Emmett Till would, and should, be celebrating his eighty-second birthday today - just a little older than my mom and dad, whom I'll be traveling to see very soon.

Till, visiting family from his home in Chicago, was murdered in the small town of Money, Mississippi, by folks who "take care of their own."

The purpose of the murder was vengeance against Till for having the temerity to exist and to breathe the same air as the very white, very upstanding, very small-town people of Money. It was also a warning to anyone else who looked like Till that they'd better not try that in a small town where people "take care of their own" and define "their own" in the most appalling of ways.

The Jason Aldean shit got stuck in my craw again today, and I was going to write something long and critical about how he DIDN’T grow up in a small town. He grew up in a majority Black city, Macon, Georgia, but CHOSE to attend a Christian school where the student body is STILL over 90% white in 2023. I was gonna write about how the town where he filmed his video, Columbia, Tennessee, is no longer a small town, but it WAS one in 1927 when Henry Choate was tied to the back of a car and dragged through the streets of that small town before being hanged right where Aldean CHOSE to stage his video.

I was gonna write about how the whole point of Sundown Towns across America was never having to SAY the words, “Get out by dark, N*****,” because that shit is IMPLIED by the militancy of statements like, “We protect our own round here,” when “our own,” are all fish-belly white and hair-trigger angry about them “outsiders from the city coming 'round here to do no good."

Just ask Ahmaud Arbery's people about that.

Last night at Annie and Gus's weekly fam-dinner, we had a killer meal and watched the Season 2, Episode 6 of The Bear - and a few things struck me hard.

First: It's the best damn thing on television since Ted Lasso, and; second, it's the best companion show for Ted Lasso one could possibly imagine.

I know, I know, I know. At first blush, the shows couldn't be more different, but in some ways, they're the exact same narrative, just blown inside out. Both shows are about how trauma profoundly warps "normal" people all the time. Both shows have as their backdrop the pre-action suicide of someone who, by all visible measures - to their family and friends, anyway - had the world by the balls. In Ted Lasso, it was his dad, who we never meet. In The Bear, it's the older brother, Michael, who we just really met in the FUCKED-UP Christmas special we just watched last night.

I love the rainy season, but I miss the night sky.

Like many of you, I've been a stargazer most of my life. I think it's just in us. We're a narrative species. We draw meaning and sustenance from the world around us - the grand metaphors of being, and with the possible exception of the ocean, there has never been a more expansive template for contemplation than the night sky.

The daytime sky presents its answers forthrightly. The big yellow bastard up there gives us heat and light. It makes the flowers and the berries grow. It provides us with life. But the night sky is inherently more sublime. What's the point of it but to sleep, perchance, to dream?