Driving in Circles by Sarah Kendizor

There was an avalanche of appreciation, all of it wholly justified, in response to Tracy Chapman’s surprise appearance at this year’s Grammy Awards. Writing for her own newsletter, Sarah Kendizor adds her own hosanna and offers a valuable consideration about the enduring relevance of the thirty-five-year-old song that Chapman sang that night. Maybe the fact that a song that evocatively considers the dead ends of American life (“So Mama went off and left him/ She wanted more from life than he could give/ I said, ‘Somebody’s got to take care of him’/ So I quit school and that’s what I did”) is still so immediately relatable a few decades is an indictment of our collective inability — or unwillingness — to solve social problems. “Fast Car” is a phenomenal song. It doesn’t necessarily need to be timeless, too.

Culture Wars Put Librarians On Front Lines by Elizabeth Williamson

Reporting for The New York Times, Elizabeth Williamson details libraries and librarians being besieged by deranged right-wingers. I really thought that it was settled wisdom by now that people engaged in wide-scale banning (and burning!) of books are never on the right side of history, but the regressive idiocy of the Grand Old Party never ceases to amaze. It is appalling that librarians, of all people, are made to feel unsafe because of a political landscape that has been made toxic by dangerously empowered reactionaries.