Things I Learned This Week

Reepigee, MLK, Cooper, Englebreit, Barwick & Lattimore, and Armitage

I know everyone is probably down in the dumps, but this MLK Day, when you are finished marching, get out there and shop at a locally owned Black business.

I’m gonna shoutout a few black/Texas-owned bookstores, so if you’ve been thinking about picking up a new read, you can start here: Kindred Stories (pictured above) in Houston, Pandora’s Bookstore in San Antonio, and Black Pearl in Austin. Better yet, preorder some books by Black authors coming out this year. My picks? When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy by Beronda L. Montgomery. Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead. And one of my favorite contemporary writers, Jesmyn Ward, has a new book of essays coming out (On Witness and Repair) that will include one of the best pieces written in the last decade about her losing her husband to Covid-19. Breathtaking.

Trying to decide when to euthanize an animal is difficult. Reepigee hasn’t been the greatest dog. He’s bitten kids. Growled at people just trying to snuggle him. I always swore I wouldn’t have the kind of dog that you had to hide away when people came over, but 16 years later, here we are. This little devil is sweet, funny, wicked smart, and terrible, and has the most high-maintenance hair imaginable. He’s been banned from too many salons to count. He’s almost totally deaf and blind and has to wear an ace bandage on his back foot to have enough traction to be able to move around. Loyal, funny, and ridiculous with the most unattractive underbite in the entire universe. He loves vegetables and his Mr. Bill doll. A bastard and an angel, he’s the best and worst of all of us. Every day, we think, “Today’s the day,” but he surprises us. I’m not sure how many he has left, but right now he’s enjoying sticking his head out of the car window and standing under our feet while we cook, hoping something will jump out of the pan, and sitting with the front door open, watching the shadows go by. His days are numbered. He’s living his best life.

Been trying to get into the theater more, and I didn’t have high expectations for this movie, but in the end, it was actually a really great flick to watch as a midlife parent and partner. Is This Thing On? (directed by Bradley Cooper) only earned three and a half stars for me on Letterboxd, but so be it. There are so few movies that I want to see that show up at the theater in San Marcos without hoofing it to Austin or San Antonio, that I am more likely to settle for a ho-hum blockbuster than wait for an indie wow that never comes. Worth a watch.

Thanks to internet ads, I discovered that the 90s illustration queen, Mary Englebreit, is a full-on progressive making delightful little resist memes worthy of sharing. While I have never been a huge fan of her style—it was always a bit twee for me—I appreciate her as a mainstream, money-making artist who speaks to a certain older white lady demographic. Still, I’ll give her a shoutout just for having the balls to not worry about sullying her brand by speaking the truth. Go girl.

Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore grew up in various nether regions of the south, and it shows in their new album Tragic Magic. I’ve been listening to it for only a day, and already this vocal/harp new-agey combo is filling my heart in ways much else hasn’t been able to of late. Check out Melted Moon if you need a little serotonin lift this weekend.

Speaking of getting lifted, Michael Armitage is kinda a big deal, so you probably already know about him. I’m just learning. A British artist born in Kenya who lives and works in Nairobi and London, his work gives Gauguin color and movement, while taking back the indigenous through imagery and thoughtfulness. Instead of painting on traditional canvas, he paints on lubugo, a Ugandan ficus tree bark cloth that gives the paintings a good deal of fracture and depth. Just awesome. How he sees the world gives me hope. We need some of that right now.

Quote of the week?

“Justice for black people will not flow into society merely from court decisions nor from fountains of political oratory. Nor will a few token changes quell all the tempestuous yearnings of millions of disadvantaged black people. White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society. The comfortable, the entrenched, the privileged cannot continue to tremble at the prospect of change in the status quo.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

‘Til Tuesday, friends.