At life’s start, we share a single heartbeat. We are connected to everything our mother feels and thinks. Now, especially when we love someone, our minds and bodies instinctively try to recapture a bit of that unity. We unconsciously mimic the physical gestures or posture of someone we like; we yawn when they do; we giggle just because they are laughing.
Smokers are not precisely analogous to the unvaccinated but there are important similarities. Smoking and COVID-19 are associated with severe respiratory illness. Both can harm the general public: second-hand smoke with smoking, and the easy passing of the coronavirus unless mitigated by mask-wearing and social distancing. It is the fact that the general public can be harmed that generated our response to the unvaccinated and to smokers.
Hardly anybody who got addicted to Bob Ross’s show bothered to paint. They just watched, rapt. His encouragement was comforting, like a compliment with no strings attached: “You coulda gone pro!” “You should write a book!” No expectations, no judgment. Just a happy reminder that possibilities existed.
Before the electric Miles Davis of the 1970s, before Chick Corea’s Return to Forever, or Weather Report, or the other fusion bands, there was Chico Hamilton, Charles Lloyd, and Gábor Szabó in the 1960s, who introduced the elements of avant-garde, rock-ish melodies, and youthful vibrancy that joined both Black and White musical sensibilities.
We expect so much more of ourselves than we do of dogs. We judge ourselves more harshly, compare more viciously. Granted, a show dog can outdo most narcissists in grooming hours, but that is the human companion’s doing, not the dog’s. Other animals do not judge themselves at all, and maybe that is what frees us to relate to them differently.
In honor of Claude McKay’s birthday, here are two rarely republished sonnets from his 1922 collection "Harlem Shadows," the Harlem Renaissance’s earliest book of poetry.
Who controls the corporations who control our news? A helpful index was just compiled—not by mainstream media, but by Harvard researchers exploring media’s future. Skimming the list, I see two names again and again: BlackRock Fund Advisors and Vanguard Group.
The world gets blown up so often these days that everyone has gotten used to it. Leon Spinks’s nervous system was not what it used to be, and neither was anyone else’s.
What makes the difference here? White man versus Black female? A harsh prosecutor, in Owens’s case, at a time with little oversight of the legal system? We will likely never know. But there is so much talk about inequity and injustice that it sometimes washes over me. Seeing the particulars unfold is a lot more painful.
Larry Elder, the Republican candidate in the California gubernatorial recall race, was chased from a homeless encampment yesterday, one of his campaign stops. The first question is, why would Elder, a conservative, fish for votes among the homeless. Any campaign operative would say that is…