Author Archives: ronqueens

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, September 28, 2025. Well, today Elliot and I successfully went to West Babylon, Long Island, to plant our feet at the New Montefiore Cemetery and Wellwood Cemetery in order to pay our respects to our two dear friends interred in both. Thus we have fulfilled the mitzvah of visiting a cemetery before the conclusion of the High Holy Days. Not that we ever intended to; it was just that our friend “Gene” desired to do it this weekend and we said we’d drive out there to meet him at one since we couldn’t find the grave of our recently departed friend, “Mark,” who died in 2023 the last time we ventured out there which was over a year ago.

Before we left the borough at about 12:45, I walked over to Austin Street to take a quick look at the fair taking place there. My intention was to find the booth where newly formed Indivisible of Forest Hills was located since our friend, “Patricia,” sent me an email indicating that they would be there today. I waded through the food booths and commercial stalls lining both sides of the street. We woke up rather late, so I didn’t go out until close to 11. I just had time to have coffee and a croissant at La Boulangerie.

By golly, I did find the culprit, the newly formed anti-Dump organization that now has a chapter in Forest Hills. I began conversing with some members there; I had a particularly interesting conversation with “Beatrice,” who was sitting by the main table. At one point, she claimed that Kamala Harris did win the 2024 election, but that she and the party consciously decided not to contest the results because they feared a MAGA war if they had. Of course, there is no proof of this, I know, and I’m just spreading what seems to be a conspiracy theory like the nuts on the right. But I like to believe this is the truth. Otherwise, we have to accept that there are many morons living in this country.

There was a sign-up sheet, so I left my name, email, and cell phone number on it. I can’t predict if they will call me at any time, but I can hope. Also, I was given a flyer about the October 18th demonstration right here in Forest Hills, at McDonald Park. I indicated I was partial to attending the rally in Manhattan; their protest is scheduled at 10 through 12 that day. The one in the city starts at 11 and runs through 1. Now you know why I prefer to take the subway down to Father Duffy Square, at 47th Street and Broadway, a new location for these demonstrations. They’ve usually been held outside the 42nd Street Library at Bryant Park.

We make good time driving out to West Babylon: we arrive around 1:40. We head for the cemetery office where we are supposed to meet up with Gene and see he’s not there. I enter the office and ask where his husband is located and the staff person hands me a map which I can never read. I am geographically compromised. I can’t distinguish west from east, north from south.

We finally get in contact with Gene who informs us he is in the other cemetery – Wellwood Cemetery which is down the block. The cemetery we were in did not have “Keith,” his husband; it only had our friend “Mark” interred here. Already very confusing!

Therefore, we leave this cemetery to find the other one and the facility office, which is quite difficult to find as well. When we ultimately find the office to the second cemetery, we look for our friend who is not there either. What to do? Finally, he does call us and tells us he’s by the grave of his husband where he has been trying to find his husband’s parents for over a half-hour. He took his electric shears with him to prune the top of the shrubbery growing by the gravestone. We exit the office area and drive down various streets and blocks when we finally catch up with Gene’s electric blue Civic.

Whooo! At least we have met up with Gene. Even if we don’t find anybody today, we still have live Gene with us. When we see Gene, he’s sweating and complaining about not being able to find Keith’s parents – until now. We proceed to accompany Gene to two gravestones marking Keith’s parents’ remains and we wait until he cuts the hedges.

We then pile back into two cars and follow Gene to Keith’s burial spot. It’s a long, winding path to where Keith is buried, but we find him and we exit our cars, to say the Kaddish (prayer for the dead) at Keith’s elaborate gravestone. Gene sheds a tear for his departed husband, who died on December 24, 2018. Elliot whispers into the air, “I miss you, Keith!” We put stones on top of Keith’s headstone and then leave.

We then follow Gene back into the first cemetery where Mark is buried and look for his place of rest. This we find somewhat easier, but I know if I were here alone with Elliot, it would have turned into a nightmare of circuitous turns and wasted gas.

Voila! We find Mark’s tablet, not a tombstone, so we conjecture that’s why we might have missed him the first time we came out to pay our respects. We recite Kaddish again and say how much we miss him too.

With our task done, we pile back into both cars and head for West Babylon to a restaurant called Brixton, located on Deer Park Avenue. This time I drive since Elliot intends to call his daughter back at 3.

I plug the restaurant’s address into Waze and start exiting the cemetery. I maintain a measured distance so as to not lose Gene who is a good distance in back of me. In less than 20 minutes, we head for this neighborhood eatery and start looking for parking spots. Gene parks a little ahead of us.

We get out of our cars and look for Brixton, which I find with my eagle eyes across the street. We cross the street and go in the side entrance and ask to sit down. We’re told the place is closed and won’t open until 4. We’re too hungry to wait, so we say, thank you, and walk out.

We cross the road and find a novel place, Babylon Social, that looks quite busy. It’s located directly opposite Brixton and it seems to specialize in comfort food, which is what we were definitely in the mood for at that moment. To me, it looked more like a sports bar with several television sets blaring a football game and people screaming their appreciation of their favorite team winning a touchdown or whatever they’re supposed to do. A middle-aged man and what looked like his son, maybe, were sitting at the table adjacent to us.

A young waitress by the name of Clarissa waited on us. Since we were all ravenous, we decided to order some appetizers first like cauliflower bites and a chopped wedge salad for Elliot and Gene. Gene and I ordered an eggplant parmigiana pizza to share with the table. For my beverage of choice, I ordered a coffee.

For dessert, Elliot treated us all to ice cream delights at Kilwins Ice Cream up the block. I almost wanted to bring home some chocolate, but the prices were indeed not too sweet.

We did find a bakery along the way where I asked for four apple cider donuts. Don’t ask what I was charged for these sweet treats.

We said our goodbyes to Gene on Deer Park Avenue. He is going back to Provincetown before Yom Kippur and then he flies back to Florida on November 4. We said we might come out to the Sunshine State sometime in March to be with him.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Saturday, September 27, 2025. I was surprisingly absent yesterday because of a last-minute decision to travel to Midtown to the TKTS half-price ticket booth to see a play with our good friend, “Gene,” who’s been in since last Sunday for the Jewish holidays. We haven’t seen Gene in almost a year since he maintains dual residences in Florida and in Provincetown. That’s why we jumped at the chance to see him this weekend. However, our original idea was to go to the cemetery in West Babylon where his husband, “Keith,” and our mutual friend “Mark” are interred, but thanks to a warning from Elliot’s former neighbor and friend, “Mary,” given to Elliot in the morning about Dictator Don coming out to the Island to play in some godforsaken golf tournament, we decided not to drive out to the cemetery. (In a sidebar, this guy’s appearance at the Ryder Cup tournament supposedly cost taxpayers up to $15 million for his security entourage, derived from a posting on Facebook today, so please absorb this while his cruel regime continues to call for cuts to healthcare and food assistance for struggling families.)

Therefore, our plans were changed at the last minute. Gene drove to us by 2 and then we all walked to the subway after Gene said hello to Atticus. Our friend had to buy an OMNY card for the first time.

When we got to the TKTS half-price ticket booth on 47th Street and Times Square, we were met with a longish line, so we entered it right away. We discussed what we would see in the evening; we talked about either seeing Buena Vista Social Club or Operation Mincemeat, which was what I wanted to see, really. However, both Elliot and Gene preferred seeing the first play which I didn’t know anything about. I was outvoted, so we waited to buy tickets for the first play. The line moved quite quickly and we approached the ticket booth in less than 45 minutes. At least the weather cooperated; the weather was sunny and warm for a late September day.

Thus we bought $105 tickets for Orchestra seats, in three different rows, right in front of each other, M,N, and O. We didn’t mind not sitting together, so we gave our assent to the ticket agent in the booth.

We had a 5:15 reservation at an Italian restaurant called Nizza on 9th Avenue and 45th Street. To kill some time, we went for coffee (actually, I’m the only one who had coffee) at Amy’s Bread, on 46th Street and 9th Avenue. I also had a peanut butter cookie.

Then we walked to the restaurant which was only two doors down from Amy’s Bread. We were slightly early, but the hostess said it was okay to be shown a table at 5.

We had a nice, leisurely dinner, replete with two appetizers (calamari and eggplant rollitini), an entree (pappardelle for me), dessert (ricotta cheesecake), and coffee.

Then it was time to walk to the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre that houses Buena Vista Social Club. Admittedly, I knew nothing about the genesis of the play. After reviewing critiques of the play, I discover that it was based on the 1997 album of the same name which propelled a renaissance of classic Cuban music onto the world stage. You see, the Buena Vista Social Club was the name of a once-popular Havana club that closed down after Castro’s takeover of the country.

The play goes back and forth from the late 50s to the 90s when an extraordinary group of musicians who played the original nightclub reunited to record the album in just seven days in 1996. The trio of Cuban bandleader Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, American producer and guitarist Ry Cooder, and British producer and label owner Nick Gold assembled an impromptu group of Cuban musicians in Havana’s 1990s vintage EGREM studios. The album would become a worldwide phenomenon. It was awarded a Grammy in 1997 and would outsell any other record in the same genre. The acclaim of the album has elevated the artists (including Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez, and Omara Portuondo) to superstar status. Here then is the backstory to the newest musical on Broadway that has garnered several recent Tonys.

The play’s joy is infectious. The audience was riotous in its affection for the soulful Cuban music that was played on stage by a 10-piece band and by the impeccable dancing displayed by the ensemble which was choreographed by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck.

Then there are the principal actors who portray two sisters from Havana’s past, Isa Atonetti who plays a young Omara, and Natalie Venetia Belcon who plays the more mature, disillusioned Omara in the 1990s who is coached out of retirement by the young producer who wants to put out an album of classic Cuban melodies. The young Omara gives a heartfelt rendition of an old Cuban song, Lagrimas Negras (Black Tears) in Act II, which is, basically, a love song about love that goes wrong. In the playbill, the producers of the show artfully enclose an insert that provides insight into the songs that were sung all in Spanish and their origins.

The story, as it is, concerns two sisters who try to get out of Cuba during the Revolution. One is Omara, who is intoxicated with the luscious notes of the Buena Vista Social Club in a pretty dingy neighborhood in Havana. She steals away from singing gigs with her sister Haydee to perform at this club where she meets a club worker by the name of Ibrahim, who also sings quite nicely when he can. She forms an attachment to him, and when her sister announces she signed a contract with Capital Records, to sing in the States, she has to decide whether to take that plane with her and escape to New York or to stay in war-ravaged Cuba. This forms the basis of the thin story within the musical. Leave or not leave Cuba when things get dire? That is the question facing the main character here, Omara Portuondo.

All in all, I recommend this play even if you don’t know a lick of Spanish like I do. If the seats weren’t so darn tight, I guarantee that you will probably want to get off your feet when the first musical bars are struck. I’m surprised there wasn’t any dancing in the aisles; it was probably because of the tight seats.

Tomorrow we’ll try again to get to the cemetery without the interference of Dictator Don.

Oh, by the way, our elevator was restored to its former glory Friday morning. Thank god! It started working again early in the morning and now we were able to do our laundry, finally. It was out almost 10 days, which is totally unacceptable in my view.

Our Sony television set, however, is still out sick. I don’t know when this will be restored to its former position in our living room or even if it will ever be working again. Our technician, “Ernest,” says he has to order parts for it. Who knows who they will be delivered?

And so it went!

There’s the playbill from the play and my knee holding aloft the playbill.

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, September 25, 2025. I was going to write about the ongoing train wreak known as Donald J. Dump who, just two days ago, delivered the stupidest, most insulting speech to world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly which is still being assessed for its insane, incoherent substance, but something personal in my life has been acutely felt, and that is the death of a friend on the occasion of Rosh Hashanah this past Monday. Today was the funeral service on West 91st Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

I received the terrible news from his husband, “Jeff,” just around 4:40 p.m. while Elliot and I were having a holiday dinner at our friend’s house on Monday. Something told me to answer the call and not let it go to voicemail since “Larry” had been suffering from an aggressive case of leukemia for over two years, I believe, and he was definitely not doing well this past week or so. My suspicions were confirmed when Jeff announced that Larry had just died and that he was going to text me the information concerning the service, which couldn’t be the next day because of the holiday on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Thus I went out today at 8 a.m. to get to the West Side to attend the last rites for Larry. The chapel was overflowing with mourners, many of them friends and relatives, and even coworkers of Larry over the years. Larry served with distinction, first, as a teacher in Brooklyn, then ascended the pedagogical ladder at one elementary school by becoming an assistant principal and then ending up as principal of the school. He began his teaching career at almost the same time as Elliot did – in 1967. Elliot began his career of teaching over three decades in 1968.

After retiring in the early 2000s, Larry found his true passion: first volunteering for the CSA – the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, and then becoming a unit chapter head. Those who spoke at the service recounted how dedicated he was to those he came into contact with at the council and how heconsidered everyone an equal. Speaker after speaker recounted how informative he was about union regulatory rules and would share that information unhesitatingly with others.

Larry received accolades from everyone who spoke. He was primarily described as a generous, kind, gentle, soul who had a complimentary word about everyone. This I can attest to in my association with him over the years. I met him through his soon-to-be husband Jeff who Elliot and I first got to know at the gay/bi dads group at the LGBTQ+ center on 13th Street.

Jeff offered the first eulogy which was spoken in a half-whisper about his loving husband and how he was forever altered for the better through knowing Larry. At one point, he mentioned that Larry told him – on his deathbed, literally – to give up petty grudges, which, I hadn’t known at the time, was actually addressed to Elliot and me. You see, our friendship with both Larry and Jeff was frayed after 2021 resulting from a misunderstanding between Elliot and Jeff. Because of the seemingly petty nature of the grievance, I won’t even mention it here. Thus for close to four years, Elliot was persona non grata in Jeff’s mind. I recently decided to renew the connection between Larry and Jeff when I heard from a mutual friend, “Gene,” that Larry was seriously ill.

Therefore, when I would see the pair generally in Midtown near where they lived, Elliot would stay behind. I never felt good about this, but I went along with this arrangement to not ruffle any feathers, even though I instinctively believed it was wrong.

Today the situation was put into stark perspective with Larry’s untimely death – he was 79 and would celebrate his birthday on the same date as I, which is November 8, but he was 10 years older than I – when I stood in a line of bereavers to hug Jeff in the hallway and he started to say through tears, “Did you hear what I said up there – about giving up grudges?” I said I did, and said something so cliched, like “Life is short!” But it’s the damn truth! I hugged him as he tearfully said he would get in touch with both of us when things settle down. That’s all I needed to hear.

How many of us know about situations when family members don’t talk to one another over some conflict or misunderstanding that occurred over decades ago? How many of us know people who never had the chance to repair broken relationships with sisters, brothers, aunts, cousins, or friends? I would say that number is quite large. So all I can say is life is unpredictable and, if you have the chance to repair a strained relationship with someone you once held very dear, now is the time to do it before it’s too damn late. I’m sure Jeff became cognizant of this very life lesson as his husband’s life was ebbing away.

So if any of you see yourself as being described in the above-mentioned paragraph, you know what to do. Go out and mend those fences – if you can. Time is of the essence.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Sunday, September 21, 2025, one day before the official start of autumn. For those of you who are interested – and I know most of you aren’t – today marked the funeral and public memorial marking the canonization of far-right activist Charlie Kirk in Glendale, Arizona. The doddering president has been shown delivering remarks on the occasion of this spectacle, but I generally had no intention of listening to him. I’m more interested in an online article from Ok! by its staff entitled “Donald Trump Falls Asleep at Charlie Kirk’s Funeral and Memorial Service as Health Concerns Mount: Photo.”

The article mentions that the president was seen dozing off during the service in Arizona. After Kirk was shot and killed on September 10, Dump shared the news on “Truth” Social. I won’t repeat what the most un-Christian commander in chief posted on his media platform about how wonderful the late Kirk was.

Now it has been reported that the killer of Kirk, Tyler Robinson, often clashed with his father over their opposing views, his mother said. When Charlie’s Utah Valley University event came up, Tyler reportedly called it “stupid” and said Kirk “spreads too much hate.”

In the meantime, this is hardly the first time Dump was caught taking forty winks. Recently, the former reality star was observed napping during the U.S. Open finals, sparking a new round of questions about his condition.

Two clinical psychologists – John Gartner and Harry Segal – now claim the signs point to something more serious, with Chump showing physical and linguistic symptoms of “early dementia.” And who recalls that it was discovered that former President Ronald Reagan was suffering from the same ailment during his second term? And that his “Just say, no” wife, Nancy Reagan, was actually running the country for him? I wonder who is doing it in the case of this loathsome individual; it’s certainly not Melanoma, his wife. It’s probably Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff who is as just as loathsome as his boss.

And who can forget the many times Chump was caught dozing during his one criminal trial conducted here in New York? Back in July, cameras caught him struggling to stay awake as his team rolled out a new health-tracking system at the White House. Later that month, critics nicknamed him “Sleepy Don” after he seemed ready to nod off during an energy and AI summit in Pittsburgh.

ll I have to say about this matter is how the media would pounce on former President Joe Biden if he had ever done the same thing as Chump in public, no less. This guy appears to be suffering, actually, from early onset dementia in real time and our legacy news outlets somehow are shying away from reporting on it! This is not good for America.

Well, that wraps it up for me for the next three days. Tomorrow night marks the start of Rosh Hashanah and we’re either hosting our friend “Patricia” here at our apartment – only if the elevator is restored to its former glory during the day – or we’re going to Patricia’s place, toting all the food that Elliot prepared for the occasion.

On Tuesday, we head out to Cherry Hill to spend the holiday with “Harold” and his family. Since we just returned from an almost-two-week overseas trip, we’re staying only until Wednesday. And we also don’t want to leave Atticus for much longer than a day or so.

So for those of my readers who celebrate this event, let me wish you “L’shana tova”; may you all be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year. I will either return here on Wednesday or on Thursday. It depends on when we come back from New Jersey and on my mental and physical state.

And so it went!

Ooh, my very first AI-generated image! Good heavens!

And So It Goes

Today is Saturday, September 20, 2025. The extent of this current regime’s corruption seemingly knows no bounds as it has been reported today by news media that White House border “czar” Tom Homan accepted $50,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents, but that this felon’s partisan-inclined Department of Justice just shut down the entire case claiming the matter was fueled by the “deep state,” which is anything that is actually critical of the Orange Buffoon in the White House. An article online for MSNBC entitled “Tom Homan was investigated for accepting $50,000 from undercover FBI agents. Trump’s DOJ shut it down,” by Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian explores this newest scandal set to engulf the current administration.

According to credible sources, it appears that Homan was recorded by the FBI accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents who were posing as business executives win government contracts in a second Chump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.

The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled after Dump became president again in January, according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Dump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the probe, two of the people said.

Undercover FBI agents posing as contractors communicated and met several times last summer with a business colleague who introduced them to Homan, and with Homan himself, who indicated he would facilitate securing contracts for them in exchange for money once he was in office, according to documents and the people familiar with the case.

On September 20, 2024, with hidden cameras recording the scene at a meeting spot in Texas, Homan accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case and sources.

No further investigative steps were taken by FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors in the final months of 2024, the people said, and were expected to keep monitoring Homan to determine if he landed an official role and would make good on steering contracts in a future Dump administration.

At the time when Homan was caught in the FBI sting, he was president and owner of a private consulting business that said it could help companies in the border security industry win government contracts.

At the National Conservatism Conference in July 2024, Homan promised he would run the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen if Dump returns to the White House in January – which he did, of course.

Several FBI and Justice officials believed that they had a strong case against Homan for conspiracy to commit bribery based on recording him accepting cash and his apparent promise to assist with contracts, according to four people familiar with the probe. But he was not charged since he was not a public official then and Dump was not president at the time he accepted money in the FBI’s undercover sting, so his actions didn’t clearly fit under a standard bribery charge.

When asked about these potential charges against Homan, legal experts said that a person who promises to influence federal contracts when they become a public official can’t be charged under the federal bribery statutes until they are named or appointed to such a post. Now that Homan has ascended to the immigration throne, he could find himself in hot water with the feds if he reaffirms his promise or communicates in some way about his plan to deliver on his agreement. Only time will tell. However, now that Patel and the Justice Department are in the pocket of Dump, it doesn’t seem likely that an independent investigation of Homan would ever be facilitated anytime soon. This won’t be the first time that a presidential cabinet contained accused miscreants, but this is the only one in which an entire cabinet is practically composed of them.

The good news emanating from the Jimmy Kimmel debacle is that the Disney Corporation (the backers behind ABC the station that let Kimmel go because of an allegedly anti-Charlie Kirk remark, which was ridiculous altogether) has lost $3.5 billion in just days. This was posted on my Instagram feed. It appears that people are canceling Disney cruises, Disney vacations, and even their subscription to the Disney channel. Sheesh, and I just took a Disney cruise in July. This flagrant attack on free speech must be fought with every ounce of our being.

Today Elliot and I enjoyed the company of two of our Austin Street Diner breakfasters at “Rachel’s” house right here in Forest Hills. She invited three of us to her lovely apartment on Yellowstone Boulevard for lunch at 12. She served us lox, bagels, chicken and egg salad, and coffee. The other person at this get-together was “”Hannah.” We stayed for almost three hours. There was a lot of jollity and some heavy baring of family secrets at the dinner table. Before leaving, we said we’d have everyone over to our place to reciprocate.

Earlier, we were visited by “Ernest,” the tech expert who came to look at the nonfunctioning television set in the living room. I tried to call him two days ago but couldn’t connect for some reason, so I went into Foodtown where he works and asked if I could leave him a message. I subsequently learned that his cell phone dropped out of his pants on the subway and was snatched by some petty thief. So my calls were just going to voicemail initially.

So Earnest entered the apartment right before we intended to leave for Rachel’s house, which was close to 11. He stayed for several minutes to gauge the situation. He claimed that the problem stemmed from faulty wiring and he said he would return to take the TV and come back with proper wiring. Thus far, he hasn’t returned. He did say he was going to other peoples’ houses in the evening, so I should just wait and see.

I now just received a message from Ernest in which he stated he is stuck in traffic and will come instead on Monday. I hope the elevator will be operating later that day. Also we won’t be home on Tuesday since we’re driving down to my friend “Harold’s” house to stay for Rosh Hashanah. I hope he can complete the job in one day, but I won’t be that optimistic that he could. This might take several days.

Have a good Sunday.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Friday, September 19, 2025. Boy, was I overjoyed that we missed the political news emanating out of this country the time we were in Copenhagen and Israel, even though we heard some snippets of the carnival of fascism swirling in this country during the present moment on BBC World News in Copenhagen. The family member we were staying with in Tel Aviv had no CNN, so we didn’t watch the news at all, but we certainly heard the news about far-right activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination while we were in Copenhagen, I believe. (I believe it happened on September 10; we were leaving Copenhagen for Israel that day.) The reaction over Kirk’s death was swift and unrelenting on the far right; the buffoon of a president talked way out of turn and condemned the “far left radicals” for Kirk’s murder, but if he had just waited until a damn suspect was taken into custody, he would have learned the gunman was not from the left at all; he was a registered Republican, as his grandmother told news outlets. This is what this “divider in chief” does so well: he divides the country into “radical lefties” and proper far righters, which he deems more American than those who espouse those policies considered too “woke” for Dump’s factions to ever wish for.

What has resulted from the death of Dump’s 31-year-old extremist friend who deserves no accolades other than that he shouldn’t have been shot for espousing such hateful opinions under the rubric of free speech is the repercussions of what Little Donnie has exacted in the wake of this event, which was to strong-arm ABC to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air for allegedly spouting anti-Kirk views on his show, which was not even the case at all. He never criticized Kirk directly for his views; he criticized MAGA for embracing Kirk’s death as a political stunt and claiming incorrectly that it was carried out by someone on the far left, which had already been disproved. For this, he was taken off the air! How ridiculous! Has anyone ever mentioned that Fox News itself should be taken off the air for espousing lies, damn lies, and more lies to the gullible American public? This station has done more irreparable damage to the American psyche ever since it came on the air, and it still is allowed to flourish, despite an almost 1-billion settlement against it for spouting lies about the 2020 election. And Kimmel is taken off for one inoffensive comment that was deemed too sensitive for the toddler in chief’s ears. In a stunning move that should serve as a wake-up call for all Americans that our First Amendment rights are now directly under attack by this fascistic administration, the Jimmy Kimmel show was put on an indefinite preemption by ABC.

It was Nexstar that owns dozens of ABC affiliates who applied pressure to the network to remove Kimmel from his late-night show. This move by Dump and his awful minions to suppress free speech should send a deep shudder through every American who cherishes the notion of free speech in this country. We are not a dictatorship – yet. But this blatant abuse of power on behalf of this authoritarian president must be dealt with severely – either with immediate lawsuits filed by Kimmel himself or by boycotting ABC itself by all people who denounce this decision by this regime. I have also been made aware that people should boycott Disney, even, since it owns ABC now. I haven’t been to a Disney property in years and I have no intention of going to one in the near future anyway.

Podcaster Aaron Parnas writes about this disturbing trend with the firing of Kimmel thusly: “If this becomes the norm, no figure in the public eye, regardless of political leaning, is safe from being pulled ‘indefinitely’ when their words displease powerful stakeholders. Beyond Kimmel, the deeper danger lies in the chilling effect this sets for all media figures, entertainers, and journalists. If the cost of expressing opinions – however clumsy or controversial – is corporate cancellation, the incentive will shift from speaking truth to power toward speaking nothing at all.” The world of 1984 will rule over this country like Big Brother reigned over that fictional land created by George Orwell.

We cannot let this thin-skinned baby get his way here. Now is the time to resist. As Parnas concludes a piece he wrote, “Today it is Jimmy Kimmel. Tomorrow, it could be any voice that dares to step outside the lines drawn by those in power.”

We are in deep doodoo, my friends, and we must make ourselves aware of how bad the situation is developing in this country and fight it. Or we won’t have a country anymore!

Despite this warning, please have a good weekend.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, September 18, 2025. Yes, Elliot and I did get home yesterday from our trip to Copenhagen and Israel. In fact, we got back much earlier than expected: I think we entered the house around 12:20 p.m. and encountered our first piece of bad news: our one apartment elevator was out of order, so we had to schlep four pieces of luggage up four flights of stairs. The second piece of bad news was our living room television set just suddenly died. It’s a Sony and I couldn’t turn it on with two remotes. I’ve unplugged the set, rebooted it several times, replaced the batteries in the Verizon remote, and that still didn’t work. I even called our cat sitter, “Laura,” to ask if she turned on the set during the time we were absent, and she admitted she never did. I asked because maybe she experienced something if she had, but it’s now a moot point. I did call Verizon Fios today to find out that they can’t do anything. Either I call a repairman to come to the house or just buy a new set. My only other option is to call a tech person whose name is “Emanuel” who we used before to do some things on our Mac to have him come up to diagnose the situation. In the meantime, I’ll just have to bother Elliot while he’s sleeping in the bedroom to watch our LG set.

Anyway, the vacation was just incredible for the number of flights we took – six altogether – and the dissimilarity of the two countries we visited. Copenhagen was brimming with hygge ( a Danish word that describes “a cozy, contented mood evoked by comfort and conviviality.” The word is pronounced “hoo-gah,” and it roughly translates to “cosiness,” but it means so much more than that. It’s literally a lifestyle that is definitely absent here and not so evident in Israel because of the tense situation engendered almost two years ago with the assault on the country by Hamas on October 7, 2023. For the most part, our Israeli section of the trip was more restful than the first leg where we did more sightseeing in the Danish capital. We primarily stayed with Elliot’s cousins in Hod Hasharon. Even though we first stayed at the Orchard Hotel near the beach for two days before taking a Gett (the Israeli version of Uber) to our cousins’ house on Friday, September 12. Then we stayed with them until September 16 when we set our phone alarm to 3:45 a.m. to get to Ben Gurion Airport for an 8 a.m. flight to Copenhagen. We had a friend of our cousins take us in his taxi to the airport at 4:30. Fo one night, we stayed at a hotel by the airport where we had a 9 a.m. flight back to the States on a Delta flight. The Israeli flights were on El Al Israel Airline.

The Copenhagen stay was noted for the amount of walking we did in various neighborhoods. I entered – without Elliot – Christiansborg Palace one day and toured the vast structure by myself, only missing out on seeing the ruins since it was close to closing time. The highlight from that day of sightseeing was seeing Christiana which is unique in its setup: it’s a self-proclaimed “free town” neighborhood on the outskirts of Christianshavn, which is the most expensive area in Copenhagen. It’s known for its alternative lifestyle and community and it’s home to around 850 residents and various businesses, cafes, and cultural venues. Elliot and I were just too dumbfounded by its anachronistic milieu in that we couldn’t think of anything like this place existing in the United States or elsewhere. Even Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco is a thing of the past and it doesn’t even come close to this throwback to the 60s. I believe Haight-Ashbury was integrated into the greater part of San Francisco, but this neighborhood was definitely not. It was all unto itself. You really have to see it to believe it!

Another day we took a one-hour canal ride in which we saw the famous Little Mermaid statue sitting by itself by the water’s edge. Our tour guide proclaimed it the second most-famous disappointing attraction in Europe; the first was Manneken Pis (“little boy pissing”) in Brussels, Belgium. Which we have seen, by the way.

The true highlight of our Danish adventure was going to world-famous amusement park Tivoli Gardens at night. It is one of the oldest amusement parks that was opened way back in 1843. There are supposed to be 40 restaurants and cafes, more so than in all of Copenhagen.

In terms of rides, I was too faint hearted to go on a regular roller coaster, so I wimped out and rode a family-style roller coaster called The Little Dragon, rode bumper cars, and walked through a haunted house instead of riding in cars on a track. This haunted house required you to put your hands on a person’s shoulders in front of you and to walk through the various rooms of this allegedly haunted house that featured live actors. Since Elliot refused to go with me to this attraction, I was assigned to walk in with a family of three from Italy, as I recall, as my haunted house companions. The only live performer I could spot was one young lady who came out of nowhere to attempt to scare us with her sudden appearance. She really did not do the trick, in my opinion. In fact, I was more amused by the “ride” than anything else.

When we got to Israel, the mood, as I suggested, did change, though the atmosphere in Hod Hasharon where our cousins lived was pretty convivial. People managed to go about their business without exhibiting any apparent tenseness. Cafes were brimming with young people – and old – having a coffee or dessert. Restaurants were full. The first night we were in Tel Aviv at the Orchard Hotel, we managed to walk to Neve Tzedek, which is an artsy-fartsy section of the city, and have dinner at a place called Suzana. The food there was very delicious. It was here that we were greeted by about four or five feral cats who begged for food. And Elliot was the one who obliged at least one of them. Tel Aviv is noted for its abundance of cats, not Copenhagen.

Two memorable events from our trip to Israel stand out: the first being was hearing a siren go off at around 3:40 a.m. to announce that we had to go to a safe room in the house to await for instructions to go back outside (here we entered the hallway since the window in our “safe room” where we slept was not completely closed) with “Becca,” our hostess. We must have waited a good ten minutes or so before Becca got the go-ahead to go back inside. So that was nerve-wracking; I don’t think I slept much after that.

The second event occurred on Sunday when Elliot’s cousin, “Ruth,” drove us almost 90 minutes to the south to view memorials to the victims of October 7: one commemorating victims killed on a particular kibbutz and the other memorializing the tragic deaths of hundreds of music festival goers at the Nova Festival who were mowed down by Hamas terrorists. At one point, we were looking down at Gaza over a bluff and seeing smoke billowing out from down below. We certainly knew what that signified. Seeing those memorials had a profound effect on both of us. Of course, Ruth had a conscious wish of not making us forget the initial atrocities committed on October 7. That cannot be denied. I just wish that the response to this first act of barbarism was not met with far greater barbarism by the Israelis, but not all Israelis have agreed with Netanyahu’s strategy here and have taken to the streets to demonstrate against his methods. Our cousins admitted that they themselves have participated in several of these massive protests. As I admitted participating in three demonstrations against Il Trumpini right here in New York to them.

Anyway, the entire trip was filled with great food, great people, and great scenery. What’s there to complain about? Getting up massively early for two flights and not sleeping on the flight returning from Copenhagen. All I recall is that I viewed three films in the 8-hour flight back to New York. One of those was High Ground from 2025 that stars Charlie Weber, Henry Thomas, and the estimable Jon Voight as the title character’s former sheriff of a father. The plot concerns the arrest of a drifter (Henry Thomas) who, we later discover, is to be a star witness against a brutal drug cartel who is embodied in the character of James Oliver Wheatley, the violent drug head gunning for Thomas. Even though there was the typical shoot-em-ups and explosives exploding, that didn’t happen until the very end of the film, while there was more character development in the rugged sheriff played by Weber who is going through his own gates of hell in his former role as a Ranger who had to make some very awful decisions that resulted in several lives lost.

Another film I did see was Bad Shabbos, from 2024. It tells the story of David (Jon Bass) and his fiancee Meg (Meghan Leathers) who steel themselves for the meeting of the future in-laws (his) on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. David’s parents are played by David Paymer as Richard and Kyra Sedgwick as Ellen who are your typical Jewish parents who are trying very hard to accept Meg’s Christian roots. The other family members gathering for this meshuganah dinner include kvetchy older sister Abby (Milana Vayntrub), tetchy younger brother Adam (Theo Taplitz), and Abby’s boyfriend, Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman), a snide Wall Street type. So far, the vibe is amusing, observant, and light, until about 20 minutes in, an accidental death occurs inside the apartment, in which the tone of the film immediately shifts to one of zaniness, as the attendees of this “bad shabbas” dinner attempt to cover up the death for the benefit of Meg’s parents, Beth (Catherine Curtin) and father, John (John Bedford Lloyd). Throw into this chaotic mix the Black doorman, Jordan, played here with gusto, Cliff “Method Man” Smith who gets dragged into the plot to cover up the death of one of the participants. At one point, he even attends the dinner in a powder-blue sweater vest and yarmulke, standing in as an Ethiopian Jew to Meg’s dumbfounded parents.

The reason I missed writing my blog is that I crashed as early as 9 lat night to sleep about 12 hours, even though I woke up several times during the night. You see, Israel is seven hours ahead of New York, and I did not sleep very much on the flight back. But I’m back now. I don’t think tonight I’ll be able to stay awake as late as I usually do; that will take some time.

And so it went!

Enjoy the pictures from our fabulous trip, by the way.

Here is the rear view of The Little Mermaid as seen on our canal ride.

This is a room in Christiansborg Palace.

This is a massive hallway in the palace.

Another room in the palace.

The throne room in which the king and queen preside. Frederik X is now King of Denmark who acceded to the throne after the abdication of his mother, Queen Margrethe. He is married to Queen Mary, who was born in Australia. They have four children.

This is the entrance to Tivoli Gardens.

More of electrifying Tivoli Gardens at night.

This is the Danish Jewish Museum that I visited without Elliot.

This is the Menorah standing outside the museum.

This sign is in Christiana.

These signposts are also in Christiana.

Here is the memorial to those killed at the Nova Festival on October 7.

Here are more plaques honoring those who died at the festival.

Ruth took us to a memorial to the burned-out cars that were devastated in the attack on October 7.

Here is a terrorist vehicle that was destroyed in the assault.

Here is a hotel near our hotel in Tel Aviv.

Here is one of the cats who had no shame approaching our dinner table to ask for food at Suzana in Neve Tzedek.

And So It Goes

Today is Thursday, August 4, 2025. There couldn’t have been a more explosive Senate hearing than today when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. the secretary of the Health and Human Services (HHS) agency was grilled by both Democrats and Republicans for being so incompetent in his role as the purveyor of this country’s health. An online MSNBC article by Brandy Zadrozny entitled “Senators tear into RFK Jr. over vaccine restrictions in explosive hearing” outlines some of the salient points that came out in today’s hearing.

Amid many calls to resign and accusations that he is a danger to Americans’ health, Kennedy struggled to defend himself against these most accurate allegations. The hearing spanned about three hours in front of the Senate Finance Committee in which both sides of the aisle accused the health and human services secretary of lying to senators during his confirmation hearings (Duh!) and harming public health by restricting access to vaccines. The only thing he could do just like Demented Don was to lash out, accusing senators of misleading the public and allegations of corruption.

This hearing marked itself as the harshest congressional oversight of any Cabinet official since the start of Demented Don’s second term in January. I say it’s about time that those lawmakers have found a spine here. One after the other, both Republicans and Democrats peppered the abnormally tan “black sheep” of the Kennedy clan with questions over his chaotic leadership of the Department of Health and Services, including his firing of the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC), his anti-vaccine record and rhetoric, and his ongoing attacks on disease-fighting treatments.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren slammed into the conspiracy theorist of a secretary by noting that Kennedy’s new recommendations for COVID vaccines have limited their availability at pharmacies in many states. She outright accused Kennedy of lying to the committee during his nomination hearings, breaking his promises not to restrict access to vaccines.

She fumed, “Last November, you said, ‘If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away.'” But just last week, she noted, “You announced the Covid-19 vaccine is no longer available for healthy people under 65.” So you be the judge here: Didn’t Kennedy just lie here about having the COVID vaccine available to all people, despite their age? Hell yes, I’ll answer. The brain-devoured secretary has been caught in a momentous lie.

At one point during the heated exchange, Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, became quite exasperated during his questioning – at one point asking Kennedy to tell him how many Americans had died of COVID. The clueless secretary responded, “I don’t know.” He should have known that the pandemic has killed more than 1 million people in the United States – a figure that Kennedy has baselessly disputed.

Then Warner exhorted, “The secretary of health and human services doesn’t know how many Americans have died from Covid, doesn’t know if the vaccine helped prevent any deaths, and you are sitting as secretary of health and human services. His voice rising, Warner postulated, “How can you be that ignorant?”

During the contentious hearing, Kennedy acknowledged he had rejected the expertise of veteran CDC officials. When asked who at the CDC he does rely on for vaccine expertise, here Kennedy should just have said voodoo experts. Instead of just acknowledging how cuckoo he really is, Kennedy named William Thompson – a longtime CDC scientist who once claimed the agency had withheld data linking vaccines to autism and who was the central figure in the 2016 anti-vaccine documentary Vaxxed. Oh, that “expert”!

At one time, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, told Kennedy, “Every single day, there’s been an action that endangers the health and wellness of American families. He accused Kennedy of elevating conspiracy theorists, crackpots, and grifters to make life-or-death decisions about the health care of the American people.

Even a key Senate repugnican, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor and chairman of the Senate health committee who had stupidly voted for Kennedy’s confirmation, joined with blistering questions of his own.

Cassidy accurately pointed out the inconsistencies inherent in Kennedy’s support for Dump’s Operation Warp Speed, the first-term program that delivered COVID vaccines to Americans, and Kennedy’s recent statements saying those vaccines have caused widespread injuries and deaths. Cassidy charged, “I would say, effectively, we’re denying people vaccines.” Of this, Kennedy stated incorrectly, “You’re wrong.”

Well, now that the hearings are over, where do you think this leaves us with Kennedy being the head of HHS? Let’s hope he has enough common sense to know that lawmakers and the American people hate him and want him gone. Do you think he got the hint today?

I’ve been a little coy with you in not mentioning my plans for travel tomorrow. I just didn’t want anyone to say, “Oh, there he goes again!” Anyway, Elliot and I are traveling to Copenhagen, Denmark, tomorrow for about four days and then we’re flying to Israel to see Elliot and my family in Tel Aviv. Here we stay about five days. Everyone has warned us about traveling to the Middle East in light of the ongoing conflict, but we have no intention of traveling anywhere in the country. We intend to stay with Elliot’s cousins in a suburb of Tel Aviv the whole time. Therefore, we return – hopefully – on September 17. See you when we get back.

Until we meet again! Farvel which is Danish for goodbye.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Wednesday, September 3, 2025. Today the news was all Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, as a powerful group of former Epstein victims demanded accountability against the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol for other adults, probably including the sitting president, who enabled the deceased financier’s sexual abuse and stated they would release their own “client list,” considering this fucking administration has not done anything to that effect ever since the Orange Turd got into office once more.

This event serves as the focal point of a Miami Herald article in the Daily News by Emily Goodin and Julie K. Brown entitled “Epstein victims say they will compile their own ‘client list.'”

Lisa Phillips, an Epstein victim who hosts a podcast that chronicles stories of sex abuse survivors, said, “We know the names.” She added, “Now, together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world.”

The rally preceded a press conference, held by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), with Epstein lawyers and victims as the two congressmen push for the U.S. Justice Department to release all of the information from its investigations into the disgraced financier.

These events occurred in the wake of Epstein’s unholy accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who appears to be pressing for a pardon from the convicted felon to commute her 20-year prison sentence.

Standing alongside Massie and Khanna was the surprising figure of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the progenitor of many crazy conspiracy theories, who said she would be very happy to work with Epstein’s survivors to make the list public. She said at the press conference, “It’s a scary thing to name names, but I will tell you, I’m not afraid to name names. So if they want to give me a list, I will walk in that Capitol on the House floor, and I’ll say every damn name.” Very ballsy from a ballsy woman!

The two lawmakers who organized the press conference, Massie and Khanna, could be using today’s event as a form of public pressure to press Congress to release the files already. It’s unclear, of course, how quickly Senate repugnicans will want to bring the matter to the floor and whether the convicted felon – whose name could possibly be contained in those files – would sign it!

Thus far, no new information from the case has emerged, further enraging those people personally connected to the case, especially Epstein’s adult victims who were abused as preteens. The Justice Department has only turned over its first tranche of files to the Oversight Committee, but Democrats said they contained mostly old information. No date for the next delivery has been announced.

Dump has suffered severe backlash in this matter for his abrupt about-face regarding the issue after his bimbo of an attorney general suddenly proclaimed there was no list and the files would remain sealed. I do hope this issue destroys him. Something has to!

Today marked a day of once-powerless women speaking out against power and privilege and Congress – and the country – must pay attention to them!

As you know, I was away from this venue yesterday since I attended my gay men’s reading club at 6:30 with my newest friend, “Harry.”

The number of guys present at last evening’s meeting was truly astounding: I estimated there were 60 of us literature lovers there, since a few of the latecomers had to sit on top of the platform in back of the cluster of chairs up front. This was new to me; no one had to sit up there ever before until yesterday.

The topic of discussion was Thomas Grattan’s 2024 novel, In Tongues. Not surprisingly, we took up the entire 90 minutes in assessing the book’s effectiveness. I even raised my voice several times in opposition to it. I was not much in favor of the book, if you need to know. Many of the other attendees were in agreement with me, even though there were some defenders of the book as well.

After the discussion, a small knot of us walked to Julius’s Bar. I actually ordered a cranberry juice, while Harry ordered a beer.

I got home around 10:30.

Since today is Wednesday, I drove to my comic bookstore on Metropolitan Avenue to pick up three comics, but I was unable to have breakfast in my usual Dominican coffee shop because every booth was occupied by someone there. This has never happened; I couldn’t ponder why this was so. Did a tourist bus just discharge all of these people at the door of Buen Sabor Latino Restaurant? I didn’t stay very long; I went to the Chinese bakery around the corner to have a Swiss cheese sandwich on a roll.

It’s late; so good night.

And so it went!

And So It Goes

Today is Monday, September 1, 2025, a new month and the unofficial end of summer. As this is the Labor Day weekend, a disturbing but all too predictable article in The US Sun appeared online which detailed the raft of violence that occurred in the country. Entitled “Sixteen dead & dozens hurt in Labor Day violence with at least 52 shot in Chicago alone as Trump sets sights on city,” Arshi Quershi reports on the unceasing victims of gun violence that were taken by lawful and unlawful firearms.

Gunfire erupted then in multiple cities, with Chicago suffering the worst toll – 52 shot, seven fatally, since Friday night.

The holiday carnage began on Friday night when a 25-year-old woman was found shot to death inside an apartment just before midnight in South Shore, Chicago. She was hit twice in the abdomen and once in the left leg. Another woman inside was also wounded.

Just hours later on Saturday morning, two men were standing outside in East Garfield Park when a dark SUV pulled up and a gunman opened fire. Two men, aged 29 and 32, were shot, according to ABC affiliate WLS-TV.

The 29-year-old man was shot multiple times and died at Mount Sinai Hospital.

That evening, a 43-year-old woman in Altgeld Gardens was ambushed by five males who unleashed a fuselage of bullets. She later died in the hospital.

In Bronzville, seven people were wounded late on Saturday when a gunman opened fire at a large gathering in a terrifying mass shooting.

Early on Sunday, a 33-year-old man was killed during an argument in the Englewood neighborhood after being shot in the head.

And several mass shootings followed, despite officials’ insistence the city does not need Dump’s help.

Chicago was not the only U.S. city to be rocked by violence over the final weekend of summer.

Atlanta police say a man in his 50s was killed after a fight between a woman’s current and former boyfriend turned deadly.

Officers said the suspect, believed to be the current boyfriend, fled the scene, ABC affiliate WSB-TV reported.

Cincinnati was the setting for three young people being the victims of gun violence in Mt. Washington, Ohio, before the gunman turned the weapon on himself.

Hours later, a woman was found shot in the head in Millvale and declared dead at the scene.

An 11-year-old boy was shot in Houston after playing a “ding dong ditch” prank as he rang doorbells and ran away. This young victim, sadly, learned the hard way that doing this trick is a far more dangerous stunt in 2025 when everyone, especially in Texas, is armed.

On the West Coast, two men died after shots rang out at Don Knabe Regional Park in Cerritos, Los Angeles, early Sunday.

The two victims were rushed to a nearby hospital but did not survive their injuries, CBS News reported.

Further east, three men, aged 35, 37, and 41 were shot outside a building in New York just after 3:30 a.m. on Sunday. This shooting has a more optimistic outcome: all three were rushed to Bellevue Hospital and are expected to recover.

In Nashville, North Carolina, police confirmed one person died Sunday after being found with multiple gunshot wounds inside a home.

The Dump regime’s crime crackdown in D.C. has included aggressive street sweeps and gun confiscations, with city and federal authorities taking around 150 weapons off the street since the Orange Turd declared a public safety emergency nearly three weeks ago.

The Orange Ogre has renewed threats to send federal agents and National Guard troops to Chicago, prompting a swift response from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Pritzker called the plan “unprecedented and unwarranted” and “illegal, unconstitutional, un-American.”

Mayor Johnson signed an executive order, the “Protecting Chicago Initiative,” to affirm city police authority and block cooperation with federal operations.

Johnson warned that deploying the National Guard could inflame tensions and emphasized the city would pursue all legal avenues to protect residents’ rights.

it’s too early to tell what will happen in these cities, mainly blue, where the reigning autocrat wants to deploy his own secret police to allegedly fight crime. Little does he know that most crime is up in red rather than blue states, but this idiot will never send the National Guard to Alabama or Mississippi anytime soon.

Related to this article on senseless gun violence occurring over this holiday weekend is an online opinion written by Thom Hartmann on how to end this national nightmare of ceaseless gun violence. His piece is entitled “The one thing that will end this national nightmare,” and it is a very thoughtful assessment of what is needed to finally end this repetitive cycle of bullets being fired into innumerable victims.

Hartmann takes us back to the brutal murder of Emmett Till that had its 70th anniversary on Thursday, August 28. This week also brought us another mass school shooting, this time in Minneapolis, with two children dead and 17 people in the hospital.

After the recent shooting in Minneapolis, Hartmann rapped a “pathetic” Republican congressman who claimed that the slaughter wan’t facilitated by guns but by “mental illness, including radical gender ideology.” This is totally pathetic, in my opinion too.

Hartmann writes about the issue, “This is a phenomenon as systemic and unique to the United States today as Jim Crow was in the 1950s.” He feels that the gun control movement needs to learn from the Civil Rights movement.

If you don’t recall, Emmett Till was kidnapped by two Mississippi white men on August 28, 1955, brutally tortured, murdered, and his mangled body thrown into the Tallahatchie River. This being the Deep South, the white men who did it, and the white woman who set it off with a terrible lie, were never brought to justice at all.

Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley, made the extraordinary brave decision to show her child’s mutilated face with an open-coffin funeral in their hometown, Chicago.

What invigorated the dormant Civil Rights movement was a picture that ran in Jet magazine that showed the mutilated face of Emmett Till. That picture made real the horrors of white violence against Black people in America for those who were unfamiliar, or just unwilling, to confront it.

Fast forward to our own ensnarement of gun violence with the innumerable school shootings starting with Columbine in 1999 and continuing up to the present day. Hartmann believes that Americans must see the horrors of gun violence in pictures like the ones that accompanied Till’s funeral in 1955.

It would be a controversial challenge, Hartmann agrees, but he feels that pictures convey an unmistakable reality that words cannot. He hopes that parents of children murdered in a school shooting may make the same decision as Mamie Bradley Till did in 1955. He feels it’s about time for America to confront the reality of gun violence in order to take bold measures to ameliorate it once and for all. He feels that the media are too squeamish when it comes to printing actual gunshot photos of children murdered in school killings. Of course, there has to be a Mamie Bradley in the form of a parent, spouse, or other relation who is willing to allow the photos of their loved one to be used in this way.

Comparing this country’s perpetual inaction over this issue to other countries, Hartmann points to Tasmania, Australia, where a gunman using an AR-15-style weapon to shoot up a public square resulted in multiple people dead. While the mainstream media generally didn’t publish photos from the massacre, they were still widely circulated.

As a result, the Australian public was so repulsed that within a year semiautomatic weapons in civilian hands were outlawed altogether, as strict gun control measures were put into place, and a gun-buyback program went into effect that voluntarily took over 700,000 weapons out of circulation.

In the first years after the laws took effect, firearms-related deaths in Australia fell well over 40 percent, with suicides dropping by 77 percent. There have been only two mass killings in the 29 years since.

Here Hartmann writes, “The year 1996 was Australia’s Emmett Till moment. America needs ours.”

I agree wholeheartedly. We finally need this if we want to see gun violence receding in this gun-toting country.

Anyway, the weekend was quite a whirlwind of activity. We were supposed to have driven to “Ralph” and “Sandy’s” house on Saturday, but we had to wait for our new Whirlpool refrigerator to arrive and to be installed that afternoon. We bought the appliance on Friday and contracted to have it delivered the next day. However, I expected it to be delivered in the morning, but I got a text on my phone saying the item would be at our door between 12:15 and 3:15. The refrigerator came around 2:05. It was installed within 45 minutes or so.

We didn’t get launched, so to speak, until about 3:40 or so, and we didn’t arrive until about 6 or so. We spent the rest of the evening indoors with our hospitable hosts with Sandy providing us with her excellent, home-cooked lasagna and a salad for dinner. A friend named “Mary” arrived a little later with dessert, a fruit tart. We all sat in the dining room and schmoozed.

After Mary left, we stayed up a little longer, trying to watch a Kirk Douglas film on TCM: The Heroes of Telemark, but I was nodding off, so we went inside to our room and to bed.

The next day, we woke up around 9:30 to have knishes that we brought from Yonah Schimmel’s Knish Bakery, on East Houston Street, and fruit salad, plus bagels. We waited until about 11:45 to drive to Sellersville, Pennsylvania, to attend my best friend of 60 years’ standing retirement party at the Washington House Restaurant, on North Main Street. We made great time, arriving before 1, when it was scheduled.

All in all, the party was lovely. There were, maybe, 25 to 30 guests, many of whom I didn’t know, except for “Harold'”s immediate family consisting of wife, son, daughter, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter. Harold made an at-times humorous speech recounting his employment history as someone interested in the music field for many years of his life and how he met his current employers, the husband-and-wife couple who own the theater that has employed Harold for close to 21 years. I didn’t know all of the details of his vocational journey here and I was happy to learn them that day. I sat with his daughter, son, and family, so I enjoyed smooching with all of them at the table.

The food consisted of a first course, mixed green salad; a second course, a choice of falafel wrap, oriechette pasta, or seared Atlantic salmon (I chose this entree); and dessert consisting of fresh fruit or chocolate chip cookie sundae. Which one do you think I chose here?

Maybe after a little over 2 and a half hours, we made our exit. Now it was time to drive back to Forest Hills. That was quite a long drive, considering how long it took. Of course, you do have to count the hour or so it took us to have dinner on the road to the overall commute, which was close to 4 hours. We encountered traffic leading to the George Washington Bridge. I think we got home after 8.

Tomorrow I will be attending my gay men’s reading club to discuss Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues. I missed August’s meeting since I couldn’t get the book in time. Thus I will miss my blog tomorrow night then, especially if we all go to Julius’s Bar for refreshments afterward.

Hope to see you on Wednesday. Oops, I just remembered we’re seeing our adopted “nieces,” “Esther” and “Rene” on Wednesday for dinner, so I don’t know if I will write one then either. I do think, however, we won’t have a long night with them since Esther still works. She’s only 27.

Have a good Tuesday.

And so it went!