{"id":13873,"date":"2024-07-20T03:40:20","date_gmt":"2024-07-20T10:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/?p=13873"},"modified":"2024-07-20T03:56:54","modified_gmt":"2024-07-20T10:56:54","slug":"an-important-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/2024\/07\/an-important-day\/","title":{"rendered":"An important day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/querent.substack.com\/p\/the-novel-that-tells-you-how-to-survive?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Falexander%2520chee&amp;utm_medium=reader2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Substack newsletter by Alexander Chee<\/a>* alerted me to this date. It\u2019s the day Lauren Oya Olamina starts her diary in <em>Parable of the Sower<\/em>, by Octavia Butler. I pulled the book off my shelf and remembered what I could from the first time I read it. The violent neighborhood at the beginning, terrifying. The anxieties of being on the road and not knowing who to trust. The themes of leadership and survival, survival through leadership. Constructing a life on the land. The strange religion, Earthseed, and whether I could accept its tenets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Reading books like this helps me digest the craziness of the times we&#8217;re living in. I&#8217;m very grateful to Octavia Butler and visionary writers like her for this gift. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>*Chee&#8217;s newsletter is titled &#8220;The Novel That Tells You How To Survive America.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"667\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8704-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13870\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8704-1.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8704-1-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8705.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8705-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13872\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8705-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8705-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8705-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8705-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8705-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8705-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8705-80x80.jpg 80w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/img_8705-320x320.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Substack newsletter by Alexander Chee* alerted me to this date. It\u2019s the day Lauren Oya Olamina starts her diary in Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler. I pulled the book off my&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[404],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13873"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13878,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13873\/revisions\/13878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}