Real Answers (Sunday Summary)

It’s the first Sunday of Pride Month. There are parades and celebrations taking place in many places. Philadelphia is holding their big Pride celebration this weekend, with a parade, festival and other events. And yet they’re the latest city to be dealing with a mass shooting, too, after fourteen people were shot last night on South Street. Last Sunday we talked about the real questions. What about the real answers? Truly, there are no easy answers. But that’s part of what we do here–we look for the answers. For ourselves. To share with you. To help us all find our place. It’s that search for answers that helps inspire us. Helps us keep looking ahead. Helps us to hold on to hope. We may not find those answers, but sometimes the other things we find on the journey are just as valuable. Perhaps you’ll find some of that in the writing we’ve shared this week.

Monday

“But this isn’t just a story about grief and fear. It’s also a story about how a community and a country came together to give Orlando the support we needed.”

On Monday, we continued to watch the news from Uvalde, Texas, and simultaneously prepared for Pride Month. So in the spirit of both themes, we shared a piece Erika wrote last year reflecting on five years since the massacre at Pulse in Orlando. Heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time, Erika looks at what’s changed, what has stayed the same and holding on for the future.

When this sort of event happens, people ask “why?” But it’s a kind of pessimism to imagine that there could be meaning in so much death and destruction. The real questions and real answers come when we grieve for what we lost and fight to protect what we still have.

Tuesday

“How can I keep holding onto what the Talmud says “The world survives on the breath of schoolchildren,” when all around me the people with the actual power to make change, keep failing those children and every person who loves and cares about them?”

On Tuesday we shared a piece from Erika about the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. As we all try to work through anger, fear and frustration, and as try to keep up with the everchanging news we know there are some real answers that seem to be right in front of us. Why is it that our elected officials are avoiding them?

Wednesday

“She has this air of other-worldliness that is both enviable and annoying to me. When I worked as a teaching assistant for her for the creative writing course, I witnessed students mesmerized by her words; I also witnessed her editing students’ creative pieces like no other”

Wednesday brought us the third entry in Huiwen Shi’s “A Good Teacher is Hard to find” series. This month she talks about Page, her thesis advisor. As a doctoral student, there are, of course, many questions that come up as you conduct your research. And a good advisor, a vital resource for answers. As a PhD student, learning to find unique answers to your big questions is a focus of what you’re doing, and the guidance of great teachers lay the foundation for the questions and answers asked by the next generation and for the teachers who will pass on what they know.

Wednesday Bonus Content

“I didn’t know any queer adults. 

Except that’s not really true.

I didn’t know that I knew queer adults. But they were there. “

To celebrate the first day of Pride Month, as bonus content on Wednesday, we brought you Erika’s piece, “Why We Need to Flaunt It” again. Erika talks about what it really means when a person says they don’t like when queer people “flaunt it.” And why it’s so important for queer people to be visible. We look forward to more celebrations during Pride Month and we hope you are celebrating your whole, authentic self. Part of being the real you is asking yourself the real question and being willing to listen to the answers.

Saturday

“Little Cat, for one, loves a good riot. But Little Cat seems to have run away again. It’ll be okay. Every time he does, he comes back with stories about going to the Big City (which, for him, is Orlando) and visiting a cathouse.”

How do you write good prose and still depict the messiness that is a part of history? Especially when so much of that affects historically marginalized communities? Writing elegant prose is important, but so is telling the whole story. The questions of history are messy. And, while it’s tempting to provide answers that tie everything up in a neat little bow, the real answers are necessarily just as messy as the questions. Read more and share your thoughts with Big Cat and Little Cat in our Caturday post.

Looking Ahead

We know you’ve missed Adam’s wisdom lately, and we expect he’ll be back on your screen this week. There’s more coming about Pride Month and disability, too. There might even be some new writing this week from someone whose work we haven’t brought you before.

We hope you have a good week. That you find your answers and ask your questions. And that you keep dancing.

“Dance until your bones clatter. What a prize
you are. What a lucky sack of stars.”
-Gabrielle Calvocoressi “At Last the New Arriving”