AL Supreme Court Claims They're Just Doing What God Wants & Historians Rank Donald Trump as Worst U.S. President--Again
Idaho's OBGYNs Leaving State, Louisiana's Sham Tough-on-Crime Laws, Beyoncé Tops Country Music Charts, Thelonious Monk Plays "Don't Blame Me"
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: A quote about family gets me ruminating on how the pull of family can be both a blessing and a curse. It can help us orbit blissfully—or limp along miserably.
Alabama’s supreme court ruled embryos are ‘extrauterine children’. IVF patients are worried: Their decision to define frozen embryos as children is intellectually and legally baffling. The result is to halt IVF treatments for parents trying to have children.
Alabama justice who ruled embryos are people says American law should be rooted in the Bible: When a state supreme court justice feels comfortable publicly admitting to abandoning separation of Church and State, we should all be worried. He thinks the signs are there that the country is ready to accept this idea as policy. Is he right?
Report shows dramatic exodus of Idaho OBGYNs since the repeal of Roe v. Wade: The real-life consequences of the right’s war on women is to leave them without healthcare and more vulnerable to maternal illness and death.
Historians Rank Donald Trump as Worst U.S. President Again, with Biden in 14th Place: Is anyone surprised? What is revealed, though, is the country is divided between those who ignore reason to advance an agenda that can’t be supported by logic or facts and those who use critical thinking to reach opinions.
‘Unconscionable’ criminal justice bills could fuel soaring incarceration in Louisiana: The governor wants to promote his “tough on crime” policies even though there is no evidence they will reduce crime and plenty that they will cost the state money and justice.
UPDATE: Beyoncé becomes the first Black woman to top Billboard’s Country Songs chart with Texas Hold ‘Em: Of course, she did—despite some country stations initially refusing to play her songs.
Kareem’s Video Break: This amazing point in pickleball is why we love sports so much. It pushes people to do more than they think is possible to do.
Thelonious Monk Plays “Don’t Blame Me”: A brilliant man and his piano create a jazz classic.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Family is gravity.
Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone
When I came across this line from the narrator in Stevenson’s wonderfully clever mystery novel, I had to stop reading. The simple profundity of the three words startled me. The phrase “family is gravity” resonates with several meanings and repercussions.
First, “gravity” has two meanings. It can be the powerful pull of the Earth’s mass that keeps us all adhering to the ground. So, too, can family exert a powerful pull that holds family members all tightly bound together through endless cycles of holiday dinners and FaceTime phone calls. Through all the trials and tribulations of life, family can keep us grounded.
Second, “gravity” also means somber or alarming, such as, “We have to face the gravity of the situation.” In that way, family is gravity, not because it pulls us toward it, but because it makes us vulnerable. That vulnerability can be because we love family so much that anything bad that happens to them—sickness, disaster, death—affects us so deeply it staggers our own lives.
Members of relatively happy and supportive families may face the usual petty conflicts that come with such closeness, but overall they are enriched and uplifted by their families. Gravity keeps them together—and they thrive because of it.
However, the relentless pull of gravity can also cause us to crash. The fact that family is gravity doesn’t mean we are incapable of leaving the pull of that gravity when it is harmful. Literature is filled with authors struggling to resolve their family issues through art: Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse,” and Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz.” Click on the links and you’ll see what I mean.
Over the years, I’ve heard countless stories of the evil committed by families to their own members, yet who still expect to be pardoned for their inexcusable behavior by playing the “But we’re family” card: “Family is everything!” “Blood is thicker than water.” Those meaningless phrases are part of the gravity meant to pull people in through the force of guilt rather than love. Gravity can ground, but it can also imprison. Parents who disown their children due to religious differences or because the child is gay are despicable. They can only love children who agree to be mini-me’s of the parents, cloned extensions without their own thoughts, beliefs, or dreams.
Families have to earn the love of their members, not just expect that is the default setting of every offspring. When that love isn’t earned, isn’t maintained, isn’t freely given, the person has to escape the pull of that dying planet and find a healthier environment. Sometimes one needs to orbit the planet a while before returning home with a new appreciation for that gravity.
Family is gravity. Though my children are scattered, I feel the tender tentacles of their love that attach me to them. I am Houston ground control, ready to respond when I hear the call: “Dad, we have a problem.”