El Castillo or Temple of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza, December 17, 2012.
Thank you for being you!
— Michael
Rain on windshield. October 31, 2018.
On the wall of The Bahn Mi Shop restaurant in White Plains, NY, a one peso note from the Philippines. The small text across the top of the currency says, “BY AUTHORITY OF AN ACT OF THE PHILIPPINE LEGISLATURE, APPROVED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES JUNE 13, 1922.” That president in 1922 was Warren G. Harding, often regarded as one of the worst presidents. The signature in the center of the note says “S. Osmeña” (for Sergio Osmeña). Beneath that is says “President,” and he was president of the Philippines from 1944 to 1946.
Thank you to editor Colleen Anderson and Eye to the Telescope for publishing my haiku in Eye to the Telescope Issue 29: The Dark. If you click on the link, you can scroll to the end to read it. The poem is much shorter than even this blog post.
The poem, by the way, was written during my stay at an artist residency in Cadaqués, Spain. So thank you to Catherine and Sergio for making the new poem possible!
Col. Maximiano “Max” Romualdez Janairo Jr., a man of deep faith and honor, died early Thursday, September 27, 2018, after a long illness surrounded by family at home in Mount Lebanon, Pa. He was 85 years old.
A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Janairo served in Korea and Vietnam before becoming the district engineer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Pittsburgh from 1975 to 1978, when he retired from the military. As district engineer, Janairo oversaw the U.S. Army’s response to the 1977 Johnstown Flood and took responsibility for the delayed opening of the new Brady Street Bridge, which earned him accolades in the media for being a rare, honest public servant.
Janairo was born in Manila, Philippines, to the late Amelia Romualdez Janairo and Col. Maximiano Saqui Janairo. The elder Janairo was a 1930 graduate of West Point who survived the Bataan Death March, escaped from the prisoner of war camp, and hid out with his family in the provincial village of his birth. At that time, the elder Janairo enlisted Max Jr., then 11, to take notes to friends in neighboring villages. Only after the war, did Max Jr. learn that he had been carrying hand-drawn maps of Japanese-occupied military facilities to guerrilla fighters.
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Tiffany Haddish has just been nominated for an Emmy for her “Saturday Night Live” hosting duties.
She is very funny, and this book and its multiple, episodic stories adds to the story of her success.
Some of the stories are already familiar from her appearances on late-night comedy shows, such as the Groupon swamp tour in New Orleans she took Will and Jada Pinkett Smith during the filming of “Girls Trip.” That story touched upon a few points that made Haddish’s story so effective: it marked a moment of her place within the world of entertainment as a relatable up-and-comer suddenly finding herself not only working with Hollywood superstars, but also socializing with them.
The distance between them, with Haddish and most of her audience on one side, and the Smiths on the other, only deepens (and the comedy, too) when it becomes clear that the Smiths didn’t know that a Groupon is just kind of a coupon and that they swamp tour isn’t private but open to the public. (Another nice touch of separation in the story is when Will Smith gets in Haddish’s car and says, “I can’t remember the last time I was in a real car.”) It’s a winning story, and the book has lots of them that make Haddish relatable. Continue reading →
Wonder Woman came into my life in the form of Lynda Carter in the TV series of the mid-1970s. Not being that into comic books, I didn’t pay her much attention until the Patty Jenkin’s directed film came out last year. The 2017 movie reminded me that Wonder Woman has been a firm part of my consciousness throughout my life, often with the theme song playing in my head (Wonder Woman, the world is waiting for you…).
I never thought much about the people behind her creation, and so The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore, published in 2014, was a fascinating read, especially Wonder Woman’s ties to such important figures in the history of the American feminist movement like Margaret Sanger, who opened the first birth control clinic in 1916 (and was arrested for it, along with her sister, who went on a hunger strike during her incarceration).
