: lower black pain.

In the song “ABC”, Mr. Berry Gordy defined reading, writing, and arithmetic as the “branches of the learning tree”. For myself, education has always bloomed far lusher than that Charlie Brown Christmas-esque image. There’s art and science and language and circus skills and then practical stuff like learning to tie your shoes or re-close the bread bag with that little flat plastic thing. Life in ou...

I am taking a break between seasons, which I’ve never been able to really do before because I’ve never really had a season of anything, but things are crazy here and it’s back-to-school time and I’m recovering from another bout of some sort of biological injustice and just need a little bit of a moment to get my metaphorical Trapper Keeper together. Also, my real one. Ok, it’s from Kinokuniya but...

Last Saturday was “soda fountain day”, something we celebrate every year; also, a product of our desperation to create “staycation” events during the lockdowns. Most of these have taken the form of obtaining an ICEE slush drink and novelty straw, then giving ourselves conspicuous brain freeze outside in front of the 7-11. But in recent years, we’ve staged taste tests between classic sodas. This we...

I took a walk.  In Manhattan. Driving is easy; I parallel park the car like I’m bulls-eyeing womb-rats in Beggar’s Canyon, but walking it’s just me. I used to walk there everyday, but then I retired, and lockdown, and everything. I felt a little vulnerable; I mean, I wasn’t barefoot, guess you can’t be more protected than Doc Martens, but I’m only mentioning it because I was a little nervous, whic...

The blanket’s name is Ned . I didn’t name it, but it’s my blanket, or it was until everybody discovered how nice a waffle weave blanket is – just the right amount of weight yet still breathable. I’m not bitter about it, I just never thought to name it. I wanted one for ten years, and finally ordered it, paid for it, it came to the house, I unpacked it, put it on the bed and you’d think it would be...

I’m not really from a “reading the instructions first” kind of family. We changed light switches, tried out new appliances, even opened up a coconut for the first time by winging it, mostly. I mean we turned the electricity off, or looked at all the pieces, or laid out some newspaper first, but we didn’t begin with directions, just basic knowledge broadly combined , confident, as if we were frosti...

As a child of the 80s… well, 70’s… the high 60’s, my concept of luxury should have been heavily influenced by television shows, particularly one entitled Dynasty. I’m sorry, the title of the show was “Dynasty”; the people on the show were entitled (misspoke there). It was a television program about rich people and their problems. These people lived in a world filled with luxury. They changed cloth...

We’ve lost a lot of stuff in the couch and I’m wondering if it’s gone forever. We can’t just shake the couch and get the stuff out, it’s in a null space, a realm between what is and what isn’t. I put my hand in there as far as I could, enduring mysterious scratches from what I pray are mysterious crumbs of some sort, and wished for the very first time that if I had a superpower it would not be fli...

There used to be located in the heart of Manhattan’s SOHO an irrationally fancy food store named Dean and Deluca, a great place to invest a significant amount of what should be your children’s inheritance on an apple and a pouch of French lentils. Lines were long for coffee and nibbles in the morning, and then again right about that time in the afternoon when folks south of Houston convinced thems...

It’s the uniform that commands respect; a beacon to all who pass that this individual has made a selfless decision to regard others above themselves, committing to a life of service and community support. That’s why nuns are cool. I was actually gonna write about nuns this week, but I’ve instead I decided to write about “the world at large”, tackling some of this madness surrounding us: people at...

I still have an original iPod. There’s one in the Museum of Modern Art. It the first thing I have that they have also, a thing I remember buying that’s now officially history , which makes me feel like I should be in the display, holding it. The idea of carrying a jukebox in your pocket is still amazing to me, but I hold vinyl albums in high respect. Playing a few of them, all the way through, is...

There are a lot of Star Trek shows now. For those of you who were “cool” in high school, Star Trek is the “beam me up” one, not the lightsabers one. Anyhow, the original, the one with Spock and Captain Kirk, still my favorite. The best music, the simplest stories, all about the future, written way in the past but entirely relevant, even now, in the actual future. Ok, well, I’m a nerd (which was a...

Grocery stores only sell groceries now. You might find shampoo, or toothpaste, and maybe some really expensive batteries, but mostly it’s just food now. When I was a kid, grocery stores used to sell anticipation . Here’s how it worked; one otherwise normal day you’d walk in and find a huge display of something entirely ungroceryish, which was being offered for nearly no money. Luxury plastic tumbl...

I like sunshine. I like most weather, except for the “WINTRY MIX”, that’s winter when it’s drunk; wet slush falling and somehow it’s dark grey even before it even hits the street. But even on the worst days, I know that sunshine exists somewhere, scientifically. And metaphorically, I’ll boldly add. I remember in grade school there was a girl in my class that used to call out when my mom came to pi...

I am not a mouse, and even if I was, I would either be one of those cute mice in nature specials that cleverly avoid snakes and hawks or a world famous French chef. You can do that, if you’re a mouse. I saw a documentary about it. Some people hate mice, the same way Indiana Jones hates snakes. Maybe they may have had a bad mouse experience, once. But when I was about six years old there was a movi...

Password is my favorite game, and my second favorite game show. It’s a word association guessing game; you give a one word hint to somebody and then they try to guess the word you’re looking at. Normally you get to put a little spin on the clue, change your voice, raise your eyebrows. Here, let me try it with you… ok… the clue is SUMMER. Ok, one of you said ”LOVIN’!’” and I know who you are, and I...

I think I’m getting old. Er. Well, we’re always getting older, but my inner self is starting to feel more vintage than classic, reflected most strongly when either bending down to pick up something or when trying to keep all the musicians with the word Baby in their names straight (the Grammys were really confusing, although I do know all the names of every member of BTS). I guess I don’t really l...

This February 19th, around 7:30 PM, I showed a film to my family, “Watermelon Man”, about a caucasian fellow in the 1970’s who, after a traumatic tanning bed mishap, wakes up as a black man; and the ensuing hijinks which follow immediately thereafter. It was part of our homespun Black History Month Film Festival, where each February we watch all kinds of cinema influenced by / starring / written a...