It’s a steamy day here in the CatBox as the temperature is forecast over 100° today. Please expect no more than a Personal Update or an Open Thread tomorrow and Wednesday. Tomorrow I have a PET scan at the hospital. Wednesday is a WWWendy day, and I have to renew my lease on my apartment here at the Madrona Studios. Oh God, it’s Monday!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:23 (average 5:26). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Trump* Virus Update:
US Cases: 4,373,561
US Deaths: 149,856
World Cases: 16,480,680
World Deaths: 653,292
Trump’s* Share of World Deaths: 22.9%
Short Takes:
From Willamette Week: Media outlets from the Los Angeles Times to the New York Post to London’s Daily Mail wrote about it. Movie director Adam McKay tweeted about his obsession with the image. Op-eds have appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times criticizing the action as a product of light-skinned privilege. At least two copycat Athenas have arrived in the buff this week at a fence surrounding Portland’s federal courthouse.
And that’s all without anyone knowing the protester’s identity.
We now know—more than before, anyway.
The anonymous woman widely referred to as Naked Athena granted her first, and so far only, interview to the Portland-based podcast Unrefined Sophisticates.
In a two-hour conversation released yesterday, the protester, who identifies herself as “Jen,” divulges only a few pertinent biographical details. She is a sex worker. She’s in her 30s. And contrary to assumptions, she is not white but a non-Black person of color.
She says the decision to undress and confront the phalanx of officers happened on the spur of the moment but that being nude in public is nothing new to her: “I am notoriously naked,” she says. She describes the moments leading up to the altercation and what happened during the standoff—she reveals that her “yoga poses” were in part the result of being shot in the foot by a crowd control munition.
While WW has not been able to independently confirm that Jen is Naked Athena, the personal details she shares on the podcast match how friends of the protester described her to this newspaper.
You can listen to the podcast at Unrefined Sophisticates. Kudos to Jen, aka Naked Athena, who proved once and for all that the bush is mightier than the Republican Nazi storm trooper! RESIST!!
From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Rep. John Lewis’ Casket Travels Across The Historic Edmund Pettus Bridge One Last Time
I was 16 and on Spring vacation on 3/7/1965. I had travelled to Selma to demonstrate for civil rights at the beginning of the long march. Because I was young and dumb, I wanted to be in the front of the crowd, but people there, knowing what was going to happen, pulled me to the back and protected me. Along with the Democratic Convention in Chicago 1968, this was one of the two most frightening incidents of my life. Farewell to one of the heroic giants of our time! RESIST!!
From YouTube (a blast from civil rights):
Support Black Lives Matter! RESIST!!
Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!
