Bookin' It in 2020

Sadly, I only finished reading a mere total of five books in 2020.  They are as follows. 

1.  A Wild and Precious Life: A Memoir by Edie Winsor with Joshua Lyon
2. Hatch Show Print: Letterpress Print and Design Since 1879 by Jim Sherraden with Celene Aubry
3. This Living by Reka Jellema
4. Save Yourself by Cameron Esposito
5. Logical Family by Armistead Maupin

Quote of the Day

... we would like very much to mention the four major freedoms that my friend and writing-and-arranging composer, Billy Strayhorn, lived by and enjoyed.  That was freedom from hate, unconditionally; freedom from self-pity; freedom from fear of possibly doing something that may help someone else more than it would him; and freedom from the kind of pride that could make a man feel that he is better than his brother.

-- Duke Ellington, upon receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Quote of the Day

Jazz is America's own.  It is played and listened to by all peoples -- in harmony together.  Pigmentation differences have no place...as in genuine democracy, only performance counts.

-- Norman Granz

Quote of the Day

Jazz is music; swing is business.

-- Duke Ellington

Quote of the Day

Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life.

-- Art Blakey

Quote of the Day

I know this may be hard for you to believe, but San Francisco is full of men and women, both straight and gay, who don't consider sexuality in measuring the worth of another human being.  These aren't radicals or weirdos, Mama.  They are shopclerks and bankers and little old ladies and people who nod and smile to you when you meet them on the bus.  Their attitude is nether patronizing nor pitying.  And their message is so simple:  Yes, you are a person.  Yes, I like you.  Yes, it's all right for you to like me, too.

-- Armistead Maupin, "Letter to Mama"

Quote of the Day

No, Mama, I wasn't "recruited."  No seasoned homosexual ever served as my mentor.  But you know what?  I wish someone had.  I wish someone older than me and wiser than the people in Orlando had taken me aside and said, "You're all right, kid.  You can grow up to be a doctor or a teacher just like anyone else.  You're not crazy or sick or evil.  You can succeed and be happy and find peace with friends -- all kinds of friends -- who don't give a damn who you go to bed with.  Most of all, though, you can love and be loved without hating yourself for it."

-- Armistead Maupin, "Letter to Mama"

Quote of the Day

My father's arch-conservatism deepened as the years wore on, even after his party climbed into bed with the fundamentalist "Holy Rollers" he had once openly disparaged.  The platforms of the candidates he supported -- including, of course, Jesse Helms -- were growing more virulently antigay.  He claimed -- as my brother, Tony, would later claim -- that his political beliefs were independent of his love for me.  To me that meant that his love for me simply wasn't important enough to make him challenge the relentless fag-bashing of his party.  I should be grateful for his tolerance, he seemed to be saying, since I was the one who wasn't playing by the rules.  So I withdrew.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 281

Quote of the Day

Queers who embolden one another to be honest about themselves can feel real exhilaration in that moment, and it can last them a lifetime.  Your tribe, as [Christopher] Isherwood called it, becomes a source of great sustenance.  A terrible weight that you have borne for years becomes apparent by its sudden absence.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 260 - 261

Quote of the Day

It's hard for the South to get things right from the start, because, ever since the Civil War, it has taught itself to equate righteousness with losing.  We must be on the right track, y'all, because everyone else is against us.  In my seventy-two years I have heard Southerners offer this excuse for everything from segregation to miscegenation laws to the"religious liberty" currently invoked in the name of subjugating gay people.  And in every instance, when the Supreme Court reminds them that decent Americans don't act in this way anymore, they haul out the states' rights flag and brandish it in a Rebel-gray fog of amnesia.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 51

Quote of the Day

The South makes social progress, like everywhere else, though it does its level best not to notice it while it's going on.  Only later, when it stands a serious risk of looking like a total asshole, does it claim to have always been on the side of decency and justice.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 51

Quote of the Day

My youth would be like that, the slow decay of cherished myths -- about politics and race, about love itself -- until nothing was left but compost from which something authentic could finally begin to grow.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 22

Quote of the Day

Sooner or later, though, no matter where in the world we live, we must join the diaspora, venturing beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us.  We have to, if we are to live without squandering our lives.

-- Armistead Maupin, Logical Family, p. 2

Quote of the Day

When I'm sometimes asked "When will there be enough (women on the Supreme Court)?" and my answer is "When there are nine."  People are shocked.  But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.

-- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Quote of the Day

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

-- Anais Nin

Quote of the Day

Music these days can feel too painful to hear -- but that's all the more reason to keep listening.  The songs keep us hanging on.  The songs remind us to keep moving out of our isolation bubbles and into the future.  The songs give us life.  The songs also tear us apart.  That's what songs do.

-- Rob Sheffield, "Life Without Live"

Quote of the Day

Music keeps me feeling alive, keeps nudging me into the world.  I listen to mixtapes from old friends and playlists from newer ones.  I spent an entire week listening to nothing except a banged-up Maxell C-90 of Nikki Sudden rarities a friend made me in 1987.  (It turns out I've been underrating "Wedding Hotel" all these years.)  I listen to my scratchy old Fairport Convention vinyl and savor their Celtic doom-drone, as Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny sing "Meet on the Ledge."  (Plague, famine, pestilence -- the ambient hum of the Irish psyche.)  But when I listen to old music, new music, bad music, I'm dreaming of crowds.  Tiny crowds in sleazy bars.  Gigantic stadiums in the sun.  DIY caves.  Glittery dance floors.  Karaoke rooms.  Wherever there's a cluster of music fans who couldn't talk themselves out of showing up.

-- Rob Sheffield, "Life Without Live"

Quote of the Day

I go see bands every chance I get, and I live in New York City, where's there's plenty of chances.  Live music is how I measure out the next week, month, year of my life.  But on a bigger scale, the shows are how we measure history.  When you picture the past or the future, you imagine what musicians are doing in a room and who shows up to hear it.  You can define any point in the arc of human history by who was in Fleetwood Mac at the time.  (And whose hotel bed they were sharing.)  So what does music fandom mean at a time when we can't gather together to celebrate, discover, experiment?

-- Rob Sheffield, "Life Without Live"

Quote of the Day

I did forgive (my dad for not accepting me when I first came out).  But I also don't know if I've ever been able to let myself feel the full scope of anger and grief that was truly going on for me during the years I felt most rejected.  I think it's too scary.  My pain was immense -- but I also had to survive.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 182

Quote of the Day

When late-night hosts deliver political opinions via jokes, they have a greater chance of connecting with a large group of people.  A good comic can relax folks enough to broaden horizons and change minds.  For instance, if you grow up in a homophobic world, jokes can push for acceptance by planting the seed of a new idea, like that gay people are people.  That's one reason I was drawn to stand-up: so I could make the world safer for me to live in by cleverly introducing myself and my ideas.  It's manipulation, used for good!  Though it can also be used for evil.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 166

Quote of the Day

Two weeks into being a lightly paid pro comedian and comedy had already treated me better than the Church I'd given two decades to, and the parents who, you know, physically made me.  And that totally rocked my world.  I'd had no idea that there was anywhere that being gay wasn't a deal breaker; I was out in the real world on my own for the first time, trying to figure out if anything was at all safe.  It's not like I had any queer castmates saying, "It gets better!"  It was just this group of straight people not being violently disgusted by me or worried for my eternal soul.  My mind was blown.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 140

Quote of the Day

Coming out feels like (the) sex talk in reverse: You sit your folks down and say things they probably find too informative and too uncomfortable.  It feels confrontational and clinical.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 118-119

Quote of the Day

After years of feeling different I finally had confirmation: I am different from a lot of people I know and almost everyone I grew up with -- but I am also not the only one of my kind!  A lifetime of feeling like a post-meteor dinosaur and now, overnight, I had words to describe myself, a neighborhood in every city, a parade every summer, and a queer family history.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 100

Quote of the Day

Men are cultured to feel ownership over their female children.  That's why dudes say things like "As a father of a daughter..." to start off their contribution to a conversation about basic human dignity for people who happen to be women.  Men aren't taught to empathize with us, but to protect us as extensions of themselves.  We are seen in relation or relief, rather than as distinct autonomous individuals.  Living in a patriarchal society means fathers view daughters as an offering, as a good to trade to other men as a way of improving one's position.  That's the history of marriage.  I'd been very high achieving, which meant that my dad was a success with a solid prize to offer mankind -- and my rejecting men [because I was gay] was a rejection of his value.  Not that he has ever spoken to me about any of this or made me feel it directly.  It's the dang water, man.  It's the system.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 99

Quote of the Day

Catholicism convinced my folks that their kids were one decision away from hell at any time, and whether that was wearing a nose ring or being honest about identity, their job was to redirect, not accept.  Exhausting!  For them and for us.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 98

Quote of the Day

Parents of lgbtq+ kids: I get that your kid might feel different to you when they come out.  It might feel like a new identity and it might be scary.  You may feel let down and you may have to mourn the person you thought your kid was.  Likely, they are sharing some of that fear and surprise.  They might even mourn their other self, too.  But there is so much joy in coming out.  I don't mean that it always goes well, or provides safety and freedom.  I am speaking only about feelings here.  Feelings-wise, coming out is elating.  It's a celebration.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 97-98

Quote of the Day

I'd been praised and validated [by my parents] for "holy" or achievement-related behavior my whole life ... Coming out was my first experience with letting them down.  And I really let them down.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 97

Quote of the Day

Once I'd realized women were not simply empty wombs, other dominoes began to fall.  If saying "all women can't do something" was reductive, for example, how could I feel that abortion was definitely evil?  I wanted to call up the Pope and say, "I'm young, and I'm pretty sure I'm not a genius, but this makes no sense and I can't be smarter than all you priests by this much."  Either the Church's prescriptive views were being defined and presented by people who knew they were a lie, or they didn't know they were lying -- and I couldn't figure out which was more terrifying.  I felt like I was on the other side of some wide chasm, looking back and wondering, What is everyone doing back there?

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 77-78

Quote of the Day

It broke my heart, seeing the Church the way it really is.  As an abuser.  As darkness.  As a bulldozer that decimates and has decimated communities, cultures, and countries for the duration of its existence.  Yes, Catholics can do good in the world.  There are priests and nuns and schools and groups of people doing solid work for the poor or the sick who belong to that faith.  I was trying to be one of those people.  Until I wasn't.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 76

Quote of the Day

I still carry shame over not being the woman culture expects me to be.  Just last week, I got called a dyke while walking down my own street by one of my neighbors -- and not as a friendly greeting between dykes.  My reaction, after wanting to punch the dude in the nose, was to feel bad about myself.  So I'm the one that's embarrassed?  Even though he's a jerk, and I know where he lives?  But yes, I was embarrassed about my Hawaiian shirt and jean jacket.  How am I ever supposed to heal or feel safe?  Well, for one, by telling someone about it.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 20

Quote of the Day

[When I was a kid] I didn't have the language to say, "It seems you're noticing that my gender presents differently from what you're used to.  That's partly because it's the mid-'80s and we don't have a ton of opportunities to see many different types of people, especially in an upper-middle-class white suburban neighborhood like ours.  Boy, will the internet blow all of our minds a decade from now!  Anyway, many of us gender-nonconforming folks exist in the world, have for centuries, and it's actually totally fine -- in fact, it's great!  There's nothing wrong with me or you, and coming to understand my own gender expression will be one of the most freeing experiences I'll have in my next two decades on this planet.  I wish the same to you!"

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 19-20

Quote of the Day

Why are Little Gay Kids so creative?  Probably because we are working hard to make sense of our own identities.  We know there is something different about us but can't figure out what it might be.  We often don't have the language or space to ponder our sexualities or gender presentations.  So we feel like outsiders or bystanders or both.

-- Cameron Esposito, Save Yourself, p. 14

Quote of the Day

They are lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.

-- Kimberly L. Jones

Quote of the Day

The hardest thing about really seeing and really hearing is when you really have to do something about what you have seen and heard.

-- Frederick Buechner

Quote of the Day

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

-- Article [1] (Amendment 1 - Freedom of Expression and Religion), The Constitution of the United States

Quote of the Day

Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard.  And what is it that America has failed to hear?  It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.  It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.  And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity.  And so in a real sense our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

... I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air.  Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

A riot is the language of the unheard.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

If you can only be tall because somebody's on their knees, then you have a serious problem.  And my feeling is white people have a very, very serious problem.  And they should start thinking about what they can do about it.  Take me out of it.

-- Toni Morrison

Quote of the Day

There are no virgin births in music.  Music comes out of other music.

-- Sandy Wilbur, "How Music Copyright Lawsuits Are Scaring Away New Hits"

Quote of the Day

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem.  Frankly, these people frighten me.  Politics and governing demand compromise.  But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise.  I know, I've tried to deal with them.

-- Barry Goldwater

Quote of the Day

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family.  In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.  As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death.  It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage.  Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves.  Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions.  They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law.  The Constitution grants them that right.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered.
 
-- United States Supreme Court, Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015

Quote of the Day

When people are attached to positions they believe are their birthright, you get huge amounts of backlash.  When men think women are taking opportunities and privileges away from them, when they think women are challenging male dominance, you get backlash.  But we have to deal with that.  Women cannot -- and should not -- internalize patriarchal values and give and give and give until we're nothing.  What would need to change is for men in positions of power to accept that women can surpass them without having wronged them.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

The good news is it's becoming really obvious that women are not inferior to men in masculine-coded pursuits like math and physics and philosophy.  Women are funny.  Women are writers.  It takes an enormous amount of willful denialism not to see that women are free-minded and creative beings just as much as men are.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

What do we do about misogyny? ... I think one thing that will help is undoing the ties that bind people falsely, the false sense of moral obligation that keeps women with abusers and makes us reluctant to try to educate, to really morally educate young men not to participate in and enact rape culture.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

(What's happened since the Harvey Weinstein story broke) seems to be mostly a good thing.  It's certainly better than the alternative, which is these men getting away with it.  But the thing that bothers me is their age.  These are all men in their 50s, mostly 60s, sometimes 70s, who are being taken down well past the age of commercial viability, so they're not paying the price that they should.  The point is, we have this image of these old, predatory, powerful monsters.  They totally exist, but they didn't start out that way.  They started in adolescence.  We are seeing this reluctance to face up to the fact that young men, even boys, can do the damage of their much older counterparts.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

Since August 2015, my prediction was that Trump would be elected over Clinton, and the reason would be low voter turnout for Clinton, because that's just the way these things work: the lack of enthusiasm for a woman who's up against a male candidate who talks and acts like he's the last hurrah for patriarchy ... On election night, I wasn't shocked, but it hurts to know that the most incompetent, morally bankrupt, and ignorant white man can be elected over a woman about whom reasonable people can disagree but who was obviously more qualified than Trump.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

Misogyny is the law enforcement branch of patriarchy.  If you think about someone like Donald Trump claiming he's the law enforcement president, I think that's right.  It's the law of patriarchy, among other things, that he's enforcing.  It's the law that polices and punishes women who transgress or threaten dominant men.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

I'm less interested in assignments of blame or holding people accountable in direct ways for their perpetuation of misogyny, and I'm more interested in having us understand the ways in which most, if not all of us, tend to be complicit in misogynistic social systems.  I wanted to know how we police women, how we keep them in their place, in their designated lane.  We can combat this, and it's not like we all have to purify ourselves or something.  But we have to be aware of the unconscious biases and cultural norms that sustain all of this.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

I think most misogynistic behavior is about hostility toward women who violate patriarchal norms and expectations, who aren't serving male interests in the ways they're expected to.  So there's this sense that women are doing something wrong: that they're morally objectionable or have a bad attitude or they're abrasive or shrill or too pushy.  But women only appear that way because we expect them to be otherwise, to be passive.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

There are relatively few misogynists as brazen or as unapologetic as Donald Trump, partly because misogynists often think they're taking the moral high ground by preserving a status quo that feels right to them.  They want to be socially and morally superior to the women they target.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

... we have these patriarchal social structures, bastions of male privilege where a dominant man might feel entitled to (and often receive) feminine care and attention from women.  I think misogyny and sexism as working hand-in-hand to uphold those social relations.  Sexism is an ideology that says, "These arrangements just make sense.  Woman are just more caring, or nurturing, or empathetic," which is only true if you prime people by getting them to identify with their gender.  So sexism is the ideology that supports patriarchal social relations, but misogyny enforces it when there's a threat of that system going away.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

There's a tendency to define misogyny as this deep hatred in the heart, harbored by men toward girls and women.  I define misogyny as social systems or environments where women face hostility and hatred because they're women in a man's world -- a historical patriarchy.

-- Kate Manne, "What we get wrong about misogyny"

Quote of the Day

The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity...

-- A. Edward Newton

Quote of the Day

Indeed, there will always be a love for artists who compellingly sing it like it is, exposing and unraveling the frustrations the listeners face in a song they can't forget.

-- Vivien Goldman, Revenge of the She-Punks, p. 179