“Boston’s Apollo” celebrates McKeller’s role in Sargent’s work but does not hide the artist’s racism. In her essay for the exhibition’s catalog, Professor Greene cites racial slurs Sargent used. “He’s an amazing painter — that doesn’t go away,” she said. “But we need to pause and rethink how he approached Thomas McKeller as a subject.”
(Alina Tugend, “John Singer Sargent’s Secret Muse,” NYTimes, 3-9-20)
I’ve heard Davy’s grey charmingly compared to the color of “goose poo.” I’m in cahoots with the tone scale ranging from dark white to light black, so have grappled “goose poo” to my lexicon with hoops of steel.
I mention Davy’s grey because Sargent lived from 1856 to 1925, and I imagine his world to have been goose-poo-colored. To live in it was to be a goose-pooist by default for most people. The standout would be someone who wasn’t.
Many call foul, but I personally deem it on my own recognizance a meet and licit reckoning to register goose-pooism in its historical sauce as well as in its present stew.
My maternal grandfather chastised his daughter for dating a “Jew-boy” American serviceman during World War II. Where I was born, the railroad still slices off “Mexican town” from the white neighborhoods. Like Sargent’s achievement as a painter, goose-pooism doesn’t go away either.
(c) 2020 JMN
EthicalDative 
All Hail the Mighty State
“Texas, our Texas, so wonderful and great…” goes the song.
“Texas is one of the most prepared states for public health disasters in the U.S.” (Tweet by Governor Greg Abbott on March 9, 2020)
State with highest number of people lacking health insurance (5 million) in the nation: Texas.
State with per-capita number of hospital beds lower than the U.S. average because of hospital closures: Texas.
(Japan has around 13 hospital beds per one thousand people. South Korea has 12. The average rich country has about 5.5 beds. Texas has 2.3 beds.)
State ranking forty-first of fifty states in physicians per capita: Texas.
State with 28 percent of nursing homes given lowest possible rating (one star) by federal government in 2015: Texas.
(In California 7 percent received that rating.)
State with 25 percent of nursing homes cited for severe deficiencies by the feds in 2015: Texas
State whose health agency headquarters had to be vacated by hundreds of employees in 2018 because they were overrun with rats, mold, and vermin: Texas
(Abbott quotation and stats from Christopher Hooks, “Let’s Count the Ways Texas’s Dismal Health Care Landscape Could Make Coronavirus Worse,” Texas Monthly, 3-11-20)
(c) 2020 JMN