I blame my work computer

For reasons I don't understand, Blogger is not something I can access on my work computer (I mean, I understand it's a feature of G Suite they have decided to disable, but I'm a little surprised I can't get to this thing already tied to my personal account). And I've become so reliant on how light and not overheated that thing is. It's also just been a strange year, and so, as is my wont when it comes to blogging, I have been remiss.

Summer is close enough that it seems fair to think about it, though you'd never know it from the weather. It's certainly close enough that planning has begun for summer book camp, and since the book I just finished is on the preliminary (overly long) list, I feel like I should document something about it.

That is, admittedly, not the stated purpose of this blog, but the thought of doing that assignment-like recording reminded me that I created this space to comment on the parts of books that I needed to talk about immediately, to share with this blog what I would share with someone who was reading along with me. And really, there are plenty of those things in this book too.

The book, by the way, is Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman. I wasn't playing coy intentionally.

This has to be one of my favorite books of the year. I feel like I've maybe written about how, in this particular bleak era, nearly everything I read takes on greater import, like, no matter when it was written or why, the author was speaking to this time. Thunderhead is full of that feeling. The battle between the New and Old Guard has whiffs of our current political climate, and so much of the Thunderhead's musings seem full of significance. I suspect I could (and maybe should, to be better prepared in August) write pages about all the instances that jumped out at me, but I feel like keeping a bit more with the spirit of this space. I'm sticking to the one that is sticking to my brain.

It comes at the end of Chapter 17, a rumination on "the fine line between freedom and permission."

While freedom gives rise to growth and enlightenment, permission allows evil to flourish in a light of day that otherwise destroy it.

YES! We permit so many things for so many reasons - it's easier, it seems polite, we have short-term goals that obscure long-term welfare. On a small scale, I see this in swapping free periods for a class that is too hard or never attended, in allowing a degradation of etiquette because it is a constant fight to keep hoods down and earbuds out of ears and phones put away. And on a grander scale?

A self-important dictator gives permission for his subjects to blame the world's ills on those least able to defend themselves. A haughty queen gives permission to slaughter in the name of God. An arrogant head of state gives permission to all nature of hate as long as it feeds his ambition. And the unfortunate truth is, people devour it. Society gorges itself, and rots. Permission is the bloated corpse of freedom.