Don’t give me the music
It is 10:00am and I am just starting to write. It took me 30 minutes to get back to my office; we had a much needed “staff meeting”, as in we just sat and lamented the way things used to be. Then I opened my email to discover the test 4 results of the REALM Project. Up to this point we have been quarantining materials for 4 days, magazines for 7. Well, now we know the implications stacking has on materials; it is not good. We are again changing our protocol, items will now be quarantined for a week, yep, 7 days. This announcement resulted in another 30 minutes of sorrow and mourning for the days before March 18th, the start date of when our library world changed.
I am going to use this time to remind you that all library materials have a grace period of 1 week. So if you return your materials on time, everything will be fine. We will renew all items you have out during checkout. If you don’t come in and you did not return your materials on time, renew online, or call us to renew for you. It is going to take longer to get more movies, but you can do this, seriously, this is not something to be upset about. Case and point, Chadwick Boseman.
Yep, I cannot do a bookworm and not recognize the King of Wakanda. On August 28th, Chadwick Boseman, age 43, the actor best known for his portrayal of T’Challa in the Black Panther, Jackie Robinson in 42, James Brown in Get on Up, and Thurgood Marshall in Marshall, died after a 4-year battle with colon cancer. Heartbreaking, yes, obviously, he was so young, so talented, but his story has a unique factor that has left my soul aching. He filmed Marshall, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, 21 Bridges, Da 5 Bloods, and Black Bottom while fighting cancer and we didn’t know.
Shanita Hubbard a social justice advocate, writer, consultant, and speaker shared this tweet: “Chadwick Boseman out here literally dying in front of us is a HUGE reminder that we never know what battles people are fighting. You don’t know what’s killing a person. Be kind. Offer grace. Be gentle. Love freely. “
I watched Boseman’s acceptance speech at the 2019 SAG awards. He borrowed words from the Nina Simone song “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” and gave a memorable speech reflecting on the impact of the film. But what drew my heart in was when they played the music to encourage him to wrap up his speech. “Don’t give me the music.” Watch it if you get the chance, watch it any time you want to not be kind, you feel like you have no grace to give, you want to be mean, or you just can’t show any love. Watch it. The hurt in his eyes has a different feel now, in the moment he was making a statement about being a black actor, but also he was dying in front of us. He was dying and his 4-minute speech was too much.
I really don’t know about the world we are living in anymore. I just don’t know. Just keep trying to better, remember we are all fighting battles and please don’t waste your time being upset about the little things. Novelist, Jesmyn Ward shared these words in her essay, On Witness and Respair: A personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic: “The last sense to go is the hearing, when someone is dying, they lose sight and smell and taste and touch. They even forget who they are. But in the end, they hear you.”
Guard your words. Don’t give me the music.
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