My 2022 Reading Stacks #2

Kate Mulgrew Memoirs!

Our year-long personal Trek-fandom revival keeps on rollin’.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife Anne or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place.

I’ve previously written why I don’t do eBooks. Perhaps someday I’ll also explain why these capsules are exclusive to MCC and not shared on Amazon, Goodreads, or other sites where their authors might prefer I’d share them. In the meantime, here’s me and my reading results…

Continue reading

Our 2019 Road Trip, Part 15: A History of Nonviolence

King crypt.

The crypt of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 my wife Anne and I have taken a trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. My son tagged along from 2003 until 2013 when he ventured off to college. We’ve taken two trips by airplane, but are much happier when we’re the ones behind the wheel — charting our own course, making unplanned stops anytime we want, availing ourselves of slightly better meal options, and keeping or ruining our own schedule as dictated by circumstances or whims. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

For years we’ve been telling friends in other states that we’d one day do Atlanta’s Dragon Con, one of the largest conventions in America that isn’t in California or New York. We’d been in Atlanta, but we hadn’t really done Atlanta. Hence this year’s vacation, in which we aimed for a double proficiency in Atlanta tourism and over-the-top Dragon Con goodness. Before we went to D*C, there was the road trip to get there, and the good times to be had before the great times at the big show.

We visited the National Center for Civil and Human Rights the day before. We traveled to key locations in Birmingham and Montgomery on our 2015 vacation. We even checked out an African-American history museum in Baltimore in 2017. In light of our past experiences, we’d be unfathomably remiss if we visited Atlanta without paying respects to hometown hero and civil rights legend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Continue reading

Our 2019 Road Trip, Part 10: Know Your Rights

MLK art!

We’re in Atlanta and it’s a civil rights museum. The list of obvious candidates for the lead photo position was pretty narrow.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 my wife Anne and I have taken a trip to a different part of the United States and visited attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home in Indianapolis. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. My son tagged along from 2003 until 2013 when he ventured off to college. We’ve taken two trips by airplane, but are much happier when we’re the ones behind the wheel — charting our own course, making unplanned stops anytime we want, availing ourselves of slightly better meal options, and keeping or ruining our own schedule as dictated by circumstances or whims. We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

For years we’ve been telling friends in other states that we’d one day do Atlanta’s Dragon Con, one of the largest conventions in America that isn’t in California or New York. We’d been in Atlanta, but we hadn’t really done Atlanta. Hence this year’s vacation, in which we aimed for a double proficiency in Atlanta tourism and over-the-top Dragon Con goodness. Before we went to D*C, there was the road trip to get there, and the good times to be had before the great times at the big show.

A couple hundred feet north of The World of Coca-Cola was the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. The museum opened in June 2014, the realization of an idea 13 years in the making, built on land donated by the Coca-Cola Company. The permanent exhibits divide into three categories that flow from one to the other as you progress through its halls — the story of Atlanta’s own Martin Luther King Jr. segues into the history of American civil rights, which in turn broadens in scope on the top floor into an exploration of international human rights as they’re interpreted and/or denied today.

The mission statement from their website: “Our purpose is to create a safe space for visitors to explore the fundamental rights of all human beings so that they leave inspired and empowered to join the ongoing dialogue about human rights in their communities.” It’s no mere, perfunctory school field trip destination for Black History Month.

Continue reading

Our 2018 Road Trip, Part 10: Tea Time for Activists

Let's Have Tea!

She fought for women. He fought for blacks. Together, they fight crime!

Our tour of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House wasn’t the only highlight of our Rochester detour. Across the street sits another tribute to the titular champion of women’s voting rights. Alongside her is a great man, a close friend of hers, and a well-known name in other circles then and now: the great abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass.

Continue reading

2015 Road Trip Photos #41: Black History on Montgomery Streets

Rosa Parks Stop.

A marker for the most life-changing bus stop in America.

Like our stroll around Birmingham on the morning of Day Two, we spent the morning of Day Six walking up and down the much wider, more gleaming, less shaded streets of Montgomery, Alabama. I’m terrible about remembering to check maps for scale and was unprepared for the fact that the state capital’s city blocks were two or three times larger than those of Birmingham’s comparatively claustrophobic downtown. Our walk was consequently longer and more draining, but no less dotted by indelible moments in state and national history.

Continue reading

2015 Road Trip Photos #7: Spirits of the Revolution

Four Spirits.

The doves are symbolic, but the scene is otherwise as remembered from September 15, 1963, a quiet, graceful Sunday morning at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church where kids were suiting up for their next choir performance to celebrate another day of joy with thanks to the Lord.

At 10:22 a.m. an explosion of dynamite sticks and unconscionable racist rage left four little girls murdered, two dozen or more injured, and a gaping wound in the side of the Lord’s house.

If you’ve seen Ava DuVernay’s powerful Best Picture nominee Selma, you know when and how it begins. On this very block in Birmingham, across the corner from Kelly Ingram Park, is exactly where too much began that should never have happened.

Continue reading

2015 Road Trip Photos #6: Faces of the Revolution

MLK!

During our sobering Sunday morning walk through Ingram Park, we saw small circles of chatting friends sharing the central commons area, while homeless stragglers reserved an errant bench here, inspected yesterday’s discarded leftovers there. All of us were equally surrounded by statues honoring those who fifty years ago walked, gathered, and fought on this very block for a better world. The reminders are impossible to ignore, but it’s up to each of us to heed them.

Continue reading

2015 Road Trip Photos #5: Signs of the Revolution

Freedom Walk!

Day Two, early Sunday morning in Alabama: we arrived at our first stop in the heart of Birmingham, a few hours before most of the city would wake up, some fifty years after our country began to wake up.

The four-acre Kelly Ingram Park is an idyllic public gathering spot, a touch of verdant life in a graying downtown, and a momentous landmark of tumultuous times. In the 1960s the stone walkways beneath our feet once hosted impassioned demonstrations against oppression, segregation, and various acts of racism both institutional and internal. Today various signs and statues around the park serve as reminders of what it was like to walk in their footsteps and stand where they took a stand.

Continue reading