Today is Thursday, July 20, 2023. I missed yesterday’s daily roundup because of a very busy day spent with Elliot in Manhattan, first going to see a film at the Independent Film Center (IFC) complex in the afternoon and then meandering over to Grand Street to catch a two-hour walking tour of Queer Lower East Side hosted by the Henry Street Settlement and Close Friends Collective. I had signed up for this tour a while ago, and I was worried about the possibility of rain, but we were blessed with warm, clear weather instead at the time of the tour. I will discuss these events later on in the blog.

In the news, it’s a busy scene in special counsel Jack Smith’s circle as investigators in the election interference probe are expected to speak with additional witnesses over the next several weeks, including at least one former Dumpf attorney, as anticipation builds for another indictment to be handed down to former president Donald J. Dumpf in the January 6 investigation. This development is reported on in a CNN online article by Paula Reid, Katelyn Polantz, Kara Scannell, Hannah Rabinowitz, and Jeremy Herb entitled “Special counsel continues to schedule witness interviews even as potential Trump indictment looms.”

Prosecutors have been in talks with at least two witnesses to schedule interviews with investigators that won’t be completed for at least another month. One of those witnesses is former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, a Dumpf brainwashed supporter, and he is still in the process of scheduling his upcoming interview, and a former Dumpf lawyer plans to talk to investigators next month, sources familiar with the planned meetings told CNN.

Because of this continued pursuit of potential witnesses in the growing case, it is unclear if prosecutors would wait until after their interviews have been completed before indicting Dumpf. It is also unclear how a possible case would be structured. For instance, Smith could bring a more discrete case first and then add on what are known as superseding indictments, or he could break up multiple defendants into separate cases.

Today Trump aide Will Russell testified to the grand jury investigating the 2020 election aftermath, including the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In the case of the former police commissioner, the special counsel’s office is seeking Kerik’s communications around the 2020 election, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. Kerik worked alongside former Dumpf attorney and bulldog Rudy Giuliani in the weeks after the 2020 election to find any evidence of voter fraud that would swing the race for Dumpf.

So the country waits with bated breath to know if Dumpf will be indicted yet another time.

Yesterday was a very busy day, beginning with my having breakfast out with one of my Austin Street Diner gals, “Carol,” and continued with Elliot and I taking the subway down to the IFC Center to catch a new sci-fi, comedy-drama called Biosphere. It stars only two people: Mark Duplass and Sterling K. Brown. The story is quite basic: two childhood friends live out their lives in a biodome created by Sterling K. Brown as a brilliant scientist friend to the former President of the United States played by Duplass. It seems that an unspecified calamity wiped out most of humanity and the president appears to have been responsible for this cataclysmic event.

The two go about their daily routines: jogging around the biosphere, reading, playing video games, playing chess, etc. The two maintain an easygoing friendship even as their food supplies dwindle. But newfound hope arises in unexpected ways. A mysterious green light slowly approaches the biosphere from the uninhabitable outside world while one of the male fishes steadily changes gender in order to survive. But the real crux of the film begins when one of the men starts to physically change in unexpected ways. Then the film begins to introduce concepts of gender identity, homophobia, what constitutes male identity, sexuality, morality, mortality, science, hope, and ethics.

Then it was time to have a light dinner and to walk to the Abrons Arts Center, located at 466 Grand Street. The walk itself to the inaugural walking tour site was itself a long haul. But we got to the Center around 5, so we waited outside for the organizers of the tour to show up. Before long, people started congregating in front of the arts space and our tour guides as well.

The tour involved much walking and discussion at several sites, one of them a playground where a queer artist by the name of Martin Wong lived and his boyfriend, playwright and poet Miguel Pinero who wrote the play Short Eyes in the 70s and was adapted into a 1977 film. The guides dispersed pictures of Wong’s paintings, and we also read a poem by Pinero on living in the Lower East Side. Then we walked to a building that housed the first transgender youth center founded by transgender icons Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera called Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) . This organization was founded to aid youth experiencing homelessness, with a focus on supporting people of color. Then we walked to another building that served as the home of black photographer Alvin Baltrop whose pictures of sex workers at the dilapidated Hudson Piers and gay men during the 1970s and 1980s prior to the AIDS crisis were iconic.

The tour ended at a gay bookstore that I didn’t even know existed called Bluestocking, located on Suffolk Street. All in all, the tour was very informative and got us on our our toes. We were totally exhausted after this, but we had enough energy to stop at Marsha’s Country Bakery in Forest Hills to share a piece of cake and have coffee.

Stay safe and be well.