What a relief to start Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist (2014) and find that I liked it. After struggling with her Difficult Women, I dreaded going down a dark hole. Not so. In fact, the first essay on privilege was refreshing. Yes, she is the first person I’ve ever read to address the difference between privileges that people have and whether that means they have a perfect life. Thank you.

In keeping with thanks, thank you to my friend, poet Paula Weld-Cary for her book, A Survivor’s Poems for the Earth and Its People: A Memoir in Verse. These touching and honest poems add to the collective healing that so many people need and deserve. Congratulations too!

Keeping up with some obits, one in The Economist (May 21) is for a 90-year-old man who witnessed the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945 by over 300 U.S. bombers that killed 100,000 and left a million homeless. He was 12 at the time and the event turned him into a pacifist who devoted seven decades to record what happened and teach others to end war.

The other, (May 14) was for a 91-year-old man who was much harder to admire. This son of an Italian immigrant and American mother, grew up in the North Bronx and learned to use a camera in the Air Force during the Korean War. Taking photos of celebrities for the base newspaper led him to make money afterward at premiers and parties in California. His not-so-great claim to fame was as a relentless paparazzi who was court ordered to stay away from Jackie Kennedy and didn’t. He started the trend of celebrity hounding, had an archive in his mansion with three million pictures, some of which, including his most famous print of Jackie, are in the Museum of Modern Art. Hmm.

blog post. https://rokeefehistory.com/blog #amreading; #RochesterNY; #RochesterD&C; #Gianna Floyd; #RoxaneGay; #ABadFeminist; #PaulaWeldCary; #ASurvivor’sPoems; #TheEconomist; #obits; #paparazzi;