franzkavka:

“Here, dear Max, are two books and a pebble. I’ve always tried hard to find something for your birthday that is of such a neutral nature that it cannot be changed, be lost, be spoiled, and be forgotten. And after having pondered the problem for months I once again could think of nothing but sending you a book. But books are a vexation; if on the one hand they are neutral, on the other hand they are all the more interesting; and then only my convictions attracted me to the neutral ones, but with me convictions are by no means the decisive factor, and at the end I found myself, still changing my mind, holding in my hand a book that simply burned with sheer interestingness. Once I deliberately forgot your birthday. That was of course better than sending a book, but it wasn’t good. Therefore I am sending you the pebble now, and will send one to you as long as we live. Keep it in your pocket; it will protect you. If you leave it in a drawer, it won’t be inactive either; but if you throw it away, that will be best of all. For you know, Max, my love for you is greater than myself and I dwell in it rather than it dwells in me. And if it only has feeble support in my insecure nature, by means of the pebble it comes to occupy an abode in rock, even if only in a crack in the sidewalk on Schalengasse. For a long time this love has saved me more often than you know, and right now, when I am more puzzled about myself than ever and when fully conscious feel half asleep, but so extremely light, barely existing—I go around as if my guts were black, you know–at such a time as now it feels good to throw a pebble like this into the world and thus divide certainty from uncertainty. What are books compared to that! Once a book begins to bore you, it goes on doing so, or your child tears it up, or, like Walser’s book, it’s already falling apart when you receive it. But the pebble cannot bore you; a pebble also cannot disintegrate, or if it does, only in times far in the future. You also cannot forget it because you are not supposed to remember it. Finally, you can never lose it for good since you’ll find it again on any old gravel path because it is just any old pebble… In short, I have found the finest of birthday presents for you and convey it to you with a kiss which is meant to express awkwardly my thanks that you exist. Yours, Franz.”

—

Franz Kafka in a letter to Max Brod, May 1908. Paragraph breaks added for the reader’s convenience.

Compare and contrast with the pebble (Milena) that the sea (Kafka) loves in Letters to Milena.

another pic just because she’s too cute

meet luna🌙🐱 a very sleepy kitty who I just adopted this past saturday. she’s currently keeping me company with snuggles on a very boring sick day💚 I love her!!!!

carpenters3:

amymcadams:

amymcadams:

PROTESTER: Look at me when I’m talking to you. You are telling me that my assault doesn’t matter, that what happened to me doesn’t, and that you’re going to let people who do these things into power. That’s what you’re telling me when you vote for him. Don’t look away from me.

Look at me and tell me that it doesn’t matter what happened to me, that you will let people like that go into the highest court of the land and tell everyone what they can do to their bodies.

PROTESTER: Do you think that he’s able to hold the pain of this country and repair it? That is the work of justice. The way that justice works is you recognize hurt, you take responsibility for it and then you begin to repair it. You are allowing someone who is unwilling to take responsibility for his own actions and willing to hold the harm he has done to one woman, actually three women, and not repair it. You are allowing someone who is unwilling to take responsibility for his own actions —

— to sit in the highest court of the country and to have the role of repairing the harm that has been done in this country to many people.

[…]

ANOTHER PROTESTER: You have power, but so many women are powerless.

[…]

PROTESTER: Do what is right.

update: jeff flake has called for an fbi investigation

beachdeath:

So by that point Sesame Street was already legendary. So were you out by the time you joined the staff?

Well, it’s more levels. I already had my life partner, the love of my life. We weren’t living together. All our friends knew, but I don’t think I was professionally out.

[Saltzman pauses in thought. I don’t have to ask why. The “love of his life” was acclaimed editor Arnold Glassman, who edited films like Frailty and The Celluloid Closet. The two were together more than 20 years before Glassman’s death in 2003.]

I think I was cautiously out. I remember not inviting Arnie to the first Christmas parties, you know. But then I have memories of bringing him to beach house parties with everybody. I think during Sesame Street was when I came completely out. By ’86 we had an apartment together. My father knew. There was no hiding it.

Ok, so we have to address—that’s the big question, right? In the writer’s room, you’re all adults. Were you thinking of Bert & Ernie as a gay couple? Did that question ever come up?

I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked “are Bert & Ernie lovers?” And that, coming from a preschooler was fun. And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it. And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were. I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them. The other thing was, more than one person referred to Arnie & I as “Bert & Ernie.”

That’s telling.

Yeah, I was Ernie. I look more Bert-ish. And Arnie as a film editor—if you thought of Bert with a job in the world, wouldn’t that be perfect? Bert with his paper clips and organization? And I was the jokester. So it was the Bert & Ernie relationship, and I was already with Arnie when I came to Sesame Street. So I don’t think I’d know how else to write them, but as a loving couple. I wrote sketches… Arnie’s OCD would create friction with how chaotic I was. And that’s the Bert & Ernie dynamic.

So you’re saying that Bert & Ernie became analogs for your relationship in a lot of ways?

Yeah. Because how else? That’s what I had in my life, a Bert & Ernie relationship. How could it not permeate? The things that would tick off Arnie would be the things that would tick off Bert. How could it not? I will say that I would never have said to the head writer, “oh, I’m writing this, this is my partner and me.” But those two, Snuffalupagus, because he’s the sort of clinically depressed Muppet…you had characters that appealed to a gay audience. And Snuffy, this depressed person nobody can see, that’s sort of Kafka! It’s sort of gay closeted too.

The secret friend…because at that point Snuffy was Big Bird’s secret friend. It was later on he out and everyone realized he actually existed.

That happened while I was there, yeah. But they haven’t…the New Yorker cover was kind of vindication, but there’s not a Bert & Ernie float in the Pride Parade.

We wish!

And because it was always diversity, diversity, it’s a shame [Sesame Steet] wasn’t leading the charge. Here’s a story about pushing the gay envelope of Sesame Street…