Beka > Recent Status Updates

"I imagine you got a picture in your head of what witches is. Like from those movies you watch. Evil, ugly, scary things...

Well, it ain't like that. It ain't excitin'. It's hard, lonely work. Witches don't fit into the roles we're *supposed* to. So we're always on the outside.

And so, witches got made into scary things to be feared. To excuse the cruel things done to us. That's what scared folks did. Still do."

"Queerness has been about difference, about not being 'normal,' about exploding the very idea of 'normal,' of reading texts, people, and experiences more subtly, flexibly, and creatively."

"If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live with dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up."
-Adrienne Rich

"Campaigns to attract immigrants + settlers are fully covered from different perspectives + add new info + insight to the motivating forces of thr transatlantic exodus.

The human drama of the emigration is emphasized, as is the individual challenge faced by people who during the sailing ship era sought a better life away from the homeland."

"They are interludes, too,

for drumbeats and throaty covers
Of well-loved tunes put on
By some local boys' gas station

Banjo and hot-rocket guitar,
A strong woman that sings
The seasons over a hand drum."

"Where do songs go when it is dark?
What names moved through these trees, the soft now-grass
The underbellies of the leaves."

This book is engaging as all get out, both writing and narration-wise.

"To give their children a chance at a better education, they switched to speaking only English at home, which was a difficult sacrifice. To shed the language that your brain naturally thinks and dreams in requires Herculean effort."

"I am interested in America," he said. "I do not see how American can go ahead if part of its people are left behind." - Julius Rosenwald, 1856

"The more pleasure you get from learning, the less it matters whether the learning is hard."

"Curiosity, at its core, is an urge to close a gap in your knowledge. Mind the gap, and you'll fuel your curiosity, which in turn will fuel you."

"Our brains have a function called Need For Closure. It prompts our search and latching on to over-simple answers to problems.

Asking yourself 'what am I missing?' Is the first step; it's that doorstop against cognitive closure that comes too early -- that hasn't gotten close enough to know enough at all."

"You can't know what you aren't close to."

"You can't know what you aren't close to.:

"Women are made to fly and soar, she wrote, not to creep and crawl."