In honor of Gramma, I share this.
In the 2023-2024 US school year
more than 10,000
book bans
affecting more than 4,000
unique titles,
with about 45% of the bans
(special note:) occurring in Florida and 36% in Iowa.
’What students can read
in schools helps
provide the foundation for their lives like
critical thinking,
empathy across differences,
compassionate personal wellbeing.’
–
Censored. Prevented.
Banned.
Outside of required school readings,
hustled bustled hurried worried adults
believing now free to no longer read books,
my 80 year old gramma
became an elder exception.
Prior to reading the book, “Roots”
she said she used to be a white supremacy racist.
She said, “I understand now”.
The irony and this would be incredibly funny, if not true,
she was half white and half American Indian-
and really looked it too-
an overlooked fact she hid from family until in her 100s –
closer to her dying.
I had my DNA tested, after her death. Yes. It was proven true.
She grew up in the Minnesota lands of severe Midwest’s
too hot and too cold ‘could not concentrate enough to read’ climate,
in the early 1900s,
and raised a large family in swampy cruel Florida,
ignorantly overcooking vegetables, always did.
Killing bacterias,
during the 1930’s Terrifying Great Depression, that bad cooking began?
Both practically uninhabitable lands and times, harshly suppressing
pressing hard-down-on-her-learning-from-reading-books-brain.
Unhelpful Climates for her expanding her mind-
too hot too cold to read anything-
Too much just trying to too much survive-
fighting or flighting-
not in between comfortable sitting down reading. Not allowed.
In Midwest’s Windy Illinois, and then in HOT/COLD Swampy DC,
how did younger and older Abe Lincoln do it? How did he read?
Gramma finally did it, reading in brain friendly and Progressive Seattle, sitting comfortably on her cushioned upholstered rocking chair,
inside a climate controlled apartment complex,
for the elderly of the First Baptist Church.
This poem is for you Gramma.
Family loved you. When you let us.
You, like the lands you were born into and were uncomfortably living on,
were often too hot or too cold closed up minded narrowed up minded.
Felt had to be – to just survive.
©️January 2025 Much Love, Deb Poems
👉🏼https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19736420-do-you-find-it-easier-to-read-in-the-heat-or-cold
👉🏼Banned Books https://pen.org/report/beyond-the-shelves/
👉🏼https://www.lincolnpresidential.org/lincoln-resources/what-lincoln-read/
👉🏼https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-does-extreme-heat-affect-our-brains
👉🏼https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/reading-books-brain-chemistry.html
👇🏿👇🏾👇🏽https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family
———-
For something different: my retired sister taught K-12
reading for over 30 years.
-About Audio Books👇🏽
Much Love, Deb Poems ~ Fresh & Thought~Provoking 
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