Sometimes I regret teaching you words,
my daughter laments when I use kin
and stan in a sentence
about Emily Dickinson. One perk
of having kids is stepping
into culture’s river at its current point,
Spiked (Brad “Pitbull” Pigott and Mississippi’s Real Welfare Queens)
Former US Attorney Brad Pigott, who was leading the Mississippi Department of Human Services’ attempt to investigate parties that had misappropriated funds earmarked for Mississippi’s most vulnerable citizens, was fired by Governor Tater Tot Reeves because Attorney Pigott had set his sights on bringing to justice some of the most powerful figures in the state, including former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant and NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre.
Imagination (Bill Russell R.I.P.)
Only a handful of players truly changed the game; among that select few, one revolutionized it.
Democracy and Education (Bill Russell on Film)
Despite the stiff narrator (Liev Schreiber) and stock footage from the 60s, Bill Russell: My Life, My Way is mind-full. You might start around 10:30 with Russell’s nicely calibrated recollection of how he felt when another (white) center was chosen as the best player in Northern California after Russell’s USF college team had won 28 of 29 games and a national championship.
G.O.P. Hot Takes (and the Dead)
Once again, I am astonished that I can be astonished at the level of gun violence in this nation. It is so routine. And yet so astonishing.
And once again, I am astonished that I can be astonished at the level of Republican callousness. It is so routine. And yet so astonishing.
Mama Prestinary R.I.P.
My late brother Tom’s second mother (in law) died on Monday in D.R. Teresa Prestinary, of Monte Cristi and New York City, made 105. She had five children of her own but she raised plenty more on both islands. Per her grandson Jamie who told me that on vacays in D.R. he ran into hombre after hombre who thought of her as his own matriarch. I lived up the block from Mama Pres (when she was in New York rather than D.R.) and was often underfoot in her apartment or at my brother’s and sister (in law) Maria’s place across the street. In all that time I never heard Mama Pres say a cross word to anyone ever. The last of 20 children she seems to have been treated as a late gift from God by her family in D.R. So she grew up to grace everyone she met. She had a special connection with my wife (who is the first of 20 children). I can see them now shucking corn on my parents’ porch in the Berkshires, taking the breeze, and laughing together. Maybe they were talking about the odd DeMott fam they’d somehow got mixed up with. Or maybe they were recalling rites they’d performed to ward off witchcraft by Santerian drug-dealers who’d made my wife’s life hell when she opened a $10 clothing store on 140th and Bway back in the ’00s. (The two of them had tested my two year old son’s pee to see if it had prophylactic powers after my wife found chicken blood spattered on her store’s door.)
Poems from “The City Among Us”
There have been more poems in recent First batches, thanks chiefly to Alison Stone whose work and way in the world has brought other poets to us. That efflorescence, in turn, has made me think I should try harder to bring attention to the poetry of my late friend Robert Douglas Cushman. What follows are poems from his book, “The City Among Us.”
Poem for July 3rd (& Larkin Poe’s Covers)
hearing larkin poe ‘wade’ before seeing
being with them before knowing them
we was blind as willie johnson
………….(a hundred years ago)
………….(in the arms of Our Mother)
hearing what Studs T wanted me to hear
“ALL her uncles is musicians”
so how could we be [“culturally deprived”]
in the cotton patch…she won’t even say the words
P.A. Way Gone
A good friend lost his brother this week. They grew up in P.A. If only they could still go local together and hear Kurt Vile’s latest. While the video may be too twee even if my buddy wasn’t grieving hard right now, I’m hoping he might find some peace in Vile’s piece someday (soonish)…
Silver Linings
“Supreme Court further erodes separation between church and state in case of praying football coach.”
Of course they did. And they did so with the supreme confidence that comes with knowing they’re on God’s side in the matter.
Mother Cheney and The Mob
Liz Cheney speaking yesterday at the Ronald Reagan library.
The whole thing is well worth hearing, but start at 8:45 for the meat. Listen to at least 17:35, although you might not want to miss the raucous applause at 23:30 when she says, “We must not elect people who are more loyal to themselves or to power than to our Constitution.”
But then why not listen to the end, for the applause for the mention of Cassidy Hutchinson, and then Cheney’s challenge to the “girls” of the nation to become leaders because “the world is run by men, and the world ain’t doin’ so well.”
Indeed listening to the repeated applause for Liz Cheney gives me a tiny sliver of hope. Hope that there just might be enough Republicans out there who have not sold their souls to Trump to turn this thing around.
But then I watch the Jordan Klepper piece,…and my hope starts to feel very quicksand-like. And I think of the two audiences, the Reagan Library and a pro-Trump rally, and I realize that if we are to be saved, it’s conservative elites who will have to stand against what Hamilton so often referred to as “the mob.”
A Black Woman Remembers Elvis
News of the new biopic about Elvis, which focuses attention on the nexus of black cultural creativity that fed his talent, moved Marsha Music to suggest your editor repost her remembrance…
Elvis was my first love. I was 5 years old in the 1950s, and I sat in the sun on the living room floor with my legs criss-crossed, album cover on my lap, in a pool of light from the leaded-glass window near the fireplace. Motes of dust bounced and drifted in the beam of sun, fairy-like. The sun shined on Elvis Presley too, on that cover; guitar strapped across his stripe-shirted shoulder, as he gazed upward into a faraway sun, or maybe into the light of Heaven itself.
The Ship of Theseus: Dylan 2022
“You can not prescribe to a symbol what it may be used to express. All that a symbol can express it may express.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein to Bertrand Russell. 1919.
Keystone Melodies
Long ago and far away in San Francisco, that lovely city by the bay, I maneuvered myself into the food concession at the Keystone Korner, a jazz club in North Beach. It was 1975, and I had many strange and wondrous adventures there.
Human Comedy
What follows is an excerpt from a longer piece on black stand-up comedy, “Unlikely Heirs: The Comedic Children of Cosby,” that places contemporary comics in relation to Bill Cosby, including ones who are not easily seen as being in his tradition. In the course of limning the Cosby aesthetic, McInnis highlights two little miracles performed by Ali Siddiq.
I discovered Siddiq after he was already a sixteen-year vet of comedy on two episodes of Comedy Central’s This Is not Happening, “Mitchell” and “Prison Riot.”
In both episodes, Siddiq tells horrifying stories about prison life, but I was unable to stop listening or laughing. Y’all know that I don’t do blood or gore. I don’t like violence in reality or art. Thus, I don’t watch horror films or films with graphic killings. Yet, I was captivated by Siddiq and couldn’t figure out why.
Wali Ali (Ghetto Existentialist)
It’s all in Siddiq’s big eyes which signal his gift for noticing. His most expressive feature enables him to enact felt surprises that define his art.
Trouble in Mind
Monk (68) and Monk in Europe (1968) are streaming at Pioneers Works film site until June 28th. (Click on titles to watch now.)