RUBY BRIDGES. New Orleans. 1960. (Norman Rockwell painting)

 

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/full-interview-rachel-maddow-talks-with-the-bishop-who-asked-trump-directly-to-show-mercy-230028869613

 LUNCH TODAY at Old Town Bar on East 18th Street. With a friend. To me, a perfect place.

WITH NO SIGN TO HOLD in the biting cold this week, I find myself restless in the early morning and I find myself at my breakfast place by 8:00. Alone, though I’m meeting a guy there on Friday morning. What I notice, and the picture shows as have all the pictures I’ve posted from the city, no one looks or dresses like a hot shot. These four guys meeting before work could be anywhere.

 WATCH THIS: 

https://youtu.be/KluZw9x3gas?si=68DLJGm0u7vu-pt-

 

MY ENTHUSIASM FOR DAVID LYNCH has a lot to do with his unending belief in TM (transcendental meditation). He had done it for over 40 years, twice a day. So have I. I’d recommend it to all of you. No matter your age. I did it first thing this morning. 

IT WAS WAY TOO COLD to go out with the sign this morning. That gave me two extra hours in my apartment. I didn’t watch a second of yesterday’s Trump inauguration, and I didn’t watch the news about it either. I’m going to try to avoid him. With the extra time inside I turned on the Ken Burns’ three part documentary about the Holocaust. I’d watched it before, but for some reason I watched the first two of three parts so far today. There’s something in it, that’s troubling for today about Trump. Something.

 

“The world doesn’t work the way the schoolbooks said it did and we are different from what our parents and teachers expected us to be.”

—David Lynch

EASILY MORE THAN A DECADE AGO I was on my corner waiting for the light to change early in the morning before rush hour. It was just me on the corner. I don’t remember why I was up. Suddenly up to the corner from back by my apartment building came a very beautiful tall woman. She stood next to me for a minute. I knew she was somebody, but I didn’t know her name. She looked busy already. Intent on making something of the day. 

R.I.P. Cecile Richards.

 M.L.K. 

RESTLESS I WOKE UP EARLY AGAIN AND WENT OUT TO BREAKFAST at the usual place. I got blueberry pancakes. Eggs on a separate plate. Scrambled. I went home and soon still restless because of the Inauguration tomorrow and the big college football game tomorrow night and because my oldest daughter is flying to India this afternoon for work, I decided I’d go buy a book at close-by big Barnes & Noble which has a staggering amount of trade paperbacks on all sorts of tables. I usually walk to my favorite bookstore but it was too far for me to go today. I looked at many tables. No book jumped out to me though. Finally on an upper floor this one did. I’m 77. It’s my era. I’ve likely read most of the entries before. But I bought it. In a kind of a fuck you to Trump and Musk and Jon Voight. 

AT THE BIG (four floors) BARNES & NOBLE NEAR ME just now.