George of Sylvania

Tag: books

  • March on Washington 2026

    March on Washington 2026

    Last Thursday, myself and five other friends of mine from the church I work at drove into Washington DC for the March on Washington: Defending the Vote, the fifth type of march centered on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s original March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Co-lead by the National Action Network and the Drum Major Institute headed by Rev. Al Sharpton and Dr. Martin Luther King III respectively. It was a rather leisurely trip in taking our time, and I don’t think we could have picked a more interesting group of people to come if we had tried. 

    A game of “what’s your story” led us to find out one of our members had traced his lineage to when his family was brought to the US via slave ships (and found out during our drive that his X2 great-grandmother had bought her freedom sooner than he originally had thought; another met his husband on his first day of college in the 1970’s; another had joined a previous march on Washington as a factory worker when she was younger; one is the youngest of 11; and the last one likes to get to know others hence starting the game. With an incredible dinner waiting for us provided by the family member of one of our travelers at their house, we called it a night as we had an early morning.

    Hitting the metro and hoping off at Arlington National Cemetery we were greeted with the sight of national traitor Robert Lee’s house and then saw the incredibly tacky and generally repulsive “refurbished” gold plated Arts of Peace statutes. As we walked toward the Lincoln Memorial, we took in a moment to remember the Kennedy Center before Trump yet again has his way with it, and being episcopal nerds we may have (totally did) taken a selfie with the far away National Cathedral. Once we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial two things were very clear; one, we had more time than originally thought to get there; and two, Trump really fucked up the reflecting pool. I have been to DC maybe five or six times, and this was the most I have ever seen the city closed off. You could generously, not get within 20 feet of the pool, which made the crowd size look smaller than the amounts that were there. It also did not help that busses were cancelled last minute, and people weren’t notified until after the cancelation. 

    Sun-screened and ready to go, we waited until the first few speakers started after 9:30, and there was a round robin of them until the end. Some key ones for me were Rev. Sharpton, Dr. King III, Sen Bernie Sanders, Rep Ocasio-Cortez, Gov. Spanberger, Derrick Johnson, Janai Nelson, Rev. Shavon Arline-Bradley, Marc Morial, Melanie Cample, many more, and the lackluster and spineless House Minority Leader (who needs to resign) also spoke. While it was a long day, even during the lulls, there was an electricity in the air I have only experienced a few times in my life. When it came time to line up and march, somehow one of my companions and I ended up at the front near Rev. Sharpton and Dr. King, but we were quick to move ourselves further back into the crowd.

    Once we started marching, eventually we made our way to the MLK Jr. national monument where some more words were to be spoken and the day’s events ended. As we were marching into the monument, there is a split wall that almost looks like Moses having parted the Red Sea which was incredibly emotional. But when the Freedom Riders who had bused in from Houston Texas that day started singing, We Shall Overcome, I was a teary mess. Eventually we were all surrounding the monument, and before I knew it, it was over. In another surreal moment, Spike Lee, Rev. Sharpton, Dr. King, and the remaining speakers walked by, some took photos, and that was that. 63 years since the original March on Washington, and people are marching for the same damn things.

    As Christians, we are called to bear witness and participate in acts of justice, social and other. These acts can be as small as sharing a meal with a person and getting to know them, bursting your church’s doors open for a Pride parade, showing up like this, praying for a change of heart, writing letters to your representatives, or as Georgia Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock says a vote is a kind of prayer. No politician is perfect, or even the best of what they can be, but we can be the people calling to account and pushing for our fellow image bearers to have the same access to rights as the most privileged amongst us. 

    Grace and peace my friends.

  • Are we the Baddies?

    Are we the Baddies?

    Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen was one of my first books out the gate in 2025, and I still think about it. When I think of the detailed research of this book, what comes to mind is, The Holocaust: A New History by Laurence Rees, another one worth your time, because of the minutia Jacobsen goes into.

    If you are unaware of Operation Paperclip, it was the name given when the United States government brought n*zi scientists into the US to work on military projects, health and medicine, and the space race. The lengths of which the government forgave the acts of despicable men in the name of “fighting” communism made me almost physically sick while reading. One doctor who was working on hypothermia continued his work in the US that had been conducted on prisoners.

    Per the books description:

    In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich’s scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis’ once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler’s scientists and their families to the United States.

    Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War?

    Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich’s ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century.

    I enjoy a hard read, and this one was difficult. The complicity of our government to do horrible things is not a secret. After all H*tler was influenced by our treatment of Indigenous people and eugenics is a very American science. But to see how quickly people are willing to throw away morality in the name of power makes me physically sick.

    This meme is still true, especially when we consider the cruel actions of our current administration.

    That said, 10/10 read, you should read this book. It will drop scales from your eyes in a very needed way. Some of it may be old hat, but even portions of that

    Grace and peace.

  • Top books/series: 2020-2024

    Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com

    I love books.

    Reading them, listening to them, or even collecting, it doesn’t matter. My office is filled with them, and so is our house. It has become a joke among some of the staff, and I have even been at bottom of a few jokes because of it. And you know what? I do not care. By nature, I am dyslexic, and I learned to read via comic books. In fact, I can tell you the first time I remember reading a word by myself.

    For Christmas in 1993 my parents bought me a box of comic books, and my life changed forever. I was already a fan of Batman thanks to the 1966 TV show reruns, but I did not know he was from another media. In that box was Batman 493, aka Red Slash, where serial killer Victor Zsasz take a few hostages and Batman has to rescue them. Well, one of the Gotham Police Officers that Zsasz… does… away… with… had my last name. That week before in kindergarten I was working with someone on spelling it out, and BAM! Right before my eyes, I see the name, I recognize what it is, and it was all downhill from there (except for reading, it took a long time for me to become comfortable with that).

    Over the years, I have spent many hours pouring over books of varying genres, mainly theological and non-fiction. However, in 2021 my wife urged me to pick up some fiction books, and I started to consume more of them. And since I’m one of the people that believes a decade starts in the year that ends in zero, we’re half way through the 20’s. With the over 300 books I’ve read so far this decade, here are my top ten books/series in no particular order:

    1. Operation Hail Mary by Mark Weir
      – Just read it. Incredible science based fiction. 10/10 no notes.
    2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
      – There is a reason why people love this book. I thought it was going to be overrated, but it just really hit with me.
    3. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a faith and Fracture a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
      – If like me you have some evangelicalism in your background, have gone through deconstruction/reconstruction and want to know some history pick it up. Also highly recommend The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Alison Barr
    4. Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr.
      – I grew up conservative and heard about the Black Panthers. Nothing about them I learned about was true unsurprisingly! This book will learning you something you need.
    5. The Inspector Gamaché series by Louise Penny
      – Look, no one should trust the police… unless they’re fictional and written by Louise Penny.
    6. River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard
      – Do you like Indiana Jones and want a true story? This one floats to the top of all those style books I’ve read recently.
    7. Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women by Kate Manne
      – Required reading if you identify as male. Don’t argue, just read the damn book.
    8. The Holocaust: A New History by Laurence Rees
      – I was going to put The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Israeli author Ilan Pappé but I read it this year. This is neck and neck with that book. Dives into the prehistory of n*zi Germany and is as impactful, plus a nice precursor to Pappé’s book.
    9. We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
      – Incredible horror/mind melt of a book. I read this twice last year, and am still decoding the hidden messages in the book. Highly recommend if that’s your bag.
    10. Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty AND Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
      – Patrick Radden Keefe is an incredible writer/journalist. These two subject couldn’t be more different, and he makes them attainable in such engaging ways.

    Bonus book series: The Exorcist House/Anathema by Nick Roberts; if you like The Exorcist, you’ll enjoy these. Roberts is quickly becoming my Stephen King.