​I’m going to be honest and admit that I started a number of books that I decided not to finish, and one of these was The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I really tried to read this book. I gave it a good shot. But I am not capable of reading trauma without activation of some old post-traumatic stress. I am almost recovered and I don’t dare test that. I read the majority of Renegade Beauty, a very interesting look at health and beauty, and I read most of Daniel Foor’s Ancestral Medicine. By the end of 2021 I may finish these. 
 
Instead of being a serial monogamist, I’m a polygamist (strictly as a reader), and I’m currently engaged with:

• Ann Petry’s novel The Street
• Barry Lopez’s last book Horizon
• George Singleton’s stories, You Want More
• John Lane’s Whose Woods These Are
• Shapes of Native Nonfiction, edited by Washuta & Warburton​

~*~
Before I leave you, I want to name which book was my favorite. This is going to surprise you, and please don’t take this as a recommendation, because you’re probably not going to like what I like. I’ve bought the book for two close friends, neither of whom have ever mentioned a word about it, so I take their silence as a message. 
 
Drum roll. 
 
The book was Ensouling Language by Stephen Harrod Buhner. I’m not even going to explain what the book is about. I’ll just say that reading it transformed my opinion on so many things. I did add my review of it to Goodreads, so you can read that there. I think two things will prove how much I liked this book:
            
First, when I finished I immediately turned back to the first page and started reading it again. I’m not sure that has ever happened in my entire life.
 
Second, I wrote the author. I get lots of fan-style letters, and although I love receiving them, I am twisted by guilt when I don’t have time to respond, or when I take time away from my own writing to pen a reply. I believe that we should be able to enjoy an artist’s work without having to enjoy the artist herself or himself or themselves. So I almost never write these letters. In this case, I did, immediately. I received a reply (!), and that was a wonderful gift. Mr. Buhner and I have not continued our correspondence (or if we have, it’s a slow one) but I have that letter. I’ve spoken with two other friends who also loved this book, so if you do decide to read it and you have the same reaction, let me know. If you don’t like it, don’t let me know. 
 
Besides all the sheer pleasure I get from stories and words, another amazing thing happened in 2020. As a reader I got faster and faster. I realized that being “a slow reader” is not a personality trait or a biological given. It’s a variable. The way you vary it is by (guess what?) reading. To become a better writer, write; to become a better reader, read. I am proof. 
 
~*~

​This is the last thing I want to say. I am not promoting Goodreads, but of all the social media, it’s the one I enjoy most because I nerd out bigtime on books. Goodreads is an easy way to keep track of what you read. Therefore, I am encouraging you to set yourself a goal for 2021. Keep it low so you can bust it open. Now’s the time to do it. 
 
Let me know what happens.

An entire wall at the Legacy Museum in Montgomery is lined with jars of soil -- earth collected from beneath trees, bridges, and platforms where lynchings snuffed out human lives without justice, without warning, without heart. On a recent visit I stood before this wall, overwhelmed.  

Soil is so beautiful in all its colors. Soil is so full of life. Here it represented death, tragedy, genocide.
 
At the memorial, I hoped not to find Tattnall County, Georgia, the county in which I have purchased a farm and where I have lived for a decade.  I hoped this county had not participated.

**
Five years ago I began to volunteer at my county’s Archives. There is a strange air about the Archives. There are stories trying to get free – stories of deeds and misdeeds, understandings and misunderstandings.

The Archives is located in the old jail downtown, built sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. In the northwest corner of the downstairs, set in the ceiling, is a trap door made of metal, three feet square. The door opens at the center with a lever, as if to pour the contents of the upstairs into the cool air of the downstairs. Upstairs there is no sign of a trap door because the floor has been covered in particle board painted gray.

When you first look at that strange contraption set in the ceiling, within sight of the downstairs cells, you don't understand what it is. Then the horror begins to dawn on you. Your mind is flooded with questions -- how many people died here? Who were they? Were they allowed trials, testimonies, juries, appeals, truth? Were other inmates watching?

No records that we have found show definitely that the trap door was used. But sometimes, working late at the records, one begins to hear noises in the repository, low voices and small bangs. Once a university intern heard the sound of chains. I did not disbelieve her, although I know how easy it is to hear people standing outside talking or for passing cars to throw rocks against the brick walls. 

**
At the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, there is a block for Tattnall County. I hated to find it. On the face of Tattnall's block are five names. Four of them are from one date, May 21, 1907, with the same surname: Dosia Padgett, Sam Padgett, Sula Padgett, and Willard Padgett. I want to find out what happened. I want to find where. I want to go there and and gather soil.