🇲🇽 It’s Cinco de Mayo today, but this posting has precious little Mexican content; don’t let that keep you from your celebrations, whatever they are.
I had intentions to cook up a homey Mexican pozole (any occasion is a good one for pozole, in my book, and I always have a can of white hominy in the cupboard, just in case I want to assemble the materials for one), but the main fresh ingredient I had on hand was an big order of Chinese (mung) bean sprouts, so I chopped them up; added a can of lentils (another household staple), with their liquid; splashed in a dose of sriracha sauce; thickened the broth with a container of hummus (ground up chickpeas); and produced a rich, spicy, and crunchy Chinese / Middle Eastern / Southeast Asian three-legume soup, heated in the microwave. It was fabulous. I might do it again, on purpose this time.
But this posting is a reaction to a card I got from Kathryn Burlingham in Portland OR roughly a month ago — I move sloth-like through my social responsibilities — about (among other things) the toll of the closet for queer people. Trying to write out and then mail a physical card is, however, gravely difficult for me, while typing at my computer’s keyboard is merely somewhat painful, so this is my response to KB, which turns not so much on the closet — coming out, accepting myself, was heart-breakingly difficult for me, but I spent almost no time in the closet — but on the actual card that KB sent me, the Jahna Vashti greeting card (“vibrantly printed in [yes!] Portland OR on a sturdy, uncoated card stock”) “Brother Sun”:
