Yum & Yuk

Loved this essay on the flaws and wonder and importance of Paul Simon's Graceland: "Details of its making and initial reception or controversy aside, today Graceland is the kind of album that, when a friend posts the question 'Don’t I know you from the cinematographer’s party?' as her facebook status, within an hour there’s a comment thread 20 lines long. 'There’s a girl in New York City who calls herself the human trampoline,' someone writes. 'And sometimes when I’m falling, flying and tumbling in turmoil I say, ‘Oh, so this is what she means,’' writes another. 'Aren’t you the woman who was recently given a Fulbright?'chimes in a third. The concluding comment hung for days in the virtual air of my facebook homepage: 'Losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you’re blown apart.'"

Image: source.

From the NYTimes, an article on an important issue, important case: A Lawsuit’s Unusual Question: Who Is a Man?: "What is a man? For El’Jai Devoureau, this is not a rhetorical question. Mr. Devoureau, who was born physically female, is a man at the Motor Vehicle Commission, at the Social Security office, at home, at job interviews. But what about at the urinal? In a case with a truly unusual set of factors, Mr. Devoureau filed a discrimination lawsuit on Friday that could break new ground in New Jersey and across the country, turning on the question of who is or is not a man. An employer fired Mr. Devoureau because it said only a man was allowed to do his job: watching men urinate into plastic cups at a drug treatment center."

Ridiculous and infuriating: people suggesting that Gov. Patrick nominated the very qualified Judge Lenk only because of her sexual orientation. "Fortunately, Patrick isn't giving in to this nonsense. Lenk is 'more than qualified, and I think the fact that she’s going to be the first openly gay member of the court is an add-on.'"

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone." [Thomas Merton]