekt. I dont never want you to forget that girl. I wont”
― Brendan Slocumb, The Violin Conspiracy