The Divine Sarah

Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan by Elaine M. Hayes (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2017) is a true page-turner. One memorable scene is the one in which Sarah Vaughan and her bandmates were touring the South in the band's bus in, I think, the 1950s. A vehicle rode alongside the bus and one of its occupants started shooting at it. Everyone quickly ducked for cover. Miraculously no one was hit. One of the perils of being black Down South at that time.

A Humorous Prediction?

Is this a humorous prediction for Sean "P. Diddy" Combs? His 2014 honorary doctorate from Howard University in Washington, D.C., was taken back because of what the administrators called behavior that they considered  "fundamentally incompatible with [the university's] core values and beliefs." In addition, they returned his one-million-dollar contribution.

Combs had been caught on a 2016 hotel surveillance video brutally assaulting his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura.

It has also been alleged that he was involved in sex trafficking.

The Two Amigos

Me (on the left) and Robert Toro, my friend of nearly twenty (?) years, in his Manhattan apartment, circa Christmas 2020 or 2021.