Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Review a Book in Haiku Form (#VerseLove26). Well, I've Been Reading Kendi...Almost Done. Phew...How Is It Only Mittwoch

Finished another graduate class last night (only two more to go) and became enthralled with looking at photos a professional photographer took at last week's Whitman events with Dr. Karen Karbiener. The allergy season has wiped out many a student, but we're still pushing onward. It looks warm, but it remains cold.

Yesterday's prompt was to reflect poetically in haiku form over a book we're reading and I'm almost done with Chain of Ideas by Ibram X. Kendi. He continues to be one of the sharpest, most efficient scholars of our times, citing research like no other as he makes a case for international phenomenon (of where we are right now). The age of authoritarianism has been woven into the fabric of democracies from their beginning, and the reckoning is political ping pong which, well, is a stance of being pro-humanity, or being pro-the-power-of-a few. For me, it's about having the freedom to educate all youth about history and the stories that get told, but also are sidelined to benefit the narrator. 

Kendi brings receipts. That is the scholarly brain. Online authorities bring opinions to protect the stories they've told themselves. They bring ignorance, privilege, half-baked ideologies, and conspiracies. Fascinating, actually. I'll be dead long before this age resolves itself for what it really tells about the human experiment. For now, I'm intrigued.  

While Reading Kendi 

b.r.crandall


ten links for our time

chaining ideas together

in a racist world:


flip the shit around

anti-anti-racism

make it about them


tell false histories

linked by self-preservation…

…ideologies…


rich men in board rooms

orchestrating bogus news,

claiming they’re oppressed. 


international

reversal of narratives -

core to bigger plans.


human animals

trapped by vast oligarchies,

a powerful design.


modern KKK

with great replacement theory

(swastika tea parties)


maskless truck convoys,

vaccine discriminations

speeding their white lies


ideas pulverized,

insurrections go free.

such democracy.


is it biology?

these authoritarians

claiming such power


a need to resist

these sheep-wolf dictatorships

reclaiming freedom


finding integrity…

our humanity, linked with

togetherness - the we.





Review a Book in Haiku Form (#VerseLove26). Well, I've Been Reading Kendi...Almost Done. Phew...How Is It Only Mittwoch

Finished another graduate class last night (only two more to go) and became enthralled with looking at photos a professional photographer to...