Yesterday’s Wayno/ Piraro Bizarro:
(#1) The coupled life, with cook and diner; cooks — I was the diner and helper in Ann’s and my life, the cook in Jacques’s and my life, and I can say that the cook is often anxious about pleasing their audience, the diner (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
Now, highlights of an exchange between Wayno and me that starts out being about this cartoon.
Briefly noted: a Facebook exchange on 10/8:
— Mike Hammond (Univ. of Arizona): Social media rant #2: On twitter, I keep seeing posts asking how I feel about interracial marriage. Seriously? Are there really sane people who object to this???
— John Singler (NYU): A recent poll (by a reputable organization) in the US asked about Black-white marriage. 94% said it was OK
— MH > JS: yeah, but 6% said no? nutters
— AZ (Stanford) > MH: 6% nutters is modest, in my experience. My rule of thumb is that you can expect 10% nutters on any matter of opinion or belief, no matter how outrageous
At least 10% believe that angels are at work amongst us, that the Illuminati control the media, that another race of people live in the hollow center of the earth, whatever. It’s all very sobering.
From the New Yorker issue of 10/13/25 (which has not yet arrived at my house), on-line on 10/5, “Takes: Rebecca Mead on Mary Ellen Mark’s photo from the Puerto Rican Day Parade” — from the New Yorker Classics, about “Forward, March” by MEM, in the 6/23/2003 print edition. This photo:
[caption:] Candice Lozada, nine, and Fantashia Toro, eleven, of the S.B.K. (South Bronx Kids) Dance Group, waiting for the Puerto Rican Day Parade to start
A monumentally challenging day. Up at 4:15, to have a very early breakfast, so as to enter into a day of fasting, for various lab tests to be done at Palo Alto Medical Foundation at 2 pm (in preparation for two medical appointments next week, one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday). After breakfast, several hours of clearing things out of my bedroom, in preparation for the removal of my excellent bed (which is too big for an assisted living facility) and its replacement by a substantially smaller one, from a mattress company contracted by my daughter Elizabeth, a company now scheduled to do removal of the old and installation of the new between 11:45 and 1:45 (my grandchild Opal will be here to supervise this process). I am dead tired from my labors, my fingers are in great pain from them, and I am surly from the fasting.
So I’ve scanned the file of dozens of postings waiting to be polished and offered to the world, in search of something small but indisputably important, and found something that I’ve been saving up for months as a reminder that great works can take lifetimes and that I, personally, must be willing to do some little bit in the belief that it will smooth the way to an end devoutly to be desired but probably not achievable until long after I’ve died. What I need to muster up is a combination of doggedness and humility; I’m am old hand at doggedness, but have a lot to learn in the humility department: how to free myself from the desire for credit?
What I saved is two voices from the past, from 175 – 250 years ago, that continue to resonate for me, but also remind me that the ends are not yet in sight, even though the visions are brighter than they once were.
🐅 🐅 🐅 Three tigers for ultimate July, while we anticipate the inaugural rabbits of August and the cheese and chocolate of 🇨🇭 Swiss National Day🇨🇭 — we await the edelweiss-bedecked Helvetia!
The territory. Meanwhile, I’ve been re-establishing an old friendship, one that goes back to childhood: Bill and I met at Camp Conrad Weiser, a YMCA-sponsored summer camp in the hills of Wernersville PA (some of these details will become relevant). We were later at Princeton together, and in the summer of 1961 (after my parents had moved on to California, while I continued my job as a reporter on the Reading (PA) Eagle and needed a place to stay), he offered a guest room in his family’s big house on Reading Boulevard in the suburb of Wyomissing —
(#1) An aerial shot of some big houses on Reading Boulevard (a stock photo from an article on Wyomissing as a planned community); there was housing for the rich on the boulevards, with workers’ housing in separate sections of Wyomissing (one of which my father grew up in) and on the side streets along the boulevards, in the adjacent boroughs of West Wyomissing, West Lawn (where I grew up), and West Reading, and in Reading itself
🌝 that’s the emoji for the full moon with face — the “man in the moon” — to mark 7/20, Man On the Moon Day, the anniversary of astronauts walking on the moon for the first time, in 1969 (a day I remember well, as my little family was gearing up for the move from Urbana IL, where (clustered around our little portable tv) we viewed the event; to Columbus OH, in a trek from my first professor gig, at UIUC, to my second, at OSU)
But this posting is going to be devoted to a different day of memory, one that I let slip by on 7/17: John Lewis’s death day, now memorialized in my country as the Good Trouble National Day of Action.
From the New Black Voices website, “Good Trouble Lives On: Honoring Congressman John Lewis with a National Day of Action” on 7/17/25:
Congressman John Lewis [2/21/1940 – 7/17/20], the late civil rights icon and U.S. Representative from Georgia’s 5th District, remains one of the most enduring symbols of courage, resilience, and justice in American history. Known for his unwavering dedication to nonviolent activism, Lewis’ legacy transcends generations. As America continues to grapple with inequality, voter suppression, and systemic injustice, the call to honor his memory has materialized into an annual National Day of Action. This day celebrates Lewis’s life, legacy, and the enduring philosophy he popularized: making ‘Good Trouble,’ such as leading peaceful marches, organizing sit-ins, and advocating for legislative change.
… In the days following his death, activists, lawmakers, and communities across the country vowed to keep his mission alive. His call to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble” became a rallying cry. From marches to voter registration drives, Lewis’ passing reignited a national movement.
To preserve his legacy, the “Good Trouble Day of Action“ has been established as an annual event, observed every July 17, the anniversary of his death.
A surprise on my Pinterest this morning: a sinesagittal St. Sebastian from Texan artist RF. Alvarez (who offers tender, communal gay machismo, which is Tex-Mex to boot):
(#1) Alvarez, St. Sebastian (2022), aka “Meet me under the pomegranate tree, St. Sebastian” (a self-portrait of the strikingly handsome RFA in the St. Sebastian pose, with a vulnerable but unharmed body, and steadily meeting the viewers’ gaze, conveying neither agony nor ecstasy); the figure here is hooking up with St. Sebastian, and he’s also mirroring St. Sebastian (with his hands behind his back, perhaps tied to a tree, only a bit of drapery barely covering his genitals)
But why a pomegranate tree (not part of Christian legend)? And the deep orange suffusing the figure’s entire body and filling all the background behind him and the tree — another pomegranate allusion (though pomegranate fruits and juice are garnet-red, not citrus-orange)? An allusion to the Greek myth of Persephone and her pomegranate seeds?
I’ve now looked at quite a lot of RFA’s paintings, and this one stands out from all the others, including his other self-portraits (for instance, Self-Portrait with Grandfather’s Hat (2023)). So it cries out for some explication.
Earlier on this blog I’ve had occasion to celebrate the humane gravity of MSNBC commentator Jonathan Capehart, who happens to be both Black and gay. Now in JC talking about his 2025 book Yet Here I Am: Lessons From a Black Man’s Search for Home, an observation about the stoop labor historically done by Black folk in the American deep south (harvesting cotton, tobacco, and sugarcane):
“My cousin Rita and I are the first generation in our family to not have to pick cotton, and for people of a certain age, they will understand what that means,” Capehart said. “… It wasn’t until I was writing this book that I understood, when our parents were our age, they were working. They were working in the fields, picking cotton, picking tobacco. We did not have to do that.
So JC and his cousin Rita represent a shift in the fortunes of Black folk. Here’s JC informing us, explaining things, interviewing political and cultural figures, a figure of importance on national television — and a moving reporter on his own life history in that book. In what I see as the release of great abilities, drive, and insights that follow on opening up opportunity to everyone: excellent qualities that are in fact distributed widely across the population will flourish in new places (and since those who succeed first will have had to run through a lot of tough hoops, they will be seen to be especially talented).
Very briefly noted. In my e-mail today, Update No. 608 from the Linguistic Society of America, announcing the slate of candidates for its upcoming elections, with one nominee for vice-president / president-elect: the sociolinguist and creolist Tracey Weldon (University of South Carolina). A great pleasure for me, since TW’s time as a graduate student at Ohio State (culminating in her PhD in 1998) was my final time at Ohio State (I moved permanently from Columbus in 1998). A photo of TW in mid-speech:
A shot from the documentary Talking Black in America (2017), since expanded to a 5-part series
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
— “Morning Has Broken”
Today, Saturday, awaking officially at 4:52, but lying for maybe 20 minutes in that wonderful half-waking state, with genuinely useful ideas chasing around my head, while an Istomin / Stern / Rose recording of the Brahms trios for piano. violin, and cello (for some reason, in reverse order, ending with No. 1) played on my Apple Music — fabulously passionate, exuberant in bursts, and musically complex. The Brahms is Morning A.
One thing that I worked on in my head was a kvetch from Michael Newman (on Facebook on 6/1, with a response from me) that I didn’t get to post on yesterday, because yesterday was largely a great trial, following on the events reported in my 6/5 posting “An indescribable day”. But now I will introduce Michael and show our exchange; that’s Morning B. Which comes with the promise of a future posting celebrating Michael, singing his praises.
Then, after morning cleanup, I went to my worktable, to turn off the Apple Music, check my vital signs (good), and turn on the tv to MSNBC, which immediately presented me with this panel:
Harvard University Professor Maya Jasanoff and Ankush Khardori join The Weekend to discuss why President Tr**p keeps losing in his war against the nation’s oldest college
In which I was once again impressed with Khardori, who came across as extraordinarily bright, incisive, tough and down-to-earth, and surprisingly charming. Also, to my famously queer eye, definitely sexy; he’s Morning C.
After him, Bob Eckstein’s newsletter The Bob popped up, in a special French edition yesterday, to cap things off with a wonderfully silly cartoon — Morning D.
Morning was then broken, and the day shambled on, with variously astonishing, distressing, and alarming news breaking in one wave after another.
