A Pennsylvania school board president was sworn in holding a stack of banned books, rather than the Bible.
… Tracy Nelson, Mother Earth.
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The brave women of Iran ditch the mandatory hijab/black robe and join everyone else out in the street protesting the pathetic theocracy in which they are forced to live. If you want to see the future of Christian nationalism, take a look at the streets of Tehran today.
photo DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP
As England debates assisted dying, a charismatic couple in their late nineties decides they’ve had enough of “merely existing.” They went to Switzerland, although the friend quoted in my headline points out that if England had legalized assisted dying by now, they’d have been able to stay home and die among family and friends.
They sent a note to their loved ones:
Sorry not to have mentioned it, but when you receive this email we will have shuffled off this mortal coil. The decision was mutual and without any outside pressure. We had lived a long life together for almost 75 years. There came a point when failing senses, of sight and hearing and lack of energy was not living but existing that no care would improve.
We had an interesting and varied life, except for the sorrow of losing Jeremy, our son. We enjoyed our time together, we tried not to regret the past, live in the present and not to expect too much from the future. Much love Ruth & Mike.
… for the likes of Carlos Alcaraz and Yuja Wang.
… that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world.”
And beating him.
The song is beautifully written and scored, Flack’s piano has the right drift/heft for the theme, and of course her strong expressive voice carries exactly the power and pathos the poetry of the piece demands.
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At this late date, UD has lost much of her tolerance for pathos; as she has explained on this blog, she now prefers movies that feature crowds of terrified Manhattanites fleeing monsters (see Cloverfield) to films where you actually have to get to know suffering particular individuals. But for this hugely pathos-ridden song (its triple-sads usually only work when floating on a torrent of vitriol/wit) UD still makes an exception – maybe because, again, at this late date, the words evoke much-beloved actual thwarted young men living and dead (for instance, her ‘thesdan playmate David).
see the sudden smile
someone they can hold
for just a little while…
while a grimy moon
blossoms up above
all the sad young men
they cry
and making love and making love
misbegotten moon
shine for sad young men
let your gentle light
guide them home again
all the sad sad sad young men
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How powerfully she sustains the final me-e-e-n…! How she brings erotic comfort to fierce lost souls. Only the very best performers can save this song from its almost unbearable – almost inartistic! – pathos. Roberta Flack – RIP – could do that.
photo vahid salemi
“I love my black job,” [Simone] Biles wrote on X Friday… It’s an apparent dig at Trump’s controversial comments earlier this week, telling a roomful of Black journalists that immigrants are taking “Black jobs.”