Lit City Blues

Day One: That's the thing about life. It goes on. Day Two: I was only ever convinced of one thing: someone was going to be very, very wrong. I just didn't expect to be this wrong. There's no fluke here. No antiquated bullshit like the electoral college to hang your hat on. This was a comprehensive thumpin' and people voted for this. It's nice on the one hand, because living in Iowa I've genuinely thought that people had lost their damn minds in this state for a few years now and now it turns out we weren't crazy, we were just early . I hated the black despair of Tuesday night. It took me most of Wednesday to drag myself out of it, but I did. I don't think politics or elections should impact my mental health that much so I'm not going to let them do that anymore. This post will probably be my last piece of political commentary for the foreseeable future. I want to do other things with my brain. I want to read more books. Study more history. Write more

This book has been lurking on my shelves for years and I've taken a few runs at it now and again but I finally finished it. I've been thinking about this and I can't remember when I purchased this book, but if I could pinpoint a reason why, it was probably moving to Mankato for grad school. No, I didn't buy this for a class, but once I moved there, I decided to try and learn a little about my new place of residence and that's when I found out that the largest mass execution in US history took place in Mankato. That's when I found out about the Great Sioux Uprising that tore apart southern Minnesota in 1862 . I grew up, attended elementary school, high school, and four years of college about 200 miles away from where a lot of it happened and none of it ever came up in any history class I had ever taken, ever. For people of color in this country, that's probably not all that surprising- given how many people had to learn about the Greenwood Massacre thanks to