Prince of Cats

My vision here is less that Rocky is uniquely Weird, because I think it's way more fun if this is a cultural difference between Eridian cultures that Rocky doesn't bother to explain to Grace until they arrive on Erid.

Here, the Eridian equivalent of Project Hail Mary is an equally international one, with the best and brightest minds on Erid being brought together from across the world: of course. But representatives of one country/region on Erid kind of dominate - whoever has the most resources and geopolitical power is probably gonna be one of the heavy hitters! The director of the project and a lot of the important scientists, technicians, and decision makers come from the ♫♫♫ country. However, ♫♫♫ is in the northern hemisphere, and you can't build a space elevator anywhere but the equator. And Rocky is from the not-nearly-as-politically-powerful equatorial country where the space elevator was actually built - that's how he first got involved with the project.

So it's a culture clash thing: Rocky's equatorial country culture sees clothing as entirely optional, something you put on as necessary for weather conditions or to decorate yourself for an event. But in everyday life? Who cares who caaaaares if your carapace is out. You ♫♫♫ans are SO weird about this. But because ♫♫♫ culture dominates the Tau Ceti Project, wearing clothing is expected on the job even though Rocky thinks it's stupid and is not shy about saying so.

At the end Grace is living and teaching in Rocky's equatorial country ("near the space elevator" but also "do not separate them") so the Eridians he sees in daily life are generally not wearing clothes, but a Lot of the doctors and scientists he'd be working with from across the world are.

This also means that culturally it's the reverse of Grace only teaching Rocky American English: as they get closer to Erid, Rocky is like. Okay. There will be a lot of scientists who will want to talk to you. You should PROBABLY learn to speak at least a little 𝅗𝅥♫♫♫♩♩. And Grace is like what. I've gotten pretty good at Eridian! And Rocky is like no you've gotten okay at 𝅗𝅥♩♬♬𝅝♩♩. But uh the main language of the Tau Ceti project was 𝅗𝅥♫♫♫♩♩ and that's what most of the scientists speak, as a first language or otherwise. And Grace goes oh. I never considered Erid had multiple languages too. Maybe I'm a bad person. Why did you speak in 𝅗𝅥♩♬♬𝅝♩♩ then? And Rocky goes because that's my language?? When we met and I first started talking to you, I didn't exactly expect to be taking you home with me!

So cultural preparation focuses on another round of language crash courses, which Grace is not very good at because he can't really tell what makes 𝅗𝅥♫♫♫♩♩ sound any different from 𝅗𝅥♩♬♬𝅝♩♩ and Rocky is not the best at explaining because 𝅗𝅥♫♫♫♩♩ is his second language so like. He can't explain WHY any of it is the way it is, that's just how he learned it okay!

MOYERS: As I listen to you talk about the liberation of motherhood and love, I find all the more incredible Sethe’s willingness to kill her son—

MORRISON:: Oh, yeah.

MOYERS: —Rather than let the slavecatcher kidnap him. Was that a far-out figment of your imagination to make a dramatic point, or did you find in your research into the past there were mothers willing to do that?

MORRISON:: That was Margaret Garner’s story. There was a slave woman in Cincinnati named Margaret Garner who escaped from Kentucky; arrived in Cincinnati with her mother-in-law. The situation was a little different; I think she came with four others. And right after she got there, the man who owned her found her. And she ran out into the shed and tried to kill all her children, just like that. And she was about to bang one’s head against the wall when they stopped her. Now, she became a cause celebre for the Abolitionists, because; you see, they were trying to improve the situation a little bit and get her tried for murder, because that would have been a big coup, if they had gotten her tried for murder. Because it would assume that she had some responsibility over those children. But they were not successful. She was tried for the real crime, which was stolen property, and convicted and returned to that same man. But what struck me, because I didn’t want to know a great deal about her story because there would be no space for me to invent — was that when they interviewed her, she was not a mad dog killer, she was this very calm, you know, in her 20s, woman. And all she said was, “They will not live like that. They will not live like that.” And her mother-in-law, who was a preacher, said, “I watched her do it, and I neither encouraged her nor discouraged her.” So for them, it was a dilemma. This is a real dilemma. “Shall I permit my children, who are my best thing, to live like I have lived, and I know that’s terrible, or to take them out?” So she decided to kill them, and kill herself. And that was noble. That was the identification. She was saying: “I’m a human being. These are my children. This script I am writing.”

MOYERS: Could you have put your — did you ever put yourself in her position, and ask—

MORRISON:: In the writing of the book, yeah.

MOYERS: —could I have done that to my three sons?

MORRISON:: I asked it a lot. As a matter of fact; the reason the character Beloved enters is because I couldn’t answer it. I felt just like Baby Suggs. I didn’t know whether I would do it or not. You hear stories of that in slavery and Holocaust situations, I mean, where women have got to figure it out fast, I mean really fast. So the only person I felt who had the right to ask her that question was the child she killed.

MOYERS: The child.

MORRISON:: And she can ask her: “What did you do that for? Who are you talking about? This is better? What do you know?” Because I just — it was, for me, an impossible decision. Someone gave me the line for it at one time, which I have found useful, is that it was the right thing to do, but she had no right to do it.

MOYERS: And you’ve never answered it in your own case, “Could I do it?”

MORRISON:: I’ve asked. I don’t know.

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.