Cheering Old Glory and the rainbow, too
It’s Pride Month, not only in the United States, but also around the world, where in recent years rainbow flags have been flown outside of American embassies. This year, however, the State Department has been rejecting requests for permission to fly the flags. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “has the position that, as it relates to the flagpole, that only the American flag should be flown there,” a State Department spokeswoman said last week.
But some embassies, including the one in Vienna, which is presided over by San Francisco-born-and-bred ambassador Trevor Traina, have pretty much ignored the lack of permission. The website of the U.S. Embassy in Austria includes a picture of a flagpole jutting from the building with the rainbow flag just under the American flag — “We are proudly hanging that flag on the pole where it belongs,” Traina wrote to a San Francisco friend — as well as news of a talk at the embassy earlier this month, at which a University of North Carolina professor discussed LGBTQ politicians. “In Vienna,” wrote Traina on Instagram, “we are flying the Pride flag unapologetically.” His official statement: “We fly the flag in Vienna as it is the right thing to do. I believe this reflects the values of the administration and it reflects my own.”
Embassies in Seoul and Chennai, India, are flying rainbow flags, and rainbowcolored lights illuminate the facade of the New Delhi embassy, according to the Washington Post. American diplomats joined the March for Pride and Tolerance in Jerusalem, and other ambassadors have tweeted photos of themselves surrounded by signs supporting LGBTQ equality.
“This is a category one insurrection,” one diplomat told the Post. That person, however, requested anonymity, “for fear of being fired.”
In memory of Virgina Ramos, the Mission District’s distinguished Tamale Lady, the Board of Supervisors declared Tuesday, June 11, Tamale Lady Day, and there’s a free neighborhood celebration at Zeitgeist on June 22. Ramos died in September. Organizers of this tribute promise Bay Area bands and even a band from Germany; apparently, her fame has spread.
Composer John Adams, who lives in Berkeley, is in Bilbao, Spain, to accept a BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Music and Opera from the Spanish bank’s foundation. The award, which comes with a 400,000-euro prize, cites Adams for having pioneered “a new operatic genre, the ‘docu-opera.’ ” The first of these was “Nixon in China,” followed by “The Death of Klinghoffer” and “Girls of the Golden West,” about the history of the West.
A vacation postcard: Deborah Sullivan and spouse were on the way back to the Bay Area from a trip to New York when a thunderstorm caused the plane’s takeoff to be delayed. They were among the passengers waiting at the gate when they saw the pilot get out of the plane. A bit later, they were told that a 747 being pulled out of an adjacent gate had hit their plane. They spent the night in a Brooklyn hotel.
Several readers responded to an item about the “Beach Blanket Babylon” scholarship awards at which Willie Brown was wearing a jacket he described from the stage as “watermelon”-colored. In a column printed in the paper the day before, they noted, Brown had written that he’d rejected a jacket when the salesman told him its color was “watermelon.” Had he bought it, or hadn’t he?
Powerless to convene a congressional committee to investigate the matter, I turned to the source. “The jacket I had on (at the scholarship competition),” said Brown, “was a Tom Ford pink jacket. It is not the Kiton watermelon-colored jacket.” He said that most of the people in the audience “would know I was making a joke.”
As to the fine points. “Watermelon and pink are two different colors. The watermelon is literally a richer color and it has more red in it than the Tom Ford pink.” Had he really considered buying a watermelon-colored jacket that would hang side by side in his closet with his pink jacket?
“It was gorgeous,” said Brown, and he had a good time laughing with the salespeople about the “watermelon” designation of the color. He had been mighty tempted, he said. “If I could have afforded it, I would have had that jacket.”
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “I followed my dreams ... and made a workingclass living.” Older man to older man, overheard at Peet’s in Pinole by Jamie Jobb