#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

White water lily flower, floating on wetlands

Dear George,

This morning I walked with my daughters into the meadow under some clouds. We passed the wild pink roses, amazingly fragrant, and I showed them to the girls and we smelled them sweet. Later, I listened to the New York Times Daily Podcast, “The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning” by Claudia Rankine, and this quote stood out to me:

If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement made demands that altered the course of American lives and backed up those demands with the willingness to give up your life in service of your civil rights, with Black Lives Matter, a more internalized change is being asked for: recognition.

Your life continues to be memorialized around the world. The world, George. One thing that needs to be transformed: the white imagination:

This:

Our deaths inside a system of racism existed before we were born. The legacy of black bodies as property and subsequently three-fifths human continues to pollute the white imagination. To inhabit our citizenry fully, we have to not only understand this, but also grasp it. 

~ Claudia Rankine

Wild rose, pink bud

Milkweed buds

Yellow Goatsbeard blossom, closed

Pink wild rose blossom, yellow center