You Had Me at “Hello”

ooh these kids’ medley

Biko, Manna, Mfundo

look…listen—ooh-ooh

Hello, Eye-Openers—Marshawn Camese and Ada Limón

New Orleans activist Marshawn Camese spoke on May 12th at the Louisiana state senate redistricting “hearing.”  An excerpt from his landmark Baton Rouge Address: “You showed us what you do.  And I believe the country as a whole is rebuking your party.  Y’all are in a death spiral.  That’s why y’all have to redistrict.  That’s why y’all have to cheat….  Y’all know what you’re doing is abhorrent….  The maga party is the last breath of the Confederacy.  And I’ll be happy to see Millennials and Gen Z bury y’all.  There will be no more of your party….  See y’all in the midterms.”  

Gazing up at two cypresses from her small plastic pool, poet Ada Limón marvels that “It Begins with the Trees.”  We sit at a picnic table, staring skyward at two knit pines.  Wherever you are and whatever the trees, the sight of interwoven branches will never look the same.  It “is not one tree, but two, and they are / kissing, they are kissing so tenderly.”

Follow the Leaders—Elina Svitolina, Stephen Colbert, and Sherrilyn Ifill

How hard is it winning the Rome Open three times…eight years separating your last two championships…this May, now a mother, defeating the players ranked two, three, and four in the world to raise the trophy again?  How hard is it to finish your elated acceptance speech, after a grueling three-set match on May 16th: “Thank you to all the people back in Ukraine watching me at night in bomb shelters.  I feel all the love.  Slava Ukraini?”  Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina deserves all the love.  How hard is it taking indefinite breaks, in 2022 and 2025, from the tennis tour grind while grieving for your beloved homeland?  From her husband, soon-retiring tennis star Gael Monfils: “What a season, what a week, what a player.  But above all, what a woman.  An incredible mom to Skaï, an exceptional athlete, a soul like no other.  I’m so proud of you, my love.  Of your strength, your calm, of everything you carry quietly day after day.”  A snippet of what she carries….

Since 2019 at the Svitolina Foundation, Ukrainian children learn tennis along with the values of care, respect, openness, and collaboration.  Her students receive academic tutoring, gender equality education, and psychological resilience tools.  In June 2022, she was the second person asked by President Zelenskyy to serve as an ambassador for his UNITED24 fundraising platform. Rallying support for the return of deported Ukrainian children, raising money for a school shelter in her hometown of Odesa as well as for hospital generators and ambulances.  Why?  “When you keep hope alive, there’s always another chance.” 

If “every joke is a tiny revolution” as George Orwell claims, then crown Stephen Colbert a revolutionary war hero.  “We call this show the joy machine,” Colbert opens The Late Show for his last broadcast on May 21st.  “I want to let all y’all know how important you’ve been to what we’ve done,” he thanks his in-person audience and eleven years of worldwide viewers for their infectious energy.  “I would call that a “reciprocal emotional relationship,” house bandleader Louis Cato replies to Colbert’s question, sensitively defining this mutual admiration society.  “Let’s do it, y’all,” Colbert invites us, and what a woohoo celebration of comedic success on closing night.  Elvis Costello joins Colbert, Cato, and Jon Batiste for a sweet rendition of Costello’s song “Jump Up,” an oldie and a Colbert favorite.  A few moments of darkness….  Party lights!  Having performed with three blokes at the Ed Sullivan Theater in 1964, Paul McCartney slides back in for a triumphant encore of “Hello Goodbye.”  Costello and Batiste hang around, joining Colbert along with Cato’s “The Great Big Joy Machine.”  Even the instruments look happy.  “Hela, heba-helloa / Hela, heba-helloa (cha, cha, cha).”  A downright uptown gala as The Late Show staff claps themselves proudly on stage.

All quiet.  Two friends remain.  Colbert nods to the former Beatle who slowly turns out the theater lights.  A snowglobe.  A guy and his dog.  “Come on, Benny, let’s go.”    

ja, Zsolt Hegudüs

Hungary’s health minister

prescribes dancing cure 

Legal scholar Sherrilyn Ifill, an invaluable voting rights expert, states in her May 12th newsletter: “Whatever (nonviolent) action you can undertake, now is the time to engage.  This is not happening to someone else, to some other country, to some other Americans.  This is happening to all of us.  They have made their goals clear.  Now it’s time for us to be as clear and unequivocal about ours while we still can.”  She serves as the Vernon Jordan Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University and as the Founding Director of Howard Law School’s 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy.  Ifill articulates maga’s allure for those clinging to the fiction of their pale-skinned birthright superiority—these natural born winners who will never entertain the reality of dark-skinned equality.  “If you think that the Republican plan to strip Black voters in the South of congressional representation is not your problem because you are white, or because you don’t live in the South, then you have accepted the end of democracy in this country.  Are you prepared to watch as your fellow citizens are disenfranchised in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama?” 

On The Daily Show with host Jon Stewart, Ifill explains “what happened to the voting rights act.”  She and Stewart model the attentive listening that assures quality conversation.  Laughter and better understanding eases worry, theirs and ours, in a twenty-minute schooling on the 14th Amendment. 

Hello, Childhood

Ifill admired poet Nikki Giovanni’s activist encouragement of Black Women’s voices, both of them members in national sorority Delta Sigma Theta.  Giovanni relished youthful summers spent with her grandparents in “Knoxville, Tennessee.”  Tasting her first homemade ice cream, feasting at the church picnic, waiting excitedly “and you go to the mountains with / your grandmother.”  She returned in 2019 to this cherished neighborhood, its homes razed in the 1960s for misnamed “urban renewal,” to speak at the dedication of an historical marker in her honor.  “Knoxville is my heart,” she began.     

Dancing to the Music—Stevie Wonder and Elliot James Reay

“Let’s git up.”  Stevie and his rollicking companions open the 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony with a salute to Sly Stone.  What a bash!  Catch that magenta-haired guitarist and pin an iris boutonniere on Flea’s lapel.  Questlove bangs it.  “Baby, Baby, Baby.”  The biggest bam?  Jennifer Hudson belts “I Want to Take You Higher” and gits it all the way up.  Not shy—all Sly.       

“You can say that I’m a fool / And I don’t know very much.”  Okay.  But Elliot James Reay sports a pompadour haircut and emotes an Elvis-like voice.  A quartet wears string ties.  “I Think They Call This Love.”      

thank y’all (!) for your notes

appreciate each one…. you

had me at “hello”