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Hey y'all,

Over the weekend, I led some folks who were on a Civil Rights pilgrimage on a tour of Jackson, MS. I do this from time to time, as I love this city and the history of it - the way that people denied so much used the means and resources available to them to rise above their circumstances and change the country.

When we read history, we think of the participants as larger than life, as somehow giants, who are made of different stuff than we are. We hear the stories of Freedom Riders and the arrests of more than 400 people at the bus station in Jackson and imagine, in our heads, some dramatic location for this event, but the actual station is a tiny art deco building that belies no hint of the sea change that happened there.

The plans for the 1963 Freedom Vote, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and 1964’s Freedom Summer were all laid out in a little undistinguished storefront on John R. Lynch St in Jackson.

Gibbs/Green Plaza, the site of the Jackson State shootings just 11 days after the Kent State shootings, is just the calm green plaza in the midst of a busy urban HBCU, and were it not for some signage, you would have no indication that this was a place where horrors took place.

The pedestrian cattle exhibition buildings at the state fairgrounds that have housed generations of FFA cattle judging contests for schoolchildren once were concentration camps that held imprisoned Black children, the house where Medgar Evers lived and was assassinated is a tiny ranch house with a mid century pink bathroom, and the then all-white library where nine Black folks sat down to read in 1961 and kick started the movement in Jackson is just a small masonry building that now houses state offices.

As one person on the tour said, when you look at the locations, it all seems so… ordinary.

In her writings on the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “The banality of evil”. We want to believe, she argued, that massive evil is caused by external forces. Hitler was a psychopath, say, or that Eichman was mentally ill. But that isn’t true.

The reason massive evil happens is because of countless small compromises, countless small decisions that, on their own, are relatively benign and ordinary. Big evil is the result of little evil, quiet evil, banal evil done again and again and again.

I have come to believe that similarly, goodness, peace, love, harmony – whatever you want to call it - isn’t the result of grand plans, but tiny micro-actions, repeated often. And that the banality of goodness, to coin a phrase, is the result of small decisions, made in shabby storefronts or the back rooms of shops, in tiny ranch houses with pink bathrooms, or late at night while staring at the ceiling, decisions made by ordinary people like you and me.

The banality of goodness doesn’t lend itself to good storytelling - you need heroes for that - but it does make a better world seem more attainable. Because if the better world we dream of is not the result of larger than life heroes, but of tiny, ordinary decisions, then we all can find a role to play.

Five beautiful things

As a kid, I loved the story of a mouse on a motorcycle. Here is a tortoise on a skateboard.

As election season amps up here in the US, against the backdrop of Gaza, my anxiety is amping up. I loved Amanda Gorman’s Hymn for the Hurting - it was the poem I did not know I needed.

The Goes Image Viewer contains the most updated satellite pictures of the visible disk of the earth and they are updated every 15 minutes or so. This is fascinating and beautiful.

A graphic essay by Mira Jacob, about what doesn’t make sense anymore. Just damn.

Ed People is asking people to teach him their favorite dance move. I love how people’s face light up when asked. Like, - “I would LOVE to show you this thing I love”!

Thank You!

Links ideas this week came from faithful reader Jenni, Recomendo, and Jocelyn K. Glei.

The most opened link last week (~ 10% of opens) was the cat who interrupted the golf game.

I’m grateful for the two new members since last week, and the more than a dozen notes that came in about last week’s essay. Thanks to the members who make this possible (this month's Member's Only newsletter will be hitting inboxes later this week) and all the links and shares y'all do.

I do no advertising, no promotions of any sort - this newsletter only exists because it matters to some people, and they tell others about it. Ways to support my work include buying me a cup of coffee, share the web version of this letter on social media, send cash via a half-dozen ways, send a postcard to the address at the bottom of the page, or just forward this email to your friends. But however you do it, I'm grateful beyond words for your support over the years.

Take care of yourself, and each other.

HH

PS: I love to get email from readers, so if something this week struck your fancy, I'd love to hear about it. I read it all, even if I get overwhelmed at times and can't always respond.