My 15 Year Blog Anniversary

15 years ago today, I published my very first blog post. 2008 was a peak year for blogging. Looking back, it seems like it might have been the high point just before its decline. For a few brief years, I had an audience here. Now, things are very different. The steepest decline in readership for me was in 2016, 4 years after Google Reader was terminated. 

People used to leave comments. Real people, not spam bots. Now things are weird. One recent example: getting a response to a very old blog post via a direct message on Instagram instead of a blog comment. 

I had hoped that blogging would lead to bigger things. I saw that happen for a lot of people right before I started, but it's never happened for me. Whatever that mysterious quality is that gets millions to like, subscribe, and follow, I don't have it and I've come to accept that about myself.

So why do I keep blogging? It's become a habit. That's part of it. It helps me remember the beautiful art and furniture I've seen. My posts are the first drafts of my books. Also, social media feels too small sometimes. I'm a multimedia person. I think Twitter is the second-best way for me to post text, images, and video together. The best way is blogging. Microblogging can only contain a fraction of my ideas. It's not expansive enough to express my ambivalence. Blogging also has the advantage of not being in imminent danger of getting taken over by an annoying billionaire. Besides that, it's easier to get my ideas out into the world this way as opposed to trying to get an op-ed published. 

All of these are reasons why I keep coming back here. I'm grateful for those of you who still read my blog 15 years later.

Book signing at the 2023 Black Women's Expo

On Sunday, August 6th, I'll be selling signed copies of my books at the 2023 Black Women's Expo at McCormick Place. Stop by Da Book Joint Literary Café from 2 - 4 p.m. if you want to pick up a paperback edition of A Bitter Pill to Swallow for the pre-pandemic price!

*Please remember to wear a mask!

Life and Death at the Field Museum

This past weekend, I had an opportunity to visit the Field Museum. My first stop was Death: Life's Greatest Mystery, which I heard about and felt compelled to see. 

 

Photography is forbidden in the exhibit, but I couldn't resist taking a picture of the quote above. It was one of many in this very thought-provoking collection. I found it very contemplative and respectful. It covers many aspects of death, from spiritual beliefs that surround it to cultural traditions from around the world. I noticed several children there with their parents. I think it would be a good way to introduce kids to the concept of mortality. Depending on the child's level of maturity, I could see it as appropriate for ages 8 and up. The exhibit closes August 27th.

Afterwards, I decided to take a look at an exhibit I'd been meaning to check out, Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories. 

The exhibit is an important reminder that Native American culture exists in the present, since it is so often depicted as existing only in the past. It features a wide range of stories from Indigenous people from all over the United States, with a special emphasis on the community here in Chicago. It also includes people of mixed Black and Native heritage. It breathes new life into the museum's ancient artifacts and supplements them with new contributions, including a humorous video clip from the popular TV show Reservation Dogs. 

I was surprised to see the museum acknowledge its role in the theft of priceless objects from Native people in writing, as in this plaque that I took a picture of:

What the curators chose to show was just as important as what they decided not to display.

Before I left, I felt like my visit would be incomplete without visiting the Africa exhibit. Built in 1993, the exhibit left a memorable impression on me when I went to see it for the first time as a teenager.

It's full of informative graphics that put a lot of things into perspective.

I don't argue with people on the Internet, but if you need something to shut the trolls up, here you go. Take that, Ron DeSantis!

I was glad to see that this is still here. This scroll is another artifact that I'll always remember from my first time seeing this exhibit. What an interesting cultural exchange between China and the African city-state of Malindi.

Also, as a designer, I had to stop and appreciate the beautiful ornamentation that surrounds these windows. 

Now let me tell you what I saw on the other side of the room when I turned around: The Middle Passage. I forgot that it just kind of sneaks up on you. While there are ample content warnings in the Death exhibit, the Africa exhibit doesn't have any such signage. I suppose someone could argue it was a deliberate curatorial experience, art imitating life, they might say. A swift, sudden, horrifying abduction from a familiar way of life to be mercilessly thrown into what poet Robert Hayden called "a voyage through death." But having begun my museum excursion contemplating death, I didn't feel like seeing more of it. The fittingly grim and haunting replica of a slave ship wrenched my heart and reduced me to tears the first time I ventured through it as a high school freshman and I wasn't in the mood to see it again on Saturday. One minute I'm admiring my ancestors' handiwork and the next I'm faced with a replica of the Door of No Return. Some jaded people about my age and older accuse younger generations of being coddled by trigger warnings, but I honestly see the benefit of including them for something like this. I've never been one to avoid slave narratives, but I have to be in the right mood and mindset to engage with them because my reaction is so visceral. I appreciate the museum showing me in its other exhibits how this one can be improved nearly 30 years later.