Blog interrupted

We're off to see the world until late August. This isn't politics; it's curiosity. The destination is Mongolia, visiting sheep herders and yurts and the vast steppe. Hope to come back invigorated and somewhat rested and ready for a vigorous fall season.

Friday cat blogging -- neighborhood watch

Nope -- he's not one of ours. Though we have a similar looking one, perhaps even larger. This one keeps guard on a nearby street and didn't bother to move when a big stranger pointed a camera at him.

Memories of delight

There are so many ways to reflect on America 250. I loved this one. 

The Center for Asian American Media writes: 

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, we’re looking through our Memories to Light archives of home movies from our community and are moved by how Asian Americans have long been an integral part of our nation. 

Memories to Light is CAAM’s archive of Asian American home footage from across the country, spanning six decades (1920s through the 1980s). These images embody shared social, cultural, and political representations of Asian America and demonstrate the importance of collective storytelling as a path toward greater understanding of the Asian American experience. 

What a gift! 

Friday cat blogging -- sleepy time

Unlike most of the country, summer in San Francisco is cool and gray. Our cats, after being fed and loved by their human servants, take the mist to signal they should take naps.

What a life!

A season complete ...

Many thanks for all the kind birthday greetings yesterday. We celebrated by watching the lackluster performance by the US men's soccer team. Congrats to Belgium and all the worthy teams in the World Cup.

Of course the Orange Toddler had to do all he could to pollute the occasion. Heather Cox Richardson sums up his intervention in favor of a suspended US star player:

But a world in which playing fields are level is not the world Trump wants. He wants one in which people in power can ignore the rule of law for their own ends. 

Most of us prefer just law, equal opportunity, and a "decent respect for the opinions of [human]kind." 

This year I've come to delight in the idea of spending the couple of weeks stretching from Juneteenth through Independence Day as a season for reflection on the country, its history, its incomplete aspirations. I think that's a worthy practice.

Now back to the grind of freedom's constant struggle ... 

Flowers for a quiet Sunday

San Francisco is surprisingly verdant. It's the dry season, yet the season of thick fog. Observed on neighborhood walks:

 Proving once again, sun and sweat are not the only way to do summer.

On the eve of the July 4 holiday

When I was a child, the preeminent patriotic song was not "The Star Spangled Banner" ... Too formal and too hard to sing. For some, the song might have been "God Bless America" belted out on vinyl by Kate Smith. But mostly, the patriotic anthem was "My country 'tis of thee ..." Perhaps this had something to do with our proximity Canada where, incongruously to American ears, the same tune served as a national anthem pledging allegiance to British monarchy. Obviously an adaptable tune.

With this in mind, I was delighted to stumble upon this wonderful iteration contributed by W.E.B.Dubois:

... Of course you have faced the dilemma: it is announced, they all smirk and rise. If they are ultra, they remove their hats and look ecstatic; then they look at you. What shall you do? Noblesse oblige; you cannot be boorish, or ungracious; and too, after all it is your country and you do love its ideals if not all of its realities. Now, then, I have thought of a way out: Arise, gracefully remove your hat, and tilt your head. Then sing as follows, powerfully and with deep unction. They’ll hardly note the little changes and their feelings and your conscience will thus be saved:

My country tis of thee,
Late land of slavery,
         Of thee I sing.
Land where my father’s pride
Slept where my mother died,
From every mountain side
         Let freedom ring!

My native country thee
Land of the slave set free,
         Thy fame I love.
I love thy rocks and rills
And o’er thy hate which chills,
My heart with purpose thrills,
         To rise above. ... 

There are two additional verses.  

Still on a brain break ...

I stumbled foggily out to a store yesterday still full of rhinoviruses and found myself among crowds of lovely young women making their way to Dolores Park for the Dyke March. The scene reminded me of this classic lesbian poster by my friend Michele Lloyd.

And that's only a tiny slice of us. Happy Pride to all.

Regular posts will resume tomorrow, I hope. 

Blog hiatus

I'm having what's either ferocious allergies or an atypical head cold. Blogging will resume when I can breathe.

Go ahead, make up a story

I usually don't pause to take pictures while getting in my laps around Blue Heron Lake in Golden Gate Park. But this was too good to leave uncaptured ...

You have to wonder, what was the husband in question doing? ... Or not doing? ...

Father's Day 2026

Roger looks pleased with himself, doesn't he? Although he remained fairly fit until he no longer could keep going, he didn't much go in for physical labor. On some photos like this, my mother wrote derisively, "Posed!" Later in life, she did the shoveling. 

This was in Buffalo, sometime in the winter of 1938, almost a decade before I arrived on the scene. He was in his mid-30s here.

If loving a child and doing no harm is enough -- and I sure think it is -- he was a good father.

Thought for a Wednesday.

Busy today. I find myself living in a construction site; thirty years of deferred maintenance has its - expensive - consequences. I am sometimes distracted.

The early 20th century four-story school building across the street is an even larger construction site --and  has been now for a couple years and looks to take a few more to get finished.  

As soon as the workers across the street put up plywood to cover their fencing, the graffiti gremlins come out. They promote the neighborhood sentiment,

'Nuff said, for a busy day.

A morning walk around Bernal Hill

Actually just the lower flanks of the neighborhood, but it's quite clear what people care about here.

A new crop of signs spring up for the season. 

These San Franciscans are not only vocal, but also verbal.

A feel good story:: Billie Jean KIng graduates from college

I'm going to outsource this one entirely to another Greatest Of All Time, Kareem Abdul Jabbar:

“Shut up and dribble!” The phrase is so ubiquitous these days, and it seems like I’ve heard it said so many times, it’s hard to believe it’s been around for just eight years. That’s right, it was in February 2018 when Fox News personality Laura Ingraham first said those words which, as a basketball player who has always spoken his mind, I found so repugnant. Ingraham prefaced her “witticism” (“witlessism”?) by saying, “It’s always unwise to seek political advice from someone who gets paid $100 million a year to bounce a ball.” This, after LeBron James had the nerve to criticize President Donald Trump as “someone who doesn’t understand the people,” and whose recent comments were “laughable and scary.” Hardly a controversial take: anyone who doesn’t get their information from the so-called news channel that employs Ingraham had no doubt reached the same conclusion long before LeBron put it into words. In point of fact, athletes are just as likely to have something worthwhile to say about politics and contemporary society as Fox News talking heads, or the ten men who could buy the world—or certain Presidents of the United States.

This comes to mind now because Billie Jean King, one of the greatest tennis players of all time as well as one of the sports world’s greatest and most outspoken humanitarians, earned her college diploma earlier this week, at the tender age of 82… 65 years after first enrolling at Los Angeles State College (now Cal State Los Angeles). She originally left in 1964 after three years to focus on her burgeoning tennis career and returned last year to complete her class work and get her bachelor’s degree in history as well as serve as commencement speaker.

It’s not every day someone older than I am graduates from college, and it’s even more rare when that person was winning professional sports championships in my same era. Over the course of her career, King won 12 major singles titles, including six at Wimbledon and a career Grand Slam. (She also won 16 majors in doubles and 11 in mixed doubles.) In 1972, she won the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open, and became the first woman to win what was previously known as Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year Award, sharing that year’s honor with one of my greatest personal heroes, my UCLA coach John Wooden. (I won my second NBA MVP Award that year and scored a career best 34.8 points a game; I was probably wondering what you had to do to win a Sportsman of the Year Award!)

But for all Billie Jean King did on the tennis court, her impact may have been even greater off the court. She led the push for equal pay at Grand Slam tournaments, and her threat to boycott the 1973 US Open led to that tournament becoming the first major where men and women earned the same prize money. That same year, she became the founding president of a new women’s player’s union, the Women’s Tennis Association, or WTA. She also helped found the first women’s professional tennis tour (the Virginia Slims) and World Team Tennis, offering many female players their first true opportunity to earn a living wage. And on top of all that, she defeated the former men’s Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs in the legendary Battle of the Sexes tennis match. Granted, Riggs was 55 years old to King’s 29, but Riggs had just destroyed the great Margaret Court in a similar match by the score of 6-1, 6-2, and the very idea of equal prize money was being called into question as a result. King embarrassed the self-proclaimed male chauvinist Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in front of more than 30,000 people at the Houston Astrodome, while an estimated 90 million watched on TV worldwide.

Outside of the tennis world, she was one of a brave group of women who allowed Ms. magazine to report that they’d undergone abortions in 1972, before Roe v. Wade made the procedure legal nationwide. In 1981, she became the first female athlete to come out as a lesbian at a time when discrimination and ostracization were all too common for anyone even suspected of being gay. As it happened, she came out unwillingly, when a former partner sued her for palimony; but the fact that she revealed her orientation rather than submitting to an extortionate settlement before the lawsuit was filed showed that she would face public opprobrium rather than be bullied or shamed into silence.

She was great friends with her fellow tennis champion and social justice warrior Arthur Ashe, and guarded the secret of his AIDS diagnosis for years before he went public. After his death, she remained a staunch advocate for people with AIDS. In 1999, she won the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, and their names will be always be linked in the tennis world: the grounds where the US Open tennis tournament is played is called the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, while its showcase court where all its biggest matches are played is in Arthur Ashe Stadium.

As an athlete who always wanted to do something greater for my community and the rest of the world, Billie Jean King is someone I’ve looked to as a model for athletic activism. I don’t know what the tennis equivalent of “shut up and dribble” is—“shut up and serve” perhaps?—but you can bet that if Billie Jean ever heard those words, she would have ignored them.

Congratulations, Billie Jean, you’ve made all Americans proud!

I don't know of many male athletes who have responded to great women athletes with this kind of generosity and respect. There may be guys I've missed ... But Kareem not only affirms King's greatness here, but demonstrates his own.

Friday cat blogging

Here's a cute one.

Mighty curious too.

 Perhaps a distant relative of Janeway? In any case, this Mission District cat was eager to inspect the passerby.

Thought for a rainy Monday

Back to the fray on Tuesday.

Strange times we live in

A friend sent me the original "Trump as Jesus raising the dead among the demons" image which you've probably seen. Yes, he posted it. Apparently even Trump's evangelical supporters blew a gasket and he's taken it down. 

But another friend posted an "improved" version which I share here:

Quite a cast of characters. Seems emotionally right. The guy is losing the few marbles he had.

We give a f**k

That distinguished commentator on journalist practice and ethics Margaret Sullivan recognized immediately that the Orange Toddler's bleat would cause trouble for honest working reporters. 

The moment I saw Trump’s crazy and dangerous Truth Social post on the morning of Easter Sunday, I could imagine the freakout in newsrooms across the country. The essence of it would be something like this: “How much of this do we publish? How do we report this without breaking with every one of our standards and traditions?” 

The President of the United States demanded: "Open the Fuckin' Strait ..."

Later in the day, and by Monday morning, it was easy to see the results of all those internal discussions.

“Expletive-filled threat,” said the AP.

“Profane” and “expletive-laden,” said the Washington Post.

“Expletive-filled ultimatum,” said USA Today.

All I can say is that, the walls here in the San Francisco Mission district don't do euphemism.

 

Some political commentary looks quite elegant. 

 

Some uses posters. We encourage youth participation.

 

Some window signs are bilingual.

When we go to protest, we don't moderate our language.

 

Hey, we've got our own standards! 

It was the women who laid Jesus' body in the tomb

This work by Arthello Beck.hangs in the worship space/chapel at the Interdenominational Theological Centre in Atlanta, Georgia. I am haunted ...

Good Friday

I fear I am largely allergic to poetry. Too often, it seems to flow at a pace and by a course that my mind doesn't grasp. (Since Erudite Partner is a poet, this is an unfortunate disability.)

Lucas van Leyden, 1517

But very occasionally, a poem gets through to me. This meditation/poem did so this morning as I sought to engage with the commemoration of the execution of Jesus.

Nobody crucified Jesus

Religious leaders accused,
culture made excuses,
politicians gave orders,
people in the streets went along,
friends left him to the system,
and the army pounded nails.
Who do you blame for that?

We live in a cross-shaped world
that believes in the expedience
of other people’s pain.
The most injurious to God
are those with good reasons.

Even the most powerful
have only the power someone gave them.
What evil have I helped to empower?
What part of me helped create this evil?
Am I ready for it to be healed?

Just as we found ways, working together,
to do evil,
it will take a lot of us working together
to do good. 

By Steve Garnaas-Holmes; h/t Diana Butler Bass.