Dedication: This week, this issue is dedicated to Mary Jane Marx. She was a dear friend of mine and yesterday was her birthday. She passed away this Winter and my weekly livestream was in her memory last night. I played mostly sweet lullaby-type songs. I miss her tremendously.

Quote: “He doesn’t say what we don’t already know, he just says it purtier.” – the quirky, loving inscription Mary Jane put inside of the first gift she ever gave to me. It was a hard-cover copy of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. That book became my bible. I think of quotes from it all the time and use it when I perform marriages too. So much wisdom, eloquently stated.

Song: White Rabbit – Jefferson Airplane – Mary Jane travelled around the world with these guys for a while, so many stories about Amsterdam and Haight Ashbury….. back when singers were badass and didn’t need to sell their bodies and sex to sell records. Live on Grace Slick, you badass woman you.
Live from Woodstock 1969https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl89g2SwMh4

Dear Humans,

I’m addicted to double-stuffed, vanilla Oreos. They are against my diet in SO many ways. Filled with sugar and gluten, they are on my 20% time-slot. I’ve decided that since my body can’t have gluten, mammals or mammalian products such as cheese and butter and I’m not eating processed sugar on the reg, there must be some way to enjoy SOMETHING out there. The last year of diagnosing what the hell was going on with my digestive system was hell. Hives spells and ridiculous gas… I’ll spare you the rest. Now I know basically all the things to which I’m allergic and I can steer clear of those things purposefully while still feeding myself relatively well. Meals are certainly not the gourmet dream as I would like for them to be (being spoiled by good cooks has ruined me for life) but I make up for it by finding new and exciting ways to turn cooking and eating into art. Relishing in making my table pretty, filled with flowers, candles, matching vintage flatware and cloth napkins makes my dinner feel good, even if it doesn’t satisfy my craving for lamb chops and butter-laden stuffed acorn squash with a glass of delicious Carménère or Pinot Noir. Now when I have a craving for some cuisine du passé, I just grab a few vanilla Oreos and forget all my troubles… mostly.

On to less entertaining updates, teaching is going well at this point. Creating a brand new curriculum during a pandemic with a new text book turns out to be a smidge less hair-pulling suck-ery than I thought. I’m only pulling out my eyebrows and the occasional eyelash, no big deal.

Democracy Matters students are on a roll doing their online college organizing, with all its necessary innovations and admitted setbacks, yet overall, I am impressed with their (and my) resilience in this grassroots effort to end the tyranny of the rich tv personality and his racist hordes. It’s no secret I’m a radical and it’s no secret of my sentiments that Biden SUCKS. *pulling out actual hair on the top of my head* I must say, however, having a woman of color on the Vice-Presidential stage for the first time EVER, is a momentous occasion and worth celebrating whole-heartedly. I cannot say how much that means to me (and millions of others in this country). I think she was chosen because of her color and gender, irregardless of her political prowess. When I saw the lineup of vice-prez candidates, they mostly had two things in common: they were women and mostly people of color. Fine with me. Bring it on. We need an actual representative democracy. We need for people in office to look like us, think like us, and to care about us. The blatant hatred and vitriol being spat from Trump supporters is disgusting and ignorant. They aren’t going down without a nasty fight. Needless of say, I’m very much looking forward to tonight’s Vice-Presidential debate with Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. I can’t imagine being in her shoes right now. Having to downplay the stereotype of “angry black woman” and having to keep strong the “we’re tough on crime” bullshit – it makes me sick. She has it twice as hard (if not exponentially harder) than Hillary Clinton. I will be praying for her tonight and I hope she is as real as real gets on that stage. Fuck commentary and opinion editorials. She deserves a chance to speak for people who rarely see the light of day, much less the national debate stage. I’m not very patriotic, but if she’s all I’ve got to stand behind, I’ll do it. Fuck the policies and hateful Trump noise and the gruesome displays of outdated, accepted bigotry his supporters spew like someone realizing they’ve just gulped curdled milk from the fridge.

I believe we can have a place where we all get along. I try not to demonize the humans but the actions of mislead and misinformed people who don’t know any better… but man do these people make that difficult. Watch the debate tonight. I’ll be eating popcorn and expecting to cry. Wish I could call Mary Jane at the end of it and have an uplifting discussion about chicken marsala and how much she loves me no matter how much the world sucks at the time. Just damn.

Upcoming shows: Tuesday nights, 8:30 live on FB and Insta!

This week in pictures: