I Acted Weird But So Did They

      . . . . Two plump robin red breasts bopping along the Houston side sward of an NYU faculty housing complex.  I yelled at them, “What are you doing here?  A blizzard’s coming!" Along came a guy running nude except for earbuds, fone in armholder, shorts and sneakers.  Behind was a woman, and her dog, bundled up in matching parkas and boots.

The storm had already begun by 9 AM,  though mildly, with something between rain and snow falling. It’s going to snow here until about midnight tomorrow, Windydotcom says.  Good thing I went out yesterday for more milk and etc. If what They Say is the Great Blizzard of '22, highways and other transportation systems could be shut down for a while, i.e. also supply lines.

There is the additional relief too, that the super was able to fix the bedroom radiator yesterday (this necessitated shutting down the building's boiler while doing so), so we can now turn it off as well as on.  The next nights and days will be bitter, They Say. 

The latest news for NYC and Covid is the new "Stealth" variant has been detected here.  This one seems to be even more contagious than Omicron.  So one does wonder if by mid-February we'll be back to mid-December, thanks to Stealth, and to Typhoid Sarah Palin and So Many Others just like her.  You know, I am getting mighty tired of this.

Due to inflation and the Fed's attempts to deal, covid, weather, Ukraine, crypto, and o so much more, the markets are roaring bears, for the most part.

Thus the first month of 2022 concludes with things maybe even worse than they were before?  Despite the astounding economic growth? and that hardly anyone who has been vaccinated got sick enough to be hospitalized or die?  Despite the splendid new White House kitty, Willow, who has the a face so adorable, even people who don't like cats cannot help but be charmed?

White House Willow! 

New Year -- Here We Are Back Where We Were

     . . . . Last year at this time we weren’t vaccinated, but this New Year, though many of of us are both vaccinated and boosted, massive numbers continue to refuse to do either, or mask, or distance. The pooba$, political and corporate, finance and real estate, insist on leaving things here, essentially, wide open.

Meanwhile school, from pre-K to unis have had to close to massive Covid. Yet both old mayor and the new in-the-pocket of Big Finance and Real Estate mayor, sworn in last night at the Times Square Ball Drop, insist all the public schools re-open on January 3rd.  This despite so many teachers and staff positive and sick and unable to attend to students and classrooms.

Subway lines, restaurants, Broadway, etc. have stopped, due to so many sick, so staff shortages.  Airlines have canceled thousand and thousands of flights. Fire fighters, police, ambulance drivers and EMS personnel are in short supply, as so many are positive / sick.  (Irony, fire fighters and cops are by-and-large refusniks of both vaccines and mask.) Doctors, dentists, hospitals are already broken in other parts of the country.  The stupid streatery sheds are still there in NYC, becoming ever more  more permanent structures w/o ventilation or shielding, so restaurants, like schools, hotels and health care, are so overwhelmed, stretched beyond limits that even more people quit.

Supermarkets are looking raggedy due to staffing problems, and, evidently, scraping bottom of the barrel hiring, have cashiers who laugh in your face about wearing a mask..  We're inundated with tourists from everywhere, while at the same time they and others seem to have decided across the board that Omicron's no big deal so what the hell.  

We are hoping somehow to get through this month of peaking infections and remaining uninfected.  But this seems less likely every day, as already back before Christmas 1 in 150 people in NYC were positive or sick. They Say we may peak with Omicron by the middle of this month. I dunno -- we also have many cases of Delta Covid, which are still increasing too. 

We're fairly stocked on groceries and other essentials, for getting through about a month, and we, double masked, vaxed and boosted, feel we maybe can chance the dash into Trader Joe's or wherever for milk and apples and tea.   I'm more concerned about whether places like this will be able to stay open and stocked.

We are in some very interesting historical times all right, which I am observing and experiencing up close, in person.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Biden can’t do anything. The rethuglican shoggoth cultists, the rethuglican plants in the Dems, and the Dem Party Establishment won’t allow it. Nancy Pelosi personally made enormous amounts doing massive buys and trades of the Big Stocks at the end of this year. “Nothing wrong with senators and reps making Big Stock money while in the House and Senate,” she declares.  

No state official has done more for the rethuglican covid death cult than the governor of Texas, with the exceptions of Florida's and South Dakota's.  Yesterday he was demanding federal aid and assistance of supplies and medical personnel to relieve Texas, because its health system, such as it is, has become utterly overwhelmed.  Yet, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) breezily engaged a question about secession at a recent conservative event at Texas A&M University, saying that he was “not there yet” but that if Democrats “fundamentally destroy the country,” then, “I think we take NASA, take the military, take the oil.”

~~~~~~~~~

Last night about 10 PM or so, el V and I met B at our little local park to celebrate B's birthday.  I gave him a a bottle of his favorite Spanish wine, and el V gave him a box of petites fours from our French Bakery, in lieu of birthday cake.  Since both el V and B are on antibiotics due to dentistry, I was the only one who was able to make a toast with alcohol, a martini that el V had made and brought with him as a surprise.  We had a most pleasant time out there in the 54°.  El V and I hadn't had any f2f interaction with anyone except with each other, other than briefly and to the point, let's get out of here as fast as possible, with dentist, doctor, librarian, retail, etc.  B's behavior is the same.  Again we wondered how the three of us would have made this far through pandemic without each other, and how lucky we live so closely together.  made sure other friends knew it was B's birthday, so they could call or email him.

It seemed generally NYC wasn't partying hard last night (though what could I really tell from a park bench?).  It was really quiet down here.  Though all the restaurants were open, they generally looked to be about only half full, if that much.  NYers are wearing masks, but the hordes of tourists here, are not.  We're number one in the USA YAY for Covid cases now, and if not number one in the world, number two or three.  We have more Covid today than we did in April 2020.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ironically, when the pandemic hit in March 2020, and NYC shut down, I’d just borrowed from the NYP Sharon Kay Penman’s final novel, The Land Beyond the Sea, published January, 2020. Penman died the same month. The libraries closed 3 days after I took it home, so I wasn’t able to return it until the end of August 2020.  Here, at the beginning of this unmerry New Year, a third year of Covid, as we shut down again, if only personally, not officially mandated, which we should be, I am beginning a re-read her final Plantagenet novel, A King’s Ransom (2014). This wasn’t planned. I began 2022 too, with the library. This past Thursday I brought home an armful of light reading -- mysteries, all -- from my Holds list at my local library, which should 'hold' me for a couple of weeks.  Not to mention all the other books I have. There's some good tv, in the offing, not least the third season of Discovery of Witches, and tomorrow night, a David Tennant Around the World In 80 Days.

El V's continuing to trade and is now doing serious editing-engineering on the audio for Tierra Sagrada, which has come out of the video documentation of our last, perhaps, final, trip to Cuba, in which we attended 14 sacred events in 8 days.  He's gotten some AI apps that allow him to do astonishing things, such as one of the lead vocalist's voice was essentially inaudible via the boom mic.  This AI can go through all the channels and pull out a single strand, which in this case is her voice, isolate it and el V can put it wherever he wants in the mix, at which ever volume he wants it!  "AI came along just in time to save these tracks!"  I heard him say on the phone the other day. He wants to have everything as smoothly produced and engineered as possible before he turns it over to the far more skilled, experienced and technically equipped pros.  This is an if, but at the moment it seems that the [redacted] network wants to look at Tierra Sagrada with the view they might broadcast it. That would be most pleasing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is how 2022 begins. I have no optimism that things will be better this year. The anti-vaxers and the shoggoth death cults will never recover from their chosen insanity. 

The First Day of Autumn Is Dark, So Dark -- The HermanCain Award Subreddit

     . . . . The Unbelievable Grimness of HermanCainAward, the Subreddit That Catalogs Anti-Vaxxer COVID Deaths

This is not a forum that attempts to change minds. It’s much darker.

https://slate.com/technology/2021/09/hermancainaward-subreddit-antivaxxer-deaths-cataloged.html

Despite the subject, describing a site that catalogs the deaths of covid deniers, anti-vaxxers and anti maskers, this piece effectively shows just how awful this disease is, how awful to die from it, and millions have -- we're creeping up to a million mark right here in the US.  From the beginning the descriptions of this disease scared the stuffing out of me -- and many others of us. Which is a massive driver for doing the right things that may keep us from contracting it, and not doing the wrong things that up our chances of contracting it.

"....It is cruel, a site for heartless and unrepentant schadenfreude. This is a place where deaths are celebrated, and it is not the only one. While endless ink has been spilled on the anger of Trump voters and Fox News viewers and QAnon adherents, there are other angers that haven’t been nearly as well explored. The exhaustion and fury doctors and nurses feel, for example, as they deal yet again with overwhelmed ICUs. Instead of being hailed as heroes, this time around they’re risking their lives to serve while walking through anti-vax protesters and being called murderers or worse by misled family members demanding or indeed suing for sick unvaccinated relatives on ventilators to be dosed with ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or vitamin C. There is the anger of family members of those without COVID who are dying or sicker than they should be because treatment was delayed or denied to them at dozens of hospitals that had no beds available. There’s the frustration of parents trying to keep their children safe, the constant, destabilizing calculations and adaptations people are forced into when (for instance) the governor of Texas prohibits schools from taking safety measures and then two teachers at a single school die, forcing closures once again. There’s the run-of-the-mill anger of those weary of living under pandemic conditions and demoralized—in the most literal sense—by the selfishness of their compatriots.

Subscriptions to the HermanCainAward subreddit are increasing exponentially, from 2,000 subscribers on July 4 to 5,000 at the beginning of August to more than 100,000 on Sept. 1 to 243,000 Friday to 276,000 today. If that rate is any indication, rage is growing toward anti-vaxxers deliberately prolonging the pandemic out of an anti-social and deadly understanding of their rights. Now, it’s true that not everyone on the subreddit assents to its spiteful premise: One exhausted nurse wrote a long post about how much one of her anti-vax patients suffered, as an attempt at counterbalance. She acknowledged her own compassion fatigue but also urged readers to think harder about how we got to this sorry pass. Plenty of the discussions do orbit around that basic question. But most of the comments are angry. A collection of screenshots generally elicits a common sentiment: The person got their just deserts...."

It's important to notice the author reporting on these sites which catalog the deaths of the covid-denying anti-vaxxers and what they have done and said throughout this catastrophe isn't excited or pleased. The author is reporting and witnessing. The author is asking questions, trying to make some sense of all it, while working out how this deranged, self-killing (and killing of others) fits into morality, ethics, community, even families, the very dilemmas and paradoxes and contradictions we are all being driven bonkers by. I.e. where is the reconciliation? Ultimately the covid-denying  anti-vaxxers etc. are irrational, thus there cannot be reconcilation.  Leaving the rest of us even more frustrated and despairing -- including, with such numbers of them, driven on by FB, Fox News and other Big Tech, can even we who try to follow the right paths, despair of evading this dreadful disease. We have reached the point where it cannot be waited out.

Because as the author says, even for those dying of covid, there is no conversion.  Nor is there after their deaths, as they are characterized by friends and family in the terms of "God gave her angel wings this week;" "God called him home;"  "His time came and now he's with his wife;" etc.  Not a word about, gee whiz if they'd gotten the vaccine and worn a mask four kids wouldn't be without parents and penniless.  They're just "beloved parents of ...." That 2 week old baby? Don't think so, since that baby never knew his parents at all. Not to mention the other 3 kids are under 8.

"Are these projects productive?" someone asks.

Someone else says, "Totally unproductive.  The effort would be better spent in integrating these lumpenized antisocial types back into the current system of biopolitical management. Something less horripilatory than re-education camps, obviously.  Sadly the don't-tread-on-me crowd doesn't take even the most tepid advice well. "

But we see from the comments of those who are dying, before and and during, and those of their families, by and large, that reeducation is not possible.  They've left that state which could allow for such rehabilitation years ago already.  We're talking people who died, not only believing covid and vaccines are a big hoax and grift designed by Dems, but also believe satanists are stalking the schools and eating children RIGHT NOW. Thus they have devoted their lives to fighting Dems and feminists tooth and nail. Then, o jubilee! They found the more entertaining, the more fun, conspiracy of covid. More fun and more entertaining because it provided a completely protected space to be as overtly abusive and bullying to as many people as any single person or group can manage -- even to the point of physical harm, while feeling safe from any official retribution from police or anyone else. Nor do the people they bully have secret service details and other protections.

You know, in all these endless dragging years of horrors as I've witnessed them -- a very few of them let me haste to add compared to Haitians and those living in so many other places -- since 9/11 and the WOMD lies, Katrina "heck of a job, Brownie," and hurricane after hurricane battering friends throughout the Caribbean and the South, and my own home too, shoggoth and his minions taking over the country -- in some ways this reddit site is the most horrible because the most depressing, the most despairing and hopeless in what it tells us about the people who live in this country.  Because it is determined derangement that is literally killing people I love and so much else that has made life worth living, despite the horrors.  It's Cthulhu manifest in our time and space. And it's from CHOICE, because, honestly? they cannot bear women and other Others having anything from decent jobs and housing and health care to R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Jesus and his saints weep.

Even with the historical highly documented evils, such as nazism and the Holocaust, you can see how there were people who saw personal advantages of various sorts from propagating evil lies, whether or not they truly believed the bs they said -- though whether they didn't, they still committed the acts, let us not forget.

But there is nothing to be gained by these deranged populations in what they are doing to themselves and others.  Though I suppose they, as cannon fodder, are helping those who designed all this for the sake of power.  Power over smoking ruin and ashes.

Well, then, there is that.  They take all the rest of us and everything wonderful with them.  They owned us, they really really really did. 

You win.  That's what you want to hear. 

So, can you get vaccinated now?

Daily Depressions, Reading, Watching

      . . . . Our tiny but sublime vacation was followed immediately by non-stop crises of all kinds, all of them made by those over whom we have no control.  Death was bookended by Hurricane Henri and Hurricane Ida. Ida's hollowed out New Orleans's professional class. With no prospect for the return of power for perhaps months, they left the city.  They have the resources to do so -- Tulane shuts down for 6 weeks, but keeps remote learning going, so the faculty get paid.  You see what I mean?  So in crazy heat and humidity, no power, no a/c, no home, no money, no food, no water -- what do you think will happen to those in New Orleans left behind?  Not a scrap of a FEMA person on the ground has yet been seen.

Though we personally have been spared hurricane crises -- so far, as tonight and tomorrow we get a month's worth of rain wrung from Ida's tattered, passing skirts into our already overflowing reservoirs and saturated earth* -- there are the western wildfires, whose toxin-laden smoke we are not spared. The mid-west is dying of drought, while the Gulf is drowning in flood. The blob that calls itself the responsible media is determined to crucify our President in the name of ... what???? A man in a no-win situation had the guts to let go the wolf's ears (which T Jefferson, referring to slavery, said could not be done -- but then, TJ become quite famous in the South, in Virginia, for his cowardice ....) does so, and some how this is reprehensible, but the Jan 1 insurrectionists are merely mis-understood, and must be forgiven.

Then ... there is covid's Delta variant which relentlessly tsunami's across the country.  In Illinois, Bro says he and his cohorts are calling it the "Unvaccinated Pandemic."  They are not saying this good-naturedly. They are as furious abut this as I am  Then comes more death, not from covid, but from people who can't get treatment due to the Unvaccinated Pandemic taking all the medical resources.  This is not of any personal making on our part, or that of anyone we know.  In the meantime, more voter repression, more war on women's reproductive rights and health. In the meantime too, the non-stop crisis that is Haiti, and now also that of Cuba, keep rolling.

And now, I am staring at the approaching mouth of winter's tunnel, a third cold, dreary winter, pretty much enclosed in this tiny space with one other person.  All we're seeing at the end of this tunnel is more vaccinations, more masks and even more dangerous covid variants. Because of Those Ilks.  Well, even people in my family now believe that is how it is with the rethugs: if They don't get Their way one way, They'll get it by something even crazier, such as killing Their own.  Whatever it takes, They get 'er done. **

So I've not been of much use to anyone outside of what is, again,  a tiny circle of close friends who happen to be physically close by, close enough we can meet informally in one of the neighborhood's small parks.  And I'm good for cooking. We continue to eat very well.  I have a big pot roast in the slow cooker right now, with wine, beef stock, herbs, onion, potatoes, carrots and 'shrooms.  It was a home delivery error on the part of MW's interpretation of what I'd ordered back in the spring. On such a wet day, with night temps for the next 2 - 3 nights going into the 60's and even 60's, it made sense to get it out of the freezer.

~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . Fortunately there is a great deal of good reading, and good watching. Never in my past life could I possibly have imagined there would be an extended period of my in which television would be of the greatest importance! This is the state of reading and watching as of today.

FICTION

Continuing:

Penman, Sharon Kay (1995) When Christ and His Saints Slept.  The workout audio book.  I’m going to re-work my way through the Penman Plantagent series.

~ ~ ~ ~

New:

Walker, Martin (2021) The Coldest Case: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel. The latest, for which I've been waiting since last September.

Walker just won a French literary prize for representation of Southern France and culture to the world.  I have an additional affection for Walker’s series now too.  I introduced these books to Mary F. back in the summer of 2020, and she loved them too.

NON FICTION

Continuing:

Herrin, Judith (2021) Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe. This one I read alone.

Sampson, Fiona (2021) Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I have only a few pages left. I'd have finished it by now but the author is so irritating as she insists on being in the book, and she is not interesting.

Wickham, Chris (2009) The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000. El V and I continue this aloud every night before lights out. 

~ ~ ~ ~ 

New:

Beran, Michael Knox (2010) Pathology of the Elites: How the Arrogant Classes Plan to Run Your Life.

Clark, Christopher (2013) The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.

Raven, Catherine (2021) Fox & I: An Uncommon Friendship. 

WATCH

Watch for: Vera, season 11, 1st, every Tuesday – BritBox;  Frankie Drake Mysteries, season 4, 3rd – PBS; Midsomer Murders, season 22, part 2, ? – Acorn; Crooked House (2017 film fr, an Agatha Christie novel), NF – 1st; Lucifer, season 6/final, 10th – NF; Dear White People, season 4/final, 22nd - NF; 

Continuing:

My Life Is Murder, season 2, 3rd through the 10th eps, 1st – Acorn -- sundrenched Sydney, Lucy Lawless.  Nuff Said.

~  ~ ~ ~ ~

New:

King of Boys  (2018) season 1, "The Return of the King"; Netflix Original.  I started this 7 episode series last night.

Made in Nigeria, by Nigerians, located in Lagos. Even in the first episode the show is ‘showing up’ the endless traditional internal conflicts, such as Yoruba vs Igbo.  Complicating things further we have a Nigerian version of protestant evangelical Christianity (a prosperity church, you betcha, with all the prosperity going to the head minister, natch), and so much more.

It opens media res within a prolonged party, dancing to live music. Money is being ‘sprayed’ i.e. the guests are “making it rain” – they are shoving, pouring, sticking, thousands of dollars upon the giver of the party and the musicians, a tradition in the Afro Caribbean as well as West Africa. So right away there’s a lot going on with which I have a certain level of long-time familiarity.

It’s as multi-lingual as Lagos is. The show is mostly English, but Nigerian English as well as the traditional languages of Yoruba and Igbo. Subtitles are provided then. Plus there is the local pidgin, for which the viewer might like to take advantage of closed captioning. The characters who know each other long and respect and like each frequently lapse into pidgin, a Nigerian variant of code switching done among friends, in the same way African Americans do this among each other.  There is this too -- 'King' is a woman.  She's addressed as "Oba" which is a male gendered title in Yoruba.  If one knows this right at the start, a whole lot of information is provided just by that.

Vivid, intense and not the USA at all.

~~~~~~~~~

*   Even as I type now, the rain begins. I hear it spraying against the window panes.

** See "The Density Divide and the Southernification of Rural America: The Old North/South Split Lives on in the Urban/Rural Divide"  by Will Wilkinson. Thanks to Lawyers, Guns & Money for tipping me to it.

. . . . One of the puzzles of the 2016 election, and the catastrophe of the Trump presidency, is how populist white nationalism finally prevailed at a time when Americans, taken altogether, were less racist than ever. This is one of the questions I take up in the “Density Divide.” But I left out one of my favorite answers to this question largely because it’s too speculative and I didn’t have the data to prove it. My hunch is that rural white culture, which was once regionally varied and distinctive, became more uniform by becoming increasingly Southern. I call this the Southernification thesis.

In the "Density Divide", I argued that the key to answering “Why did white ethnonationalism finally work to win the GOP nomination and then the White House when it didn’t even get close to working for Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul?” was that residential self-selection on ethnicity, personality, and education had made lower density parts of the country progressively more homogenously ethnocentric and socially conservative, which finally made it possible to unify and organize rural and exurban whites as a single constituency.

I’m confident that this is correct, as far as it goes. However, I think it’s an incomplete explanation without something like the Southernification thesis. Before it could be successfully organized politically, America’s increasingly ethnocentric non-urban white population needed to be consolidated first through the adoption of a relatively uniform ethnocentric white culture.

What I’m still groping for is solid empirical confirmation that the Southernification of white rural America did happen and, if so, how it happened. Now, I have few doubts that it did happen and is still happening. Indeed, it’s hard to think of better impressionistic evidence than the spread of Confederate flags far from the South into all parts of white rural America. But that doesn’t seem like quite enough.

But let’s suppose that it is enough. How did Southernification happen? I’m going to take this up at length in another, even more speculative, post. But here’s where I would start: When I was a kid, the Atlanta Braves somehow became “America’s Team.” Could it be that the media mogul who married Hanoi Jane took the critical first step in bringing non-urban white America together by beaming sanitized Southern culture into living rooms everywhere? . . . .

This is the most cogent explanation for what has happened that I've seen.  Of course, one doesn't see it in the Blob, which is what Lawyers, Guns & Money have taken to calling the so-called media, made up of people who have gotten whatever it is wrong almost every time, but still keep getting paid big money to keep getting it wrong.

We Take Refuge Where And When We Can

     . . . . Not been a good month here despite el V's lovely birthday, two superb Postmambo Events, and, additionally, the ophthalmologist monitoring the eye with the damaged optic nerve -- though what's going on can be signs of incipient glaucoma -- found actual improvement from the last check-up.  Maybe it's the new lenses?  Another positive thing is the spectacular greenery and the variety of greens, due to the heat and the moisture. Related to that positive are the flowers, particularly in the community garden that's been allowed to grow as it wants pretty much, without being cut back or off.  The range of vivid blossoms erupting out of the head tall greens is balm to the soul. That's purely personal though. Beyond the purely personal, things are very far away from good.

It's unnecessary for me to provide the details as to why both Haiti and Cuba are tragedies of political history, and our personal histories, that need not have happened, as surely by now all have heard of them and formed opinions, if there is among all and sundry enough interest to even bother forming an opinion -- or learning facts. Climate change feeds into both Haiti's and Cuba's disasters as well as political forces forcing both nations to go without medical supplies and food -- which forces merge into catastrophe for both the island nations. For Cuba certainly, there is no light at the end of the tunnel that begins and ends in Miami. Haiti too, as we've been told that's from where the conspiracy was hatched.

Weather They Sayers announced today our city has the most dangerous air quality of any city on the planet, due to the western US wildfires' smoke blowing right into us. One wishes to wear a good mask if one needs to go outdoors for this reason now too. Rain fell for a little while, so all that particulate from the West and Northwest can be flushed into our gardens, sewers, into the East and Hudson Rivers, the harbor and the ocean.  Like pandemics, climate catastrophe never stays in one place. No man is an island, what affects thee, affects me, and so on and so forth.

Yet despite the experts of many nations begging governments to impose mask mandates in public spaces and limit gatherings, like our own stupid mayor, the politicians and governments everywhere refuse to mandate masking and distance in public spaces now, because THE ECONOMY -- and future office seeking. So -- here we are again, spiking like crazy, including right here, when barely 2 weeks ago, our own zip code and so many others in the city and state were essentially at zero for positive tests, new infections, hospitalizations and deaths. All those anti-vaxxers, enemies of the people, surely are pleased with themselves all over again, as they bring down what's left of a health system. 

Again, with COVID, extreme weather, bikers, skateboarders, stupid tourists, guns/crime/mad/desperate people, mosquitos showing up infected with the Nile Virus, etc. etc. etc., being outdoors means anything but relaxation and refreshment, even at night. In many ways, particularly at night. But for the out-of-control, whether from racist hatred or years of being homeless or the conviction of utter privilege that no laws or regulations apply to ME shoving my Porsche at 90 MPH through the crowded streets and killing people so what? day and night make no difference.

     . . . . Spouses, Lovers, Friends, one way and another, these purely personal relationships are the greatest refuge from the horrors overwhelming our present cursed "interesting times."   About once a week, el V, B and I dine with, and catch-up with, 2 or 3 friends -- all of us vaccinated.  We've been to visit another historian in his Rhode Island beach shack, making us a mini history conference.  At the beginning of August, we will visit one of our terrific Postmambo friends in his beautiful, large old historic house upstate -- with a pool, massive yard and huge screened in annex, where we will have Thanksgiving in August, the Thanksgiving we'd planned for last November, but prudently called off due to Covid spiking, which it continued to do until the blessed vaccines showed up. But we are vaccinated, so we are keeping to the plan made last year to do our cancelled holiday celebration feast with friends this summer. Still, as originally planned, this will be a small gathering of 4 people, perhaps 5, depending on another's work schedule.

     . . . . History provides refuge and escape. One does speculate others too are looking for refuge in the past, thus so very many time-travel series showing up lately -- none of which I have the least inclination to look at even the first episodes.  How fortunate, one further speculates, that it is not possible to subject the present or the past to the pressures of future colonialism for the sake of the yet unborn's survival. The future would have every right to do so, considering how ours and every preceding generation has abused Earth. But alas, we cannot go back in time and save ourselves, since we didn't already do it. Beside, those who benefit would be, as usual the very rich and protected, not the future sort of thee and me -- while the already mentioned 0.01% make massive profit out of our lack of salvation.  Until, perhaps they too, despite anal dildo shaped escape space craft, are crushed by lack of oxygen and water.

Some of these latter sorts are getting spooked by Delta, getting the idea that the economy can tank from it.  This is the only way of course we will ever get a federal mandate anywhere in the world for masking and vaccination.  One does fear it's way too late now.

We continue our own plundering of the Dark Ages with Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000. Wickham's thesis of the real changes and transformations of the West in the 5th century was the changes in the signatures of the wealthy and powerful. Free time, leisure, was the signature of wealth and power. Much of that was spent in the luxury of the country villas, where they cultivated the arts and learning, particularly the literary arts, as well as government and administration.  By the end of the 5th C, the signature of the wealthy and powerful were the manly martial arts.  The ruling class no longer affected togas as sartorial signatures of their status, but dressed like Roman army commanders.  However, even more so, the ruling class needed as much land as they could wheedle, conquer or steal. And steal away they did, which went on for centuries, as we know.

     . . . . Television has provided some good historical escape.

Straight-up historical - period scripted drama created in the present:  El Cid, 11th C, Spain and Andalus, season 2; No Sudden Move, 1950's Detroit, scripted now; The Rising Hawk, 13th C, refugeed tribes in the Carpathians invaded by the Blue Horde, scipted now; Borsalino, which was looked at here last time, is another splendid example, scripted at the end of the 1960's, located in 1930's

Women in the past re-created in the present: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (the 1920s, Melborne, scripted in the second decade of the 21st century); Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries (sequel series scripted in the second decade of the 20th C, set in  1960's Melborne when niece inherits Aunt Fisher's possession and calling) Both of these were eras in which women claimed freedom and rights Horatio had not yet dreamed of. 

The present that is now the past: Bergerac, first season of 9, begins in 1981, on bi-lingual island of Jersey, featuring the young John Nettles who grew up to become Midsomer Murders's Barnaby, scripted then; House of Cards (the original, British version -- forget Kevin Spacey -- scripted then); The Midnight Garden of  Good and Evil, set in the late 1970's, semi-fictional, scripted then, and oops can't forget Spacey coz he's the driver. These three share the commonality of period: late 1970's and the first years of the '80's.

     . . . . Fiction has provided two works of historic escape that eschew cloying froth: Katherine (the Lady Swynford, Duke of Lancaster's mistress, eventually his wife, whose children ultimately ancestored many royal figures, while living in the England of Edward II and Richard and the Bubonic Plagues) by Anya Seton; The Noble Outlaw: Crowner John Mystery Series, Book 11 by Bernard Knight. This is a  series in which it seems to be always cold, always snowing.  "Crowner" in 12th century Essex, is our contemporary "coroner"; author's day job was as coroner.

Summer 2021 Is In the House And Here Come A Lot of Firsts Since Before

     . . . .Today’s the Summer Solstice.  

Yesterday was the first day of summer.  Saturday was Juneteenth -- and a birthday party!

Saturday, f or the first time in nearly 16 months I applied some cosmetic. Lipstick cannot be done until arrival, after washing hands, of course, due to masks. Left the apartment about 5 PM, for the first time in nearly 16 months got on the subway. We took the elevator to Hosts' apartment, spent 4 hours in a NYC apartment, with ‘many’ people – about 20? – all unmasked -- but all vaccinated, it should go without saying -- again rode on the subway in company of some of the other guests,  and got home about 10:45. 

I don’t even know how to describe this thing of simultaneously ‘it was just like life as we knew it Before pandemic with each other and in those rooms’ and ‘what the ??????’  It was so normal. Except it wasn’t.

I seem to have expected that all of us have gone through some great physical transformation. But it was as in Lucifer, the final 5 eps that went up recently on Netflix, after the long hiatus to shoot After pandemic -- everybody everybody looked, sounded and behaved just like themselves -- maybe a bit thinner, but that's to be expected.  Everybody has been productive, come through well. People who were coupled before the pandemic are still with each other, clearly all of us even more strongly bonded with our partners than Before. 

But unlike previous get-togethers, the conversation was dominated, not by discussions of art, technology, gigs, teaching, and so on, but by a pandemic. Other than that the conversation tended to slide around to the real good old days, of UC-SD, and of the Kitchen, the real days of Before, when we all (mostly) met each other first.  And those who might have been with us, but had already gone, well before pandemic.

Some people at Saturday's party had gotten sick with covid. Their experiences were all over the place, none the same, except those who contracted covid did so very early in the pandemic -- and one of them, if I heard correctly, two days before New York locked down in March 2020. Travel seems to be involved one way or another. The second is that the young ones -- I'm talking under thirty -- got it far worse, and were sick much longer than the older ones who got it.

It was so interesting to hear everyone's experiences, reactions and thoughts.  Even though we are all among the privileged (though nobody rich or super rich, but we all have enough, with a little to spare; some had much larger spaces to isolate in, and some of us, well, we didn't, some of us even had even been able to leave the city), still, all our experiences were different -- other than as relationships.  We were all in good ones Before, and it is clear that these relationships are stronger than ever. None of us had seen each other physically in all this time. All of us have just in the last 10 days or week, just now, begun to re-enter 'the world' despite having been vaccinated for so long -- some since January and February even.

None of us have bee able though, or even desirous of flinging ourselves right back into our lives Before, for all kinds of reasons. Some of the institutions where people worked are gone, including a small liberal arts college that closed down for good this winter.  Live music, and traveling for it, is still not regarded as safe among our kind.  Artists have lost galleries, and some have lost their museum commissions, even as the institutions shut down. Flying all over the world, all the time, living half the year in a different country -- none of this is possible right now.  Moreover, none of us really want to go back to schedules we had Before, it seems, particularly the traveling part. That is particularly unexpected by many of us: we liked staying home, with family.  None of us are racing to go to restaurants. We have no interest in going to movies. Any travel this summer is about seeing family, or something like, as in our case, research.  

All of us isolated immediately, wore masks and gloves, disinfected everything, and got vaccinated as soon as we possibly could.  Several of us were among those standing in the extreme cold and snow at the mass vaccination sites -- many of us went through hell trying get a vaccination appointment, not just once, but for the second dose too.  Every one is well informed about covid, and believes another surge is inevitable due to delta and gamma and other variants. 

Out came this big birthday cake -- a carrot cake.  I don't know about anyone else but it was my first carrot cake in probably two years.  

Of course we had a champagne toast. We are all still alive and healthy, still standing, still creating, still loving our partners and families, and each other. How more privileged than that can we get?

We are part of the archetype of our city that makes the fascist international shudder and sneer at it -- yet -- holy cow -- we dare to remain and persist.

Like I say -- privileged, that is us.

And very lucky too. Because the cost of the pandemic is starting to arrive, and I don't mean only with inflation and the higher prices for just about everything across the board, and shortages of things, due to supply line/labor shortages.

The greatest cost is the people we have lost due to them not getting the medical attention they needed soon enough.  A friend died today, of cancer, for that very reason.  He would be alive, if not for the utterly impossible wreckage made of dealing with covid from the frackin' gitgo. We know who is to blame.

Red Letter, Er, Red Number Days, They Are Here

      . . . . Am looking at my wall calendar, above the computer desk. 

O my, there are red reminder circles around quite a few dates!  Which hasn't been the case in nearly 16 months, generally speaking.  Additionally, there are the arrows running across a week of dates indicating when el V leaves for Miami, and when he returns. Holy Cow! He has a research residency at the Ayallah Archive at the Florida International University.  This will include giving a webinar while in residence at the Diaz Ayala Center of Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute on Thursday, July 1, at 2 pm Eastern: "Teaching the Cuban Discography: The Archive as Clave." As the title suggests, he's preparing a course in the Cuban discography.

~~~~~~~

. . . . The long persistent 'heat dome' disintegrated a couple of days ago.  My toes are confused. After such a nice time of sandal freedom, they are back in sox and boots, with long sleeves and / or light sweater outside. Which means that the coming week looks like 'normal' lovely June weather of earlier years.

Nevertheless, it's difficult to rejoyce too much. The They Sayers are saying covid's here for good. Why yes, just forget about that herd immunity fantasy.  Ain't happening, ain't gonna happen, folks. Why yes, this is no kind of surprise.

Due to Delta spread it does seem the UK isn't going to completely open this week, which is good.  But we're wide open here, so we know what to look forward to.

While the new surges in Southeast Asia are of course hitting hard the factory workers who make everything we USians use.  Again, not a surprise, is this? Along with this is the ever-increasing housing crisis in this nation.  Much of this is caused by capitalism, all right. The wide-spread, grinding, relentless poverty -- just starting with utterly unaffordable housing -- in the USA is a deliberate policy choice:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/opinion/stimulus-unemployment-republicans-poverty.html?

And yet so many obscenely wealthy wonder why so many of us believe they are the greatest danger to family, community, society and security ever created.

~~~~~~~~~~

. . . .  WATCHING:  Lupin, Part 2, went up on Netflix this weekend. 

My goodness the writers, camera people and editors do tension in this show. It's breathtaking how many narrow escapes upon narrow escapes they can pile up in a single sequence of a single episode.  I've never seen anything quite like this. And while doing so they manage to create visual jokes that add commentary.

For a single sample, in one scene Our Protagonist, Assane Lupin, captured and handcuffed in a police vehicle, stops a station to refuel, naturally requests to use the bathroom -- and of course, hands cuffed behind him, requires assistance from the guardian cop. All through this sequence are people holding hoses and engaged in other activity, that with a restroom in the picture, provides comic, um, er, well ya, relief!  Only the French could have done this so elegantly, subtly, refusing to draw any attention to itself, lacking broad vulgarity (which broad vulgarity, of course the French do as much as every other culture on the planet), while containing wit.

Ya, this show is special in every way, because it is so French, making no gestures toward that blandness of deliberately trying for an international audience. Lupin was conceived from the gitgo for a French audience, not a global one.  The producers are fairly convinced that this is why the show became an unexpected  international blockbuster -- it is relaxed within its French context, from source material to culture to cast, to locations.

~~~~~~~~~~

 

. . . . READING: The Horde: How the Mongols Changed The World (2021) by Marie Favereau. 

Definitely in the top 5 of the books read this year.  I don't like it that I've only a few more pages left to read in this book. It was so pleasant to sink into Eurasia in the era given to us by Chinggis Khan, until the Bubonic Plague and other factors diminished the bloodlines of the Hordes, and the rise of the Ottomans.  Believe it: if you think you know about the Mongols and what they did, you very likely do not, as one learns by reading this book. A solitary sample: how many of us have even considered how much the Hansa trading consortium depended on, and was integrated into the Hordes' commercial system?

Having concluded Justinian's Flea as our bedtime together Read-Aloud, we have embarked on a very old book, recommended by the author of same, but published way back in 1971, Peter Brown's The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150-75. Thus in many ways, presenting a perspective that contemporary scholarship no longer supports. It's a slim book, during which one does frequently observe, "My! how late antiquity has changed in the 21st century!"

We will follow this as our Read-Aloud with The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (The Penguin History of Europe - 2009), by Chris Wickham.  All our faves included -- Goths! Vandals! Mameluks! Mongols! Ottomans!  And most of all, Charlemagne!

I remain puzzled though: why does the Eastern Empire interest me so much less than either the old or new Western Empire, or the Mongols or the Turks?

~~~~~~~~~

* I do not need to be informed that French expression can and does resort to that kind of humor as much as does every other culture in the world. Ha!

The Merry Month of Vaporous May

      . . . .  Much cooler today – 60’s, not the high 80’s of the last week.  This is the longest stretch without rain since the drought of 2012.  I hope the rain indicated for the weekend materializes. 

 ~~~~~~

WHERE WE ARE

The messages, social and professional, arriving in from people coming to NYC for various reasons, starting last week, who want to get together, increase every day. Right on annual schedule too, people are already arriving here from other states and countries for Gay Pride.

Well, They Declared the City completely open as of last week.  So I guess we're open, all right.  Everyone sounds so excited, while my own feelings are ... well, things don't seem to have changed for me very much.  Except the noise and horror of the restaurants get worse and worse.  Thursday the entire community, even other restaurants who get frequently cited for over-crowding and noise, had to call the police several times, because Laduree was so insanely beyond the pale. 

Then a second building on Bleecker Street, meaning also a whole lot of homes, within three weeks, went out, due to fire.  The fire department just couldn't get to the fire in time to save anything -- because of the goddamned realestaterestaurant covid sheds blocking all the streets and sidewalks.  I said this was inevitable, but was not allowed to vocalize this or write it by those I attempted to address who are responsible for this insanity in first place, which They insist is permanent and the best thing that every happened to NYC.

Politicians here locally racing to promise full, in person, public school education this fall. But to even minimally adhere to health issues, starting with distance, we need far more classrooms, thus more teachers and more buildings.  The kids may or may not be required to be vaccinated in the age groups for which vaccine is available, but teachers and staff are not -- across the board, from all the mayoral hopeful candidates. Sure, yes! they all say!  We will hire teachers to take the place of those who for health reasons do not wish to return in the fall. 

It's like these jerkwaddie politicians, despite all them boasting their own parenthood, have no idea how miserably teachers are treated and have been for decades.  Even before the pandemic teachers were quitting.  Enrollment in education depts. are way down.  Why go into so much debt to get  job that pays shyte, in which one is personally and as a member of a group treated like shyte, having to balance all the cray cray of conflicting local political, religious and cultural bs -- none of which have anything to do with educating anyone in anything. Additionally, ALL these jerkwaddie politicians, beginning with the current mayor, blithely opine how among other work this fall, teachers must be prepared to play counselor to All the Kids' traumas from the pandemic, integrate them back into socialization in groups, proper behavior and on and on.  Not a mention of course that the teachers themselves may very well have plenty of trauma from the pandemic, not to mention already being burned out working out how to handle the myriad of troubles and problems they've had to deal with in the virtual realm of education and dealing with the children.

It's as though these jerkwaddies think teachers, like nurses, are a magical, ever naturally renewing resources, that they can just say, "More," and immediately materializing are all the needed teaches, with all the skills, socialization, expertise, experience and love that are to keep our kids healthy, safe from crazies with guns, and fulfill every specific need of every specific student, of the, how many students they are to deal with every day. But we crow about all the money we're pouring into the restaurant businesses and bringing back tourism. Nothing for people who LIVE here and contribute instead of mere exploiting and extracting. 

~~~~~~~~~~~

BOOKS

The two books that have enthralled me these last weeks are Will Rosen's Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire (2007), and A.N. Wilson's Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker (2017).  

Justinian Flea's a re-read, this time aloud, with el V, at bedtime. He'd not read it before and is fascinated by the content, which ranges from how the architects created the Hagia Sophia, to in graphic, grisly, scientific detail the operation of the flee that propagates the Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for Bubonic Plague.

Charles Darwin is an examination of the naturalist's construction of his genius and his theories, and all the many others in the field who contributed, all with in the deep and broad context that is the Victorian eras in which they all operated.  This one received outraged and scathing reviews from many, all insisting everything Wilson wrote is wrong.  However, as I'm now nearly finished with Charles Darwin, and I too know a very great deal in depth and breadth of the Victorian eras, politically, culturally and intellectually, with a lot of knowledge of the figures involved, which I've been acquiring since about age 16. These critics often seem to have read something else, or out of the context within which Wilson is writing -- and Darwin himself is writing.  But not always. There are contradictions that Wilson makes often to his own arguments. He writes very well, so there is this additional pleasure, as well as knowing a great deal, of arguing with the author, so this has been a joy to read.

~~~~~~

SCREENS

I've watched a lot of Acorn TV this month.  Three non-Acorn screen works have made a particular mark on my hour after dinner watching.

First is Mare of Easttown, featuring Kate Winslet as the centered character of Mare.  As this contained mini series hasn't yet concluded, that's all I'll say for now, other than I am liking it enormously.  I'll explain why, once it finishes -- if the finale lives up to the previous episodes, that is. 

The second Big Watch is the 4th, the latest season of the Neapolitan series, Gomorrah. It's a long one, in a way that usually UK and US series no longer are. Have only reached the 5th episode. Like Mare of Easttown, Gomorrah, which began on Netflix, is on HBO.

The third worthy watch is via Netflix, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (2017) Joan Didion’s life and times.  It is a fascinating watch on a variety of levels, not only because it centers, w/o ever vaunting/saying it, one of the few public intellectuals and commentators of the last 1/2 of the 20th century's USA, who is a woman -- and didn't come out of academia. The establishment of the non-academia affiliated New York Review of Books, did so much for her profile. It was a different time for writer-thinker-journalists, with so many outlets, including Look Magazine, for exhibiting their ideas.  None of that exists now. 

Didion's  trajectory and perspective on so much is not part of Gloria Steinem's, or the clown, Germaine Greer's.  IOW, like Susan Sontag, Didion didn't begin with, or arrive at her ground-breaking career, via the propellant of self-identifying as a member of any overtly political feminist group or organization, or even academia. Which is fascinating in its own right, because like many other ground-breaking, high achieving women before 'Feminism', in other ages, Didion was stalwartly supported and encouraged by a parent, in Didion's case, her mother.

It certainly helped, that like Steinem, cameras loved both Didion and Sontag.

~~~~~~~~~

HOW IT IS 

It's been busy, and very productive here all month, yet I persist feeling unanchored, free-floating.  I keep wondering who am I? who are we? as a city, as a nation, as human beings? Will my very ill friend survive, or will there be yet another loss long betimes?   My sense is that we are all falling further and further and further behind reality.

Sally Go Round the Roses*

      . . . . A third consecutive beautiful May morning!  

    

Yesterday I saw this year's first roses.  The green of the foliage in Washington Square Park and LaGuadia Place was nearly overwhelming, so fresh and vigorous.

Though I continue double-masking, even in the street, unless sitting quietly with a friend outdoors, yesterday was as perfect as a day can be These Days. It began with the third substantial unexpected check this week out of past music-book-movie work.  I had activities all day!

Walked to meet up for a sort of lunch-picnic with librarian friends in the garden of the Jefferson Market branch library, whose garden is famous for its roses. 

Continued on to Best Buy, went inside and purchased a protector-cover-stand for the new Tablet el V got me on Sunday.  Walked up to Union Square, got croissants in the Green Market. For once I ignored nutrition, fiber, fat, sodium, sugar, and gave the mouth what the mouth wants. 

Turned around and entered DSW, rode the escalator to the shoe department, where I tried on quite a few, and purchased a pair of sandals and a pair of sneakers. Enjoyed the later afternoon sunshine, stopped at LaGuardia Place to rest, chatting with amigo K for half an hour about books and the Gwendolyn Midlo Hall event later in the night, organized by Postmambo, CubaNOLA, in company with the American Studies Department at Berkeley, and the Institute of Gulf Studies (which el V's early work on New Orleans and Cuba had quite an influence of awareness of the Gulf itself as a geography and culture that is not the Carribean, despite the flow and currents) at Tulane.  K, with C and MIL attended the Webenair, as did nearly 200 others, among whom were a lot of friends, whom we've not seen yet in person. It was a wonderful event, providing great satisfaction, judging by the emails last night and this morning.

The occasion was the publication, as of May 11th, of Gwen's memoir, Haunted By Slavery: A Memoir of a Southern White Woman in the Freedom Struggle.

Today is good too -- and even warmer, as tomorrow is supposed to be. The mayor announced that as of today our city has the .lowest rate of Covid-19 positivity in 7 months -- under 2%.  O my.

I haven't had days like this in over two years, since the weather had been wintery already in 2019 mid-late fall.  I was so happy-giddy by bedtime last night it was like the ecstatic inebriation when 20. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*

The Jaynettes 1963 "Sally Go Round the Roses" is followed by Grace Slick's version.

People Who Don't Work From Home Both Lose Their Jobs and Are To Be Forced to Take Jobs

      . . . .  "It’s Been Hard Not to Roll My Eyes”  and  "Pay A Living Wage Or Flip Your Own Damned Burgers."

....Many of these workers resent that people upset over being asked to return didn’t display the same concern for the safety of those who have been there all along. And they wonder why they’ve been left out of so much of the national narrative about what this year has been like for workers. They haven’t been stuck at home baking bread or going stir crazy from being cooped up with family members; they’re out risking their lives working with the public and/or in close quarters with colleagues every day, and they feel invisible in much of the conversation about pandemic life. More than anything, they’re deeply, deeply exhausted....

Goes right along with this WaPo's story about yet another expanding restaurant owner,  thinking we should all 'weep for me', unable as he and the industry are, at finding enough people to work in their intolerable conditions, for pennies and no bennies. 

The comments, which number, last time looked, hit nearly two thousand, are about 99.09 contemptuous of these guys.

I am particularly am contemptuous because this where the financial speculation industry, capitalists in general and rethugs in particular always point when pronouncing that 'people don't want to work and prefer collecting massive government benefits.  So make unemployment illegal!"  See: South Carolina, etc. Same states passing Jim Crow voting repression laws, who have 'right to work' / no right to unionize laws, etc. Also, recall these are the states that made it illegal for labor, i.e. African Americans, to leave neighborhoods and states and go elsewhere for work outside of sharecropping and domestic work.

https://money.yahoo.com/south-carolina-cancels-federal-unemployment-benefits-212914813.html

https://abcnews.go.com/US/south-carolina-montana-declining-federal-unemployment-funds-huge/story?id=77553102

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/montana-south-carolina-ending-participation-in-fed-unemployment-programs.html

Why are they weeping though?  They've gotten what they've been howling about for decades: deportation and anti-immigration.  They promised then wages here would go up -- A Good Thing!  Now they have it, and yet, yet, yet, persist in whining ... about wages going up.

In the meantime the restaurant industry, i.e. owners and landlords, has gotten billions in federal  relief. Not to mention whole transfers of public, tax-payer owned property, for absolutely zero payment – nor do they even clean the messes their covid sheds make in the gutters, streets and on the sidewalks, where, of course pedestrians, blind people and people in wheelchairs can’t even navigate a path -- again, capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich.  This also reminds me a great deal of England and Europe in wake of the 14th centuries first three great waves of pandemic Bubonic Plague, passing laws to keep prices for wages for labor and prices of commodities exactly what they were prior to the Plague, even though so many had died (which contributed greatly to all sorts of social mobility upward for non-aristos in the 14th and 15th centuries).

And ya, there is, and will be, inflation of up the wazoo, due to choked, interrupted, halted supply chains for absolutely everything, everywhere in the world, along with some damned bad harvests due to not only pandemic, but catastrophic weather.  It's going to get quite bad, one may think indeed, if judging by historical periods in which pandemic coincided with bad harvests and labor shortages -- while war continued, unabated.

Homo Saps are too stupid to survive.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And GD!  Americans Will Lose Unemployment Benefits If They Turn Down Jobs, NPR SAYS Biden Says, just now.

Except Biden said NO SUCH THING. Not even in the text NPR posts under that headline.  Shame, Shame, SHAME! on NPR.  Gods I loathe NPR.

Biden, in his Monday remarks to reporters, pushed back on the suggestion that funds from the progressive relief package were being abused in any meaningful way and encouraged employers to offer competitive wages to court Americans back into the workforce.

"My expectation is that as the economy comes back, these companies will provide fair wages and safe work environments, and if they do, they'll find plenty of workers. And we're all going to come out of this together and better than before," he said.

"No one should be allowed to game the system."

Biden said that while he took allegations of fraud seriously, the government could not "turn our backs" on those who had lost jobs as a result of the pandemic. He placed the blame for the sluggish state of the national economy on his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, who Biden said "bungled" his handling of the virus and its fallout.

"We'll insist that the law is followed with respect to benefits. But we're not going to turn our backs on our fellow Americans. Twenty-two million people lost their jobs in this pandemic through no fault of their own. They lost their jobs to a virus, and to a government that bungled its response to the crisis and failed to protect them," Biden said.

SHAME, SHAME, SHAME on NPR.

But it's still hard to take, hearing Biden say that anybody offered an appropriate job must take it or lose benefits.  How does he get to decide what is an appropriate offer?  So it will be the chiseling, cruel restaurant owners.  Shame on you too, Biden.

Long Time Gone: Emergence

      . . . . It's May 7th!  Nor has there been a post here since last month, on the 14th.  I guess . . . things just happen . . . or don't happen?

True, a great deal has happened, while it continues to feel as though nothing is happening -- which that latter is untrue, that nothing is happening, because a lot has gone down and is happening  and is going to happen, from dental appointments to planning the end-of-June trip to . . .  Miami . . . in fulfillment of the grant provided to perform discographic research in the Diaz-Ayala Collection.  Not one's preference for first plane trip in 16 months, etc., but one goes where the materials are, when creating a syllabus for a Discography Studies, a program that has never ever existed. 

Next week Postmambo and NOLA Reconnect host, in cooperation with The New Orleans Center for the Gulf South and University of California, Berkeley- American Studies, A Conversation With Gwendolyn Midlo Hall:

Haunted by Slavery: A Southern White Woman in the Freedom Struggle

Thursday, May 13, 2021 / via Zoom / 8 pm Central Daylight Time (9 pm Eastern)

Invite link: https://tulane.zoom.us/j/93931683186?pwd=bEcrMFhUYUMzajBTWnRJdVpkMklXdz09

Please join us in celebrating together with pathbreaking historian Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall the publication of her long-awaited memoir, Haunted by Slavery: A Southern White Woman in the Freedom Struggle.

From the Haymarket press release:

The memoir of Gwendolyn Midlo Hall offers today's activists and readers an accessible and intimate examination of a crucial era in American radical history.  

 Born in 1929 New Orleans to left-wing Jewish parents, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's life has spanned nearly a century of engagement in anti-racist, internationalist political activism. In this moving and instructive chronicle of her remarkable life, Midlo Hall recounts her experiences as an anti-racist activist, a Communist Party militant, and a scholar of slavery in the Americas, as well as the wife and collaborator of the renowned African-American author and Communist leader Harry Haywood.

    Telling the story of her life against the backdrop of the important political and social developments of the 20th century, Midlo Hall offers new insights about a critical period in the history of labor and civil rights movements in the United States.

    Detailing everything from Midlo Hall's co-founding of the only inter-racial youth organization in the South when she was 16-years-old, to her pioneering work establishing digital slave databases, to her own struggles against cruel and pervasive sexism, Haunted by Slavery is a gripping account of a life defined by profound dedication to a cause.

Produced by NOLA Reconnect, Postmambo Studies, and CubaNOLA Arts Collective, in association with the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University and the University of California at Berkeley American Studies. Admission is free.

Then there's always Postmambo Movie Night, which needs a lot of attention to set-up so the subscribers can have a smooth experience.

We're embarked upon planning and organizing a major move of books and music materials out of the apartment, which includes the use of professionals of all sorts. And the shredder.  I'm selling all the sf/f to a group who do very well with pop-up used bookshops in Brooklyn; they are desperate for stock.  Certain research groups will be kept, but more of them are going to be sold off, as how things are now we can't even access them, and it's highly unlikely we'll be writing any more books on these topics either.

Shopping / errands take a lot of time. My latest is shopping for a tablet, as the small computer is reaching the very end of its life.  It will be nice to have something that small, light and portable on which I can download books from the library and write and receive e-mail and have access to the internet.

We've also been very carefully initiating a slight approximation of social life, so far only with friends we know with absolute certainty are fully vaccinated, and who are doing the same. It has been very difficult to do this, which came as a shock. Thus this sense that nothing is happening.  Fortunately it seems just about everyone we know is going through this too, so we all understand each other, and there are no hurt feelings.  We'll get there certainly by the time it is warm enough to be comfortably outside at night.  None of us has any desire to meet in covid sheds or inside the restaurants.

It all feels just as weird now and hard to comprehend as it did a year ago at this time, but weird in a different way. Then we were closed down, really closed down, including a curfew. No covid sheds, no restaurant service at all except pick-up/take-out.  No library grab and go. No doctor appointments except emergencies, very emergency emergencies. Now we are very slowly attempting to come out of our cave-bubble, go shopping in real stores -- why yes, even with the tablet I've done research / comparison shopping places like Best Buy and in Apple (where one must have an appointment, as well as a mask in order to enter), buying jeans, since those from over a year ago fall off now, t-shirts and so on. 

Though the right dish drainer remains, evidently an impossibility. Moreover any place that has dish drainers has only a single variety, and it invariably is too small, is not wrongly designed for my space, which isn't, let me emphasize, is not a weird space for a dish drainer.  Cannot find one with a drainage tray that faces the right direction, fits the space, is not attached to the dish rack, large enough, no matter what.  I'm on the third one, which el V brought home the other day, and sure 'nuff, he didn't check, and the drain tray faces the wrong direction. 

But all around us, from Canada and Michigan to Mexico and Latin America, India and other places, the virus is burning down the house and a new variant seems to emerge every day -- while here the mayor and the governor race to be the one to open up the most the fastest and first w/o any restrictions of any kind -- and bring back All The Tourists, at least "36 million by the end of 2021."  One of the attractions?  Get a free vaccination injection, just walk in and probably get a Broadway ticket as swag.  This while pedestrian deaths from speeding cars, bicycles and scooters is already higher by this month than it has been in decades.

Now tell me this isn't weird.