Forty is Coming

I can vividly remember my friends’ parents having their 40th birthday parties with “Lordy, Lordy, Look Who’s 40” on the cakes or decorations. And I remember thinking “Wow, 40. That’s practically dead. How sad, because I really like X.”

And here we are, twenty days out from me turning 40.

I have accomplished nothing! I feel like a kid who hasn’t done his homework and then discovers that the school has burned down. I have accomplished nothing! Victory is mine!

Which is not to say that I haven’t accomplished some things. But I do think that I have very successfully make a way in the world that I can thrive and be weird and still be okay. That means a lot to me.

Minstrelsy

This is one of the things I find most fascinating and hard to wrap my head around about minstrelsy–white guys who practiced the art-form were simultaneously mocking and stereotyping black culture while also often coming to sympathize with black people in a way most whites at the time were not willing or able to do.

But, yeah, then, I have to admit, there’s something truly American about this story, then.