Thought I’d offer some levity from my usual melancholy hot takes… Thoughts are fleeting, however, and the state of the world has only amplified my anxiety.

I did make it a priority to read and write more over the past week.

I found a new favorite app to track my reading progress and keep track of books I’ve read and want to read called — The Storygraph (think Goodreads without sending billionaires in the midst of a midlife crisis to space). Hey, I found some levity, albeit brief. Most of the books I want to read are dark or intense.

I'm seeking something lighthearted to shield my mind from the post-election news cycle…

I’m currently more than halfway through…

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

It's not exactly a laugh riot, but more of an enjoyable distraction. Here’s the story description as found on Storygraph…

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

Reading about the community in McBride's Chicken Hill reminded me of a poem my Dad wrote about his childhood on Chicago's south side.

4855 & Other Jive

Came to in a do
crossed and recrossed primary paths
John Farren was the block, but
DuSable wasn’t my destiny.
Corpus Christi around the corner,
death and destruction the Christian way.

Regal was a theater.

47th and Southpark, familiar smells of
popcorn, hotdogs, and lots of sweaty
bodies on a summer day.
Lost in Woolworth’s, lost in the
world.

Corner playground, sanctuary from sin
the “L” at its back carrying
a deafening din.
Street fights, freedom flights,
rabid dogs, a creeping
fog. Gangways and gangwars, playing
hide and seek with tomorrow’s tragedy.
Old men standing in place on a forgotten
corner, pulling the time of their lives
through the neck of a gin bottle.

Set your pace,
run in place
4855 a day of grace,
moved away, what’s
the use, no matter
how hard — can’t shake
that noose.
4855 I lived to sin.
4855 I’d do it agin,
4855 I’ve no regrets
I lived on 4855 Calumet.
— C.R. Giles

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