June 25, 2022

I’ve put the Stuytown green market to one side along with my visit to the Met’s Winslow Homer exhibit.

I want to honor a woman, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and an organization, The Alliance of Baptists, that give me hope. Anyone who knows me knows I’m deeply critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Along with the Zionists I’m lumping the Supreme Court justices who have conservative Catholic beliefs that they’ve turned into law.

Back story:  I’m a religious shopper. I was raised Catholic, drifted into the Friends, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the Bahai faith.

June 17, 2022

Celebrating Juneteenth. 

Before I could celebrate Juneteenth, I had to find out the significance of that awkward word. Here goes.  It combines June and nineteenth. It’s believed to be the oldest African-American holiday, with annual celebrations on June 19th.   From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19 as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States .

Opal Lee, a Black retired school teacher from Texas campaigned to have the day when slavery was declared illegal a national holiday. June 19, 2022 is the second anniversary of that historic occasion. 

Here’s Miss Lee being introduced to President Biden as he signs the proclamation making Juneteenth an official holiday.

June 11, 2022

Some June Dates

On June 3, 1888, the poem “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest L. Thayer was first published, in the San Francisco Examiner. It came to sum up America’s growing love for baseball, with its drama of high hopes and crushing disappointments.

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;

And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,

But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.

On June 24, forty-five minutes before sunrise we can see, by looking east,  a line up of five planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

June 4, 2022

I got to the New Museum the second to last day of a Faith Ringgold exhibit. The 91-year old artist has been creating all types of art for over fifty years. She was born in Harlem and  was raised in a loving and supportive family. She attributes her development in large part to her early environment. 

I also saw Daniel Lee’s instillation, Unnamed Entities. What a glorious New Museum-filled day.