Things have been busy. Very busy. I am sorry, my people, for getting too busy to sip tea with you.  I will be back in a week or so, but I am leaving you with a little sumptin’ sumptin’ for now.  965 more days.

Kintsugi  5/30/26

 

If you haven’t read this, please do. God don’t like ugly.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BNhPSeopi/    OR

https://drstaceypatton1865.substack.com/p/the-ancestors-sent-a-spider-to-bite?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

 

That God don’t like it doesn’t stop some folks.

https://jemartisby.substack.com/p/the-most-corrupt-senate-nominee-in?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=242650&post_id=199689876&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=opppp&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

 

 

 

WCW is away working for the next few weeks. She left me in charge, hehehe—politics, politics, politics, and everything else that keeps me up at night. Last night I couldn’t sleep for hours. Chronic stress.  Too much going on. Texas is a cesspool, not that it was ever much different. Different monsters were lurking in the pit, that’s all. Economics is at the top of my list. Immigration is not, and never was.  Except for the fate of children separated from their parents who were – and are – high on the list.   Be grateful for what you have.  Things can, and will, get worse before they get better.  Today is Memorial Day. What/who are we memorializing? How did it begin?  What if Cynthia Erivo has been Glenda and Arianna Grande played Elphaba in  the Wicked movies?   Go see Project Hail Mary. The book and movie are a little different, but both are worth being bothered with. New poetry. Don’t forget to support NPR and PBS.  We need them more than ever.  977 more days; check out the Presidential Term Countdown Clock. 

Kintsugi  5/18/26

 

 

 

Our current president has never filed for personal bankruptcy, but his hotel and casino businesses have filed for Chapter 11 corporate bankruptcy six times. I have always wondered how someone could own a casino (especially someone who touts themselves as a great businessman) and still go bankrupt. Here is the answer. It takes real smarts to own and operate a casino successfully, and strong moral values not to cheat people out of their wages or contracted earnings.

 

 

Memorial Day, a federal holiday observed on the last Monday in May, is the nation’s foremost annual day to mourn and honor its deceased service people. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Blight’s 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, a commemoration organized by freed slaves and some white missionaries took place on May 1, 1865, in Charleston, S.C., at a former planters’ racetrack where Confederates held captured Union soldiers during the last year of the war. About 10,000 people, mostly black residents, participated in the May 1 tribute, according to coverage in the Charleston Daily Courier and the New York Tribune. (more)

 

 

Soft shell crabs are typically in season from late April through September, with peak availability running from May through June. 

Fried Soft-Shell Crabs   (how I do it)

 

 

 

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.  —Eric Hoffer

 

 

A Colorado Republican Party chair was arrested in a child predator sting. Hunter Rivera, the 24-year-old chairman of the Weld County Republican Party in Colorado, was arrested during an undercover operation targeting child predators.  (more)

 

 

POTUS took a 3-day trip to China. He arrived in Beijing on Wednesday without a tarmac greeting from Chinese President Xi Jinping — but the apparent snub was actually an “upgrade” from his last welcome in 2017, according to an expert.  Chinese media downplayed the importance of a visit from a U.S. president. As James Palmer of Foreign Policy noted, on the day Trump arrived, the main story on the front page of the state-run English-language newspaper China Daily was the visit of the president of Tajikistan the day before. The Chinese Communist Party newspaper featured Trump’s visit on page 3, writes Heather Cox Richardson in Letters from an American.

 

As an NPR listener, we thought you’d be interested in our latest newsletter, “How to Cut Your Food Bill”: A 4-week crash course in meal planning, budgeting, and more. You can sign up for the series here. Join Joe Hernandez on a 4-week journey to cut his family’s food bill. Listen to NPR’s new series What’s Eating America.

 

 

Starting with the 2027 season, the relocated CT Sun team will play their home games at the Toyota Center in Houston.  This move officially revives the Houston Comets franchise, which won four WNBA championships in the 1990s. Yeah, Houston gets a WNBA team again.  

 

 

 

Gratitude is in short supply. You’re actually doing better than most people right now if these 10 things are true for you:

• You have a roof over your head 
• You have clean water
• You ate something nourishing today
• (more)

 

 

 

 

Bill Allison and Jess Menton of Bloomberg reported that a new financial filing shows that in the first quarter of 2026, Trump or his investment advisors made more than 3,700 trades—over 40 a day—“totaling tens of millions of dollars and involving major companies that have dealings with his administration.” Trump invested in major companies whose businesses are affected by his decisions, including Nvidia, Intel Corp, Netflix, Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros Discovery, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon. (more)

 

If you are a writer of any genre, this is for you. Writer’s Digest’s 95th Annual Writing Competition is now accepting entries. 

 

 

For the recipe, go here.

 

 

 

 

Amazon Flex is advertising heavily in my area. They are offering $15 – $24 per hour to delivery drivers. You supply the car, insurance, and fuel while Amazon provides a few coins.  Meanwhile, the technical college is offering adjunct instructors the same amount to teach students. What does that tell you?

 

Shaker Lemon Pie

Ingredients

● 2 pie crusts, rolled out  to fit a 9inch pie pan and refrigerated
● 3 Meyer lemons, cut into very, very thin rounds (using a slicer or mandolin is advised)
● 2 cups sugar
● 1/2 teaspoon salt
● 2 large eggs
● 2 large egg yolks
● 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
● Egg wash (made from 1 large egg beaten with a pinch of salt)
● Sanding sugar (raw sugar, Demarra sugar, etc.)

Directions

• Toss lemon slices with 2 cups of sugar until slices are all evenly coated, and macerate (allow them to sit so the sugar can draw the liquid out) for 2 hours at room temperature.
• Preheat oven to 425°F (220°C). Beat eggs and yolks together with salt. Add flour a little at a time, whisking continuously to avoid flour lumps. Add egg mixture to the lemons and mix well with a big rubber spatula. Pour mixture into chilled bottom crust. Cover with chilled top crust and trim edges, then shape edges as desired, creating a seal. Cut slits in the top to vent pie, then place in the fridge for 20 minutes.
• Right before baking, brush top of pie with egg wash and sprinkle with sanding sugar. Bake at 425°F (220°C) for 20 minutes on the bottom rack, turning halfway through. Turn the oven down to 350°F (180°C) and bake until filling puffs crust up a bit, about 15 to 20 minutes.
• Remove from oven and allow to cool completely, then chill for at least 1 hour before serving.

 

 

What do you know about critical race theory? About intersectionality?

Listen to this fascinating interview with Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, originator of both phrases.

 

 

In a six-to-three ruling along ideological lines, the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to what was left of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Supreme Court stomped on the Voting Rights Act in 2013, suspending preclearance provisions that required states and localities with a history of racial discrimination in voting to get approval from the federal government before changing rules that had a disparate impact on minority voters.  Then, in 2021,  the Supreme Court gave it a brutal kick by nullifying the ability to challenge laws that make it harder for minority voters to cast a ballot.  Last week, in the final, fatal blow, the Court eliminated the law’s protections against lawmakers drawing maps that dilute the political power of minority voters. “In the three most recent presidential elections, the trend shows [that] the racial turnout gap is widening,” writes Kevin Morris for The Brennan Center. 

 

 

“Red-headed, spindle-shanked Thomas Jefferson was thirty-three years old when he drafted the Declaration of Independence, in 1776,” Jill Lepore writes in The New Yorker, in her reflection on the document’s conception, both its revolutionary ideals and its failure—particularly its failure to address the institution of slavery.