Disconnected Thoughts

So remember how last week I was like, "Probably my book will be available this weekend!" 

Womp-womp. Not so much.

Here's the thing: I'm working with a company helping me do cover design and page layout. I chose to do this because I want the end product to really look and feel polished and professional. After everything I put into the pages, I want it to not look crappy, you know? But that means that they send me something and I ask for a change and they make the change and then I approve the change and even the smallest changes can take a whole business day in terms of the back and forth email exchange. So it's just a whole process and everything takes so much longer than I think it will. I had to approve the interior pages, the e-book cover, and now the paperback cover. It's all coming together and I'm really excited, but I also want to make sure I'm not missing something that will have me kicking myself later.

(Although I think it was Jen Hatmaker who got Glennon Doyle to write a forward for her new book and then her publisher accidentally printed the whole first run of the book with NO FORWARD INCLUDED even though it said "foward by Glennon Doyle" on the cover and that is a true publishing disaster and yet Jen is doing just fine, so her story gives me hope.)

Anyway, let's just say the book continues to be forthcoming (AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, I SWEAR!) and I will keep you posted.

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Photo by Matthew Bornhorst on Unsplash

It's Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil apparently saw his shadow, which is not the news we need right now. When I told the girls that the groundhog predicted 6 more weeks of winter, Zuzu replied, "Well, I don't really trust that dude." 

I appreciate the health skepticism. The sun is shining today and that's helping my mood immensely.

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Meanwhile, I read this article about historians doing work on Alexander Hamilton and then I had so many thoughts about it that I wrote a multi-paragraph Facebook post and the comments were CIVIL and thoughtful and I didn't regret posting it, so there's a FB miracle for you. Here are my thoughts on this article.

Something I think about a lot is how to be a fan of things that are also partly terrible. And I don't just mean Emily in Paris (although, yes, that). There are things I really loved as a kid that no longer sit well with me. Some I think merit discussion, even though the shine has worn off (Little House on the Prairie books) and others I'll never read or watch again (Gone With the Wind is just too horrible, even though that scene of Scarlett and the Tartleton boys is a visual delight). It's harder and less pleasant to have a complicated and nuanced perspective--I loved GWTW as a kid until I realized how gross it is in its depiction of slavery. I read Chernow's book on Alexander Hamilton and I was definitely not alone in falling in love with Lin Manuel Miranda's musical. So now that historical documents show that Hamilton was not an abolitionist but an enslaver, does that change things? 

Yes. And no. Yes--Hamilton is not a hero. He was already a cheater and a liar though, so I've been on #teameliza from the start. LMM is still brilliant and the musical is still wonderful in other ways (but not perfect--it doesn't pass the Bechdel test, so that's important, too.) 

I guess my point is that it's sad and hard for be disappointed by the people (and movies and musicals) that we love. Sometimes that means avoiding them as we go forward. Other times it just means having a conversation about these important problems and not shying away from confronting them. (Game of Thrones is too rapey and I can't even begin to unpack Sex and the City here, but let's watch and analyze them because they are great TV even though they are problematic.) 

It's unpleasant to learn that the founding fathers so many of us were taught to revere (haha see what I did there?) were actually smaller, more flawed, and less moral than we thought. It would be better if this country were built on men who lived what they preached about morality and equality and liberty for all. But we own up to reality so we can improve on it. We acknowledge that George Washington, a great leader in many ways, also did the unforgivable in enslaving people and not freeing them even upon his death. We acknowledge that Hamilton was brilliant (and, apparently, quite good looking) and also he made choices that cannot be justified or excused--not just cheating on his wife, but, according to historical evidence, enslaving human beings.

We don't want our heroes to be flawed, but all the real ones are. We can't expect them to atone for their mistakes because they're dead, and maybe we give them a little grace for the context of time and space (not that much, though, because there were men in the 1700s and 1800s who fought against slavery and remained faithful to their wives... it's not THAT hard). 

It's important to reckon with the truth of our flawed history so we can make the future better. Historical footnotes don't mean everything Hamilton did was garbage. It means he was selfish and inconsistent and ego-driven. And who among us isn't? So maybe he didn't deserve the glorious musical LMM gave him, but what a gift that was to us and to theatre (a musical which, again, can be problematic and still awesome).

This is literally the longest thing I've ever written on FB so I'll just assume everyone has stopped reading by now and I'll say that we we shouldn't pretend not to see what's there, even if we honestly didn't notice it at first. We can appreciate imperfect art and we can acknowledge the gifts of imperfect men while also calling them out so that the whole story is told, including the names of individuals whom history has tried to erase. (Also you should read this article which made me think all these things first thing on a Monday morning.)

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Also I wrote about grief and yoga for Sharing Magazine and that article is up. 

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My to-do list is calling persistently, but I just wanted to drop a quick book update. Will tell you more as soon as there is more to tell. xoxo