“doors” open at 7 for community hang)
Where: https://youtu.be/VQoP3Yc0Xe4

Who gets 10%: www.welcomehomemass.org Welcome Home strives to provide families experiencing hardship with basic household items they need to live with dignity, collecting and redistributing like-new household items with no fees, no forms and no requirements. Any items that we cannot use are repurposed or recycled environmentally. “We have 200 square feet of well-organized home goods that are available with no questions asked for anyone who is rebuilding a life for themselves. Please send people our way”, says Julie Plaut Mahoney, Exec. Dir., in a note to me, including a sweatshirt.

They sent me a sweatshirt. Hell yeah, I’m giving again.
http://paypal.me/vancevancevance  or
https://venmo.com/vancevancevance  or

a check to VanceFunder P.O. Box 17,
Arlington, MA 02476 for this web-groovery.
Pay or not. Up to you. Let’s stay connected.

This week’s pajamas = gilded silk. I play folk = big money

PLUS VANCE’S TOE IN THE WATER FIRST LIVE TOUR (ok, one gig) OF 2022:

2/19 BEACON, NY THE TOWNE CRIER; https://www.townecrier.com/production/vance-gilbert-specil-guest-marc-von-em/
Ima try this playing out thing again. I don’t expect a ton of people. But I’m inexpensive, so they’ll have me and you can come cheap!! Everybody wins. I hope I remember to wear pants... Vax and masks required.

I teach and coach stuff.

Good Good Man - the CD - streaming all over, even get one from me.

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STRANGE OLYMPIC GAMES

“Some of his best training came unexpectedly when he was performing aerobatics alone in the base's practice airspace. Another Thunderbolt appeared from out of nowhere. Being a fighter pilot, Harry (Lt. Colonel Harry Stewart Jr., Tuskegee Airman (ed.)) engaged the presumed tenderfoot. Before he knew it a knock-down, drag-out (mock (ed.)) dogfight... to see who could get on whose tail. The exercise went on for what seemed an eternity, with the other pilot eventually gaining the advantage...the two planes broke off their joust and landed. Harry craned to see his competitor step out of the other P-47. He wanted to get a glimpse of the skilled aviator.”

“The pilot stood on the wing and when the helmet was pulled off, a full head of long, red hair flowed out. "I'll be damned," Harry said to himself. Who had given him a run for his money was one of the female flyers of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program. It was a reminder that flying talent is not bound by such irrelevant characteristics as gender or race.”

From “Soaring To Glory: A Tuskegee Airman’s Firsthand Account Of World War 2”. Used without permission. It’s February. And I’m Black.

Every ethnic or gender group has a specific flag to wave in the Un-winnable Suffrage Olympics, don’t they? It’s hard to measure who is “further along” in those games. The measurement made even more insidious by the measuring stick used to quantize who has first down. Tell me, who wrote those rules? Surely not Black men or White women.

Reminds me of when I used to say “Aww c’mon, that’s not sexist what I said/did/purveyed. I treat everyone like that...” Like that is some excuse to perpetuate the crappy placement of the goalposts of history. Like as a Black man I didn’t need to recognize my positions of privilege, even as they shift, even in the midst of the Un-winnable Games.

I’m learning, I’m still a work in progress. Aren’t we all?