Bread and Circuses

           It's been a weird couple of weeks, y'all. "Official" Mardi Gras season kicked off here in Mobile, and it has been one of the funniest, strangest experiences of my life. The people of Mobile will never hesitate to let you know that Mardi Gras "started here." They're very insistent about this, and they are correct. The first recorded Mardi Gras celebration in the United States occurred in Mobile in 1703. I'm not going to debate historical fact. Among the questions I have asked and have not been given satisfactory answers to: When does [name of parade] start tonight? What is the most popular parade? Which local high school has the best marching band?     No one has a firm idea of when the parades actually start here. You can ask five people and get five different answers. Answers also vary wildly about the most popular parade. Fair enough. New Orleanians also have their personal favorites, but people in New Orleans also are so particular i...

     What the actual fuck are we doing? I am so furious that I could, and have been, crying. While I was down here yesterday morning, taking pictures of flowers and making sourdough bread that would never rise, ICE agents were murdering 37 year old Alex Pretti in the middle of the street in Minneapolis. Because he approached the officers brandishing a gun and "wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement," according to Greg Bovino.     Or, you know, he had his phone in his hand and was recording the officers actively shove a woman to the ground and then put himself between the officers and the woman and attempted to help her. Same thing, right? I've seen the video. Alex Pretti never touched his gun (which he was carrying legally). He never had the chance, because he was pepper-sprayed, tackled to the ground by seven immigration enforcement agents, pistol-whipped, and disarmed. He was disarmed before they shot him at least ten times on the ground, and...

 Lord, don't we have projects around here! Beanie and I got up early this morning so I could start my first loaf of sourdough bread with the starter I've been working on for the past couple of weeks. My first starter attempt was a bust, so I started fresh this week with much better results. Now, we have sourdough slowly rising in the kitchen as I type.  I can hardly feel three of the fingertips on my left hand, because I'm also learning to play B's tenor guitar. I have small, very inflexible hands, so four strings should theoretically be easier for me to master than six. We shall see. Right now, I'm trying to learn my open chords so I can play some very simple songs (looking at you, "Sweet Jane"). Apparently, this will get easier as I get some calluses on my fingers. Let's hope this is true.  Also, I'm trying to get better about taking pictures. We're considering a trip to Ireland in the fall, and looking through my photos from my last trip the...

 On the B-HAG and being my own worst enemy     When I washed up in Minneapolis after Hurricane Katrina, I ended up working for the Minnesota Medical Foundation for four years. The Foundation raised money for the medical school and medical research happening on campus. It was there that I learned about the B.H.A.G. The Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Around the office, people called it the B-HAG. Basically, the B-HAG was the overarching goal that all the fundraisers were working toward. In this case, it was funding for a cancer research center. As you can imagine, you have to hit up a lot of rich people to get together enough cash for something like that. Everyone in the office had a part in this.     In 2008,  we actually attained the B-HAG. There was a big fancy breakfast for us, where they announced that we'd hit the goal with what was the single largest gift the foundation had received to that date ($65m for cancer research from the Masons). It was a great mom...

    Hi! If you're here for a recap of some Ovid this week, you're going to be disappointed. I haven't picked up Metamorphoses  since last Sunday because apparently, my adult life will be lived entirely in unprecedented times. I've heard tell of times that weren't just one compounding crisis after another. That must have been awesome.      To recap the crazy of the first week of 2026: our president sent the military to Venezuela to extract their dictator president and his wife to bring him back to the United States to face charges of narco-terrorism. Nicolás Maduro Moros was a brutal dictator, and I'm not arguing that he should have remained in power in Venezuela. I do, however, find it hilarious that Trump would think such an intervention was necessary when he pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez (former President of Honduras) last month. Hernandez, who was convicted of conspiring to bring cocaine into the U.S. in 2024, was pardoned less than two years into his ...

Well, it's a good thing that this translation of Metamorphoses has extensive notes, because I was flipping back there every other page. The spine of this book is going to be trashed by the time I'm through! Yesterday, I sat down and read Metamorphoses book one, lines 1-744. That's 30 pages in the physical copy of the book. I don't know that this is a sustainable pace for reading, but we will see. There are some absolutely beautiful lines from the very beginning of the poem. For example, this description of Earth before the gods:               Chaos they called this rough and knotted mass,               nothing but sluggish weight and battling seeds               of things just loosely joined in one big heap. [Lines 3-5] Or how about this quote from Deucalion to his wife, Pyrrha:               My wife, believe me, if the sea ...