How it started: Ms. Opal Lee walked to D.C. every year to get lawmakers to recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday.
How it’s going: This weekend, we are all coming together to partake in the second annual celebration of Juneteenth.
????We’re proud to support @therealopallee pic.twitter.com/lqIXfVy3pA
— Heal America (@joinhealamerica) June 18, 2022
Here's my full story, painting today's event and some of the community members who were in attendance. No paywall, so give it a read! https://t.co/6jWhnjLSlF
— Jessika Harkay (@JessikaHarkay) June 18, 2022
.@VP Harris arriving at the reception in celebration of #Juneteenth at the VP’s Residence.
: theonlyjasonlee on instagram. pic.twitter.com/9w6A7Wzyh7
— best of kamala harris (@archivekamala) June 18, 2022
At the intersection of Juneteenth and Pride Month:
Civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and other freedom riders have their convictions posthumously vacated in the same North Carolina courtroom where they were sentenced. https://t.co/woYDtZ0zLK
— The Associated Press (@AP) June 17, 2022
Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Bloom Where You Are Planted
Steeplejack
That Opal Lee quote is gold.
Baud
I wonder how many holidays future generations will get out of the current wave of fascism.
Kay
@Baud:
If they win the holiday will be January 6th.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Those Conservatives. Always giving, but do they get any credit from the lower castes? No, they do not.
Won’t stop them giving, though. And giving and giving and giving and…
Ken
@Baud: First we need to see how Juneteenth works out. The retailers haven’t even decided what they’ll put on sale, and that’s the most important part of any US holiday.
O. Felix Culpa
@Ken:
Hehe. True. There’s definitely a dearth of Juneteenth sales in my neighborhood.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@O. Felix Culpa: LOL. I suspect my building won’t be having any special celebration either.
eclare
Wow, quiet here today. Also real quiet on Twitter.
oatler
Maybe Tucker will call Cruz “Cancun Ted” and the Mardi Gras Road Warriors will beat the shit out of him. Count on Qanon to slaughter their own when they can’t find an Austin “soyboy” to assault.
Eyepatch McCain…
WereBear
There was a recent study done on how attacking an outgroup member feeds the reward centers in the brain.
It figures that they don’t have anything else to make them feel rewarded. So.
Betty Cracker
I’ve been hate-reading Caitlin Flanagan for ages, an activity that is sometimes rewarding since she is the extraordinarily rare contrarian who is genuinely insightful on occasion. Flanagan’s current column in The Atlantic about Sheryl Sandberg’s bullshit brand of feminism is such an occasion, IMO.
sab
@Betty Cracker: I also hate read Flanagan. Thanks for the heads-up, because Sandberg is vile by any metric other than greed-is-good
ETA Just read the article. What slapped Ms. Flanagan into common sense? Nothing has seismically changed.
eclare
@Betty Cracker: I read that yesterday. When that book, Lean In, came out all the women that I worked with in a very rigid Fortune 100 company carried it around like a badge. It was such bullshit.
And by rigid, I mean two weeks vacation for each of your first five years, and, if you apply for disability, you can get reduced pay for six weeks of maternity leave. But yeah ladies, Lean In.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m rereading Miller’s CIRCE to lead a book club discussion. Here’s a sentence: “Telemachus and Telegonus gusted through the door, wet from hauling the boat.” “Gusted.” What a fabulous verb.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: Even so. I’ve sworn off the Atlantic. They’re all over the map when it comes to making sense.
WereBear
@eclare: People ask me why I’m not trying to get my book published with a traditional publisher. It’s because they’re all about the scams and the cashing in on celebrity. It’s not the library club anymore.
Joey Maloney
@Dorothy A. Winsor: So when they went back out that door, were they disgusted?
eclare
@WereBear: Makes sense.
sab
@eclare: Good God it’s early. Sunday. Hopefully fathers are sleeping in.
My dog agrees. Energetic, so she is sucking on the quilt because she is hyper and nobody else wants to get up yet.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WereBear: Celebrity books tick me off no end. I tell myself they pay for some mid-list books, but with the consolidation of publishing into companies that aren’t much interested in books, that may no longer be true
@Joey Maloney: Just so!
eclare
@sab: Great point. I don’t have any kids to remind them of Father’s Day, and my father passed away several years ago, so that never occurred to me.
I hope all the dads are enjoying a nice day with their kids and grandkids.
Poor Ponyo.
Baud
@Joey Maloney:
Nice. I give it 4 NotMaxes.
eclare
@Joey Maloney: Excellent!
sab
60 degrees here and the windows are open. Cats are standing in line waiting to sniff the air outside and watch the birds.
Betty Cracker
@WereBear: True; I frequently find the content maddening, and they are one of the most egregious purveyors of cancel culture nonsense.
sab
@eclare: I promised her a good walk later.
ETA This last hot week was fine for me walking but not for her in this heat with her stubby pitbull nose. She thought it was 77 outside because it was 77 inside.
O. Felix Culpa
@Betty Cracker:
I particularly liked this line in her piece:
Cuts through all the corporate “We Are Family” bullshit.
eclare
@sab: Sounds like you have great weather for one!
Betty Cracker
@sab: 60 degrees! I didn’t sleep well last night and spent some of the wee hours on the porch listening to the frogs and doom-scrolling. It was so muggy my glasses kept fogging up.
sab
@Betty Cracker: It was 49 when I woke up! That’s why I am still in bed at 10 am. Lounging in the coolth.
zhena gogolia
I keep subscribing and unsubscribing to the Atlantic (and the Guardian). It seems whenever I’m unsubscribed, they keep having articles I’d like to read, and as soon as I subscribe, that stops.
eclare
@sab: So jealous. We had a cool spell here in MEM that started last night. It’s 77 now, but only going up to 91 today. Back to 97 tomorrow, with some 100’s later this week. I have been here eighteen years, it has never been so hot in June.
Anyway
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I enjoyed Circe — good insight into bring immortal.
I hated -Lean In- and Sandberg from the moment I heard of her. She got a huge buildup from the corporate bullshit media and both book and concept amounted to nothing.
Honus
So bishop McManus told the school to take down the LGBT and BLM flags and that apparently precipitated an act of violence:
“According to the school, the flags remained up for more than a year before the bishop requested they be removed. Shortly after that request, the flags were torn down in an act of vandalism, but the school replaced them…”
Still waiting for a rational explanation of why a BLM flag is inappropriate for a Catholic school.
sab
@eclare: So sorry. I thought our cool weather cam from you guys out west. Apparently not. Canadian high pressure I guess.
We got air conditioning about five years ago. Didn’t really needed it before that. And husband has cluster headaches triggered by (among other things) air conditioning. He decided he would rather be cool with horrible headaches than hot without. Big change.
phdesmond
just thought i’d drop this off. it’s Judge Buttig on NPR, speaking much more spryly than he did at the Thursday hearing.
npr.org/2022/06/18/1106089263/former-federal-judge-warns-of-danger-to-american-democracy
eclare
@sab: I would prefer that too, I think, although I have never had a cluster headache. Awful choice to have to make.
Josie
@WereBear:
So do you think it’s preferable for a debut novelist to self publish instead of seeking an agent and publisher first? Asking for a friend ;-)
Honus
@O. Felix Culpa: My father told me this fifty years ago when I was looking for a college and a career “Everybody is telling you to find something you like to do for a career. Forget that; work is something you do so you can do the things you like the rest of the time”
To be clear, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be happy in your work, just that it’s not the center of your your life.
germy shoemangler
2020:
Betty Cracker
Going to visit my dad later and bring him an order of fries from Checkers, his favorite. We’ve been butting heads ever since I learned to speak, but we’ve both mellowed over the years. Hopefully there will be a ballgame or fishing show on TV so no one brings up politics.
sab
@phdesmond: When I saw that hearing and he spoke so slowly I said to my husband “slow but not one mis-spoken word or grammatical error. Every syllable will hold up when transcribed.”
Apparently that was his thought process.
Kristine
@WereBear: @Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’ve often wondered if those books really do make money. Maybe they do, but they’re the absolute last thing on my to buy list. Guess I’m not the target audience.
Elizabelle
@phdesmond: Judge Luttig.
And, here’s Luttig’s twitter thread on the subject of his speech pattern from the Jesuit thread overnight. JPL provided it.
Judge Luttig (a) has a fine sense of humor but (b) subjected us to the Slow Talkers of America testimony on purpose.
Sort of backfiring, but we’re also talking about his segment days after the fact. Although for its delivery, if not its substance.
O. Felix Culpa
@zhena gogolia:
LOL. Same.
germy shoemangler
@Elizabelle:
A fascinating thing about the Jan. 6 hearings videos: How differently people in TFG’s circle talk when they’re on the fox network vs. how they talk when they’re under oath.
OzarkHillbilly
Waiting for rationality from Catholics is like waiting for rain in the Atacama desert.
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
My body forgot how to sleep in years ago – now it’s a friggin’ miracle when I sleep past 7. The kiddo, OTOH, is in his teens and will sleep into the afternoon if you let him.
Elizabelle
@germy shoemangler: It’s almost like they want to avoid lying under oath or something. Strange, that. And that you have a Fox Nation of numbskulls that thinks they’re likely to be more truthful to the Fox audience. The most gullible sheep out there.
O. Felix Culpa
@germy shoemangler:
They tell the truth? Or at least something approaching it?
ETA: What Elizabelle said above.
WereBear
I look at the time and effort and marketing that goes into getting the attention of an agent (the days of the slush pile are over) and then the book has to get the attention of only the five trad publishers left.
It can takes years to work through the stages and at the end you are exactly where you started.
Also, celebrity culture means they aren’t going to promote you. They are only interested if it has some angle. To paraphrase the delicate language from one agent’s form: “Are you famous or have you slept with someone famous?”
I decided it was better to put all that effort into marketing the book to readers who want to buy it.
Plus, then you are relying on the publisher to keep and print the midlist and send it to bookstores. Too often, they don’t. And they can do a tricky contract so the writer can’t either.
WereBear
@Honus: That’s a good point. I looked for something with regular hours that wouldn’t interfere with what I wanted to do :)
eclare
@lowtechcyclist: I find it hard to sleep late when the sun is up early, and it was light before 6 am here.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone
Madeleine
About to go see how our farmers market is recognizing Juneteenth!
Mike in NC
Pretty sure Trump wanted his birthday to be a national holiday. Sick rotten bastard that he is.
eclare
@Honus: The father of a friend of mine told her never try to turn a hobby for fun into a career, that would turn the hobby into work.
I think we are safe, we are both accountants. No one does that for a hobby.
NotMax
‘@Ken
White sales.
//
AWOL
@WereBear: For a new writer, a Top 5 publisher wants to know how many high-end blurbs you can obtain before the galleys are ready; are you telegenic and articulate enough to promote the book on both radio and TV; and if they can build a brand around you.
No one needs books, which are expensive to produce. The people who produce books want money back on their investment.
And the process is amoral.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WereBear: Supposedly, Einstein worked as a postal clerk because he wanted to save his thinking time for science
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’ve been entering rooms the wrong way for years!
Liminal Owl
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@AWOL: I’m happy with my small press. They bear the up-front cost of editing and cover/book design, and do what promotion they can.
I used to have an agent, but she couldn’t get a big publisher to pick up my book and she didn’t want to deal with small presses because she worked on commission and couldn’t make enough money that way. I took my age and needs into account, figured out what I needed to be happy, fired her (that hurt), and went the small press route. For me, deciding what I needed was the key.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@mrmoshpotato: Think what an impression you could make!
Liminal Owl
I recommend the Twitter account Micro SF/F stories, and today’s:
germy shoemangler
I live in New York state. No mail delivery tomorrow for Juneteenth. It’s a federal holiday, good.
But a few minutes ago I saw our letter carrier walk up and down the street delivering mail today, Sunday.
I don’t understand. Is deJoy making them work on Sunday because tomorrow is a federal holiday? I’ve never received mail on a sunday before. And this doesn’t happen the Sunday before any other federal holidays.
What gives?
Another Scott
@Baud: I heard a bit of radio discussion advocating Black Future Month along with Black History Month. The argument is that only talking about the history is confining and kind of othering. While history is very important, the framing and what is done now is moreso. We can’t change the past, we can only influence the future.
Cheers,
Scott.
phdesmond
@sab:
it’s good he didn’t have a stroke, and i’m glad there’s a better recording of him blaming the Republicans.
prostratedragon
“Juneteenth from the Top,” a program of youth musicians performing works of African American composers, at 11 Central/12 Eastern, on Wfmt.com. Likely syndicated nationally.
phdesmond
@Elizabelle:
thanks for the links.
AWOL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The Top 5 are in the situation where a critical mass of leftists, liberals, and people who are part of the LGBT+ community need to keep their low-paying jobs and decent benefits and are forced to produce books written by the same people who would have them killed.
The Top 5 has also just discovered that Black people exist and are scrambling to put on some fig leaf of diversity.
And yes, small publishers may be putting out the better stuff now.
I just can’t wait to retire and get away from the bastards.
prostratedragon
@eclare: This time of year is hard on night owls, even with a good sleep mask. Can’t wait for late August.
eclare
@germy shoemangler: My postal worker once delivered mail on a Sunday. I asked why, and he said he was out sick Saturday, and he wanted people to get their mail.
germy shoemangler
@eclare:
Maybe that’s what happened here. The young lady who delivered mail today is not our regular carrier (that’s a different young lady) and I noticed there was no mail yesterday. So maybe today this letter carrier was just making up for missed work.
I don’t know.
eclare
@germy shoemangler: I was outside when the postal worker came by on a Sunday, so I could ask.
germy shoemangler
@eclare:
Just goes to show what 4 years of the former guy did to my brain. My first thought was some mischief from deJoy. I’ve grown too suspicious in my old age
prostratedragon
@germy shoemangler:
Wow, I wonder. New holiday / old contract? Probably before your time there used to be Sunday and twice a day delivery in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
germy shoemangler
@prostratedragon:
Interesting. I wish I had just asked the girl, but she was gone by the time I made it to my door.
According to google, no mail delivery june 19th or 20th.
Honus
Andrew Greely wrote thirty years ag that there were millions of Catholic women in the United States that used birth control yet nonetheless considered themselves good catholics (I know this because my sisters were four of those millions of women) He pointed out that they had essentially overruled the position that birth control was a forbidden sin and that were just as much the Catholic church as the cardinals in Rome.
I consider the nuns (and a number of priests) that ministered to the poor and taught me to work for social justice to be Catholics. Cheap punks like McManus don’t have any more authority to define who is and isn’t Catholic than I do.
eclare
@germy shoemangler: Perfectly reasonable to wonder under DeJoy. I had hoped he would be gone by now.
Honus
@germy shoemangler: I’ve gotten mail on Sunday a number if times for the past few years. The carriers are trying to be efficient and sometimes it’s convenient for them to work on Sunday. I also understand from a few of them that they were working to ameliorate the effects of DeJoys sabotage of the postal service.
Baud
@Another Scott:
The past is more knowable than the future.
germy shoemangler
@Honus:
In a Nov. 11, 2019, presentation titled “Responses to the Plague of Gun Violence” that he gave during the U.S. bishops’ fall general assembly, Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, then the bishops’ domestic policy committee chairman, spelled out the bishops’ support for a ban on assault weapons, universal background checks and a federal gun trafficking bill.
NotMax
‘@eclare
In my limited experience Sunday deliveries involve a different delivery person than the one assigned the route on weekdays, take place on an irregular basis on malleable routes and (with the exception of some forms of Express mail) do not include regular flat mail but rather are driven by the sheer bulk of packages piled up in sorting rooms. Have on occasion had a box delivered to the front porch by postal truck on a Sunday between 6 and 7 a.m.!
germy shoemangler
germy shoemangler
@NotMax:
Yes, I’ve seen that happen on Sundays.
But this was a substitute carrier walking the entire route and visiting every house. Not a Sunday special delivery.
James E Powell
@Betty Cracker:
I remember when that Lean In came out. There were a fair number of people who were saying, “You know this is bullshit, right?” Maybe they were just silly lefty bloggers, not famous experts on how to live like Caitlin Flanagan.
I knew it was bullshit because all those corporate success books are bullshit.
HeartlandLiberal
We went to the local Juneteenth celebration. One Black guy was wearing a tee shirt that read in part “Free-ish since 1863.” I told him his tee nailed it.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: That sounds like a relatively lovely way to doomscroll.
Last night we watched the 80’s suspense/thriller Manhunter by Michael Mann, the first film of the Silence of the Lambs series. It features really stunning shots of Captiva island, in the style of Miami Vice which Mann became famous for. It reminded me of how when I was a kid I absolutely loved Florida and dreamed of living there someday. Coming from the endless cold of Boston, the beaches of FL seemed like paradise to my 12 year old self. Boy how things have changed.
prostratedragon
“Who’s Hank?”
The Murdaugh tale keeps adding new bizarre threads: theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/19/south-carolina-alex-murdaugh-murder-deaths-police
germy shoemangler
@James E Powell:
60 Minutes does some good investigative reporting. Unfortunately they have a habit of mixing in some celebrity CEO worship. I remember the Lean In lady being interviewed. The whole tone was “You go, girlboss!” They did the same thing a few years later for the Starbucks CEO. “Such a wise man! Tell us more!”
And then a few years later we get stories about their shitty behavior. Not from 60 Minutes, though. They’ve moved on to the next hero.
The Starbucks guy is basically a union buster (or attempted one, anyway). But 60 Minutes wanted to make heroes out of both of them.
eclare
@prostratedragon: I read that earlier and as a fan of Dateline, I can’t wait til Dateline covers this case. I hope Keith Morrison narrates!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
The thing about Luttig suddenly makes a terrifying amount of sense. A good, principled lawyer, and by extension a good, principled judge, will do their damnedest to avoid ambiguity and close off possibilities for misinterpretation. Given the stakes – which I suspect Luttig would rank as the highest he’s ever encountered in his life, given that the life or death of the United States as a nation is at stake – he was taking no chances.
(As an aside, my elderly parents have been watching the committee hearings, sometimes live, sometimes pre-recorded, and they have been deeply impressed with the quality of the presentation being given by the Committee. Granted, they may not be the audience to worry about, given that Mom lived through the Nazi occupation of Greece and knows a fascist when she sees one, but I interpret it as a sign that the Committee is doing a pretty good job making its case.)
Eyeroller
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Probably too late into the thread to note this, but Einstein worked as a patent examiner in Bern. And he did that because his graduate advisor was a raging anti-Semite who wouldn’t give him good letters of reference for an academic position. He did later say that he enjoyed the work and it gave him more opportunity to pursue what he wanted than might have been possible with a more traditional path. Of course once he became famous he went immediately to academia. (He also held patents of his own, including for a refrigerator.)
Calouste
@O. Felix Culpa:
The
cultcompany I work for also does that “we’re family” crap. Apparently none of the geniuses have ever realized that there are a lot of people who don’t get on with their family, and some who have been outright abused by them.Dorothy A. Winsor
I don’t want to pollute the kindness thread, so I’ll stick this here. Looks like the J6 committee members fanned out to cover the Sunday shows. I don’t know if anyone still watches them. Normies?
ABC’s “This Week” — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen; Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.
NBC’s “Meet the Press” — Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.; former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
CBS’ “Face the Nation” — Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council; Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.; Loretta Mester, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
CNN’s “State of the Union” — Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas; Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
“Fox News Sunday” — Deese; Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.
Geminid
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: That’s sound anecdotal evidence. More politically engaged people are often hypercritical, and it’s good to see the reaction on the part of more “normal” people.
Geminid
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks. I don’t watch TV, but I will try to check out reporting on Secretary Granholm’s appearance. There is a lot of good work being done at the Department of Energy and I want to hear about it.
Brachiator
@Honus:
My sister and I were talking about work and life and such. A nephew is trying to decide what he wants to do with his life.
My sister, who thought she was bad at math as a kid, has had a long career as an accounting manager or budget director.
Anyhow, we agreed that it was great to know what you wanted to do, and even better to know what you are good at. These can be two very different things.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Democrats? On Sunday talking heads news shows?
I don’t believe you.
Citizen Alan
@eclare:
I really wish someone had given me that advice when I was in high school. I had an academic scholarship that paid 100% of my bachelors degree and I wasted it on a music ed degree to become a band director because band was the only class I enjoyed in high school.. I came to find out that the stuff I enjoyed about band was only a tiny percentage of being an actual classroom teacher.
Burnspbesq
@oatler:
Roy’s a worthless piece of shirt, but he doesn’t deserve that treatment.
Geminid
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Well, the lead news coming from Secretary Granholm’s CNN appearance is that Americans should not expect gas prices to drop very much this summer. Her Department estimates prices averaging about $4.35 a gallon in the coming 3rd quarter, but Granholm cautioned that this projection could “be completely upended” by world events.
Hopefully when things in this area have settled down Ms. Granholm wil be invited back to talk about the Department of Energy’s contributions towards the clean energy transition.
@Geminid:
OGLiberal
The Rustin thing is a long time coming but glad to see it happen. NC is that weird mix of quite liberal folks and just flat out Confederates. That said, Trump has exposed to me that those same Confederates exist in NJ and Northeast PA…which is understandable since they were strong members of the Confederacy. /s
Rustin was not only a civil rights activist but gay, Quaker and communist. What I’ve read about him has been from more general civil rights/MLK stuff but he seems like an amazing figure from those times who is kind is forgotten. I took a lot of history classes in college, read a lot of stuff, and I didn’t even know who the guy was until my 40s.
Felanius Kootea
@OGLiberal:
Rustin didn’t get the attention he deserved because of homophobia. I’m glad that’s changing.
Another Scott
France24 – (Projections) Macron has lost his majority in Parliament (live updates)
Low turnout. Apparently lots of voters were disaffected, but they still should turn out or the monsters will win…
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Not sure what the takeaway is.
Another Scott
@Baud: My quick read is that there will be an attempt at a coalition, but it may be fragile and new elections may follow.
We’ll see!
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Baud: Sounds like Macron will have to try to make a Center/Left coalition work. That will be a challenge, but Macron can use a challenge. It helps that France is doing relatively well economically, I think.