"I looked in his eyes. I can't picture his face... I didn't see the skin. When I think about him... all I see is these deep oceans of blue in these deep concerning eyes."

"And this like white light behind them. That's what I picture when I think about what did Bob Dylan look like to me. All I can see is these the deepest bluest eyes with the most concerning emotion in them and then this like aura of like white light. That's what Bob looks like to me in my memory. I can't remember his face...."

Said Billy Strings.

Theo Von: "It's almost something that's like almost like maybe from another realm or something. I think God, like God's concern, like shows up in our eyes, I think. So maybe he just has a lot of like concern from the other side, you know?"

Billy Strings: “Yeah. And it's it's not a paranoid concern. It's more of like a compassion and and a like like a love like from an elder, you know?”

Theo: “Yeah. Maybe like a kind of semi-aggressive intrigue kind of.”

Billy: “Like a some kind of musical grandpa, you know?”

Theo: “Yeah, dude. Bob Dylan, bro. Wow.”

I just wanted to get a look at the refilling of the newly blue Reflecting Pool.

But I couldn't avoid seeing this video, shared by Trump:

🚨 LMAO!! President Trump just dropped this absolute GEM: He's filling the newly improved Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with leftist tears

Straight from the source 🤣🤣

📽️ @TheRicanMemes pic.twitter.com/NJrOdFR750

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 4, 2026

I guess that's an effort to visualize what has become the stock joke: The pool will be filled with "liberal tears."

ADDED: Actual footage, showing how the color will work out:

 

"But blue is a color we associate with injury: Think of the mottled black and blue of a bruise. It is the color of authority and stereotypical masculinity..."

"... of depression, but also tranquility; of cleanliness; of cold; of winning first prize. And so we must ask: What is American Flag Blue?"

I'm reading "Did Trump pick the right blue for the Reflecting Pool? We asked a pool guy. Old Glory Blue? American Flag Blue? Let’s reflect on all the shades, while a federal judge mulls 'aesthetic injury' in the president’s latest decorating flourish" (WaPo).

It's a dark blue, we're told, not swimming-pool blue, which would be too light and bright, not the right somber blue. But it's Trump's blue, so somber — and flag-oriented — is also bad.

"Just because American Flag Blue looks good on a flag, it doesn’t mean it will necessarily look good slathered on a length of more than 2,000 feet, says Jill Morton, a professional color consultant. 'The context of a color is what matters,' says Morton. 'That dark blue, if it is that dark, oh man, that’s going to look very, very dismal.'"

Fear of blue and desperate clinging to "character-defining grey."

"The resurfacing will dramatically and permanently transform the character-defining grey, achromatic appearance of the reflecting pool basin. The new colouration will cause the pool to resemble a large swimming pool rather than the reflective civic landscape it was designed to be, distorting the experience of the site for the millions of visitors who come to it each year."

So said the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a Washington society, quoted in The London Times, which looks like this, going all in on AI imagery:

I was going to ding the the Cultural Landscape Foundation for writing "grey" instead of "gray," but when I saw "colouration," I had to assume that The London Times imposes its British spellings on quoted material.

It's funny how people are getting cranked up over the color blue. The Foundation associates blue with backyard summer fun incompatible with what the reflective pool is supposed to be.

"The Minnesotans I met on the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul were determined to resist and fight back."

"The Trump administration has tried to paint the anti-ICE activists as hard-left agitators, 'blue-haired' domestic terrorists bent on stirring up mayhem. But I found they looked a lot more like a woman I met named Hillary Oppmann, a blonde, 50-something solar energy consultant who lives in South Minneapolis. I stumbled upon Oppmann on a frigid morning last week, when I rolled up on a corner near a high school in South Minneapolis.... A few minutes before I had come upon her, Oppmann had heard the sound of whistles like the one that she wears around her neck, and hustled to the spot.... Oppmann had gotten involved as a volunteer in this group through a parents’ group at the local high school.... She told me she wasn’t surprised at how quickly her neighbors had sprung into action. The community groups that formed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd quickly reactivated, she told me, making it much easier to organize a response. The killing of Renee Good was a horrific shock, but it has not deterred the volunteer observers — if anything, Oppmann said, their ranks have swelled. 'Minnesotans are really good at chipping away at ice,' she dryly noted...."

Writes Lydia Polgreen, in "In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War" (NYT).

I remember when "blue-haired" was used in descriptions of little old ladies, nice grandmas, who got their white hair tinted slightly blue to keep it from tending toward yellow. Oppmann is portrayed as someone like that even as she is contrasted to "hard-left agitators, 'blue-haired' domestic terrorists." That's a different blueness, an aggressively intentional unnatural look. The little old lady blueness was a byproduct of gentle dithering over the appearance of age.

Melania Trump presents the White House Christmas.

Home Is Where the Heart Is
AMERICA’S CHRISTMAS

This Christmas, let’s celebrate the love we hold within ourselves and share it with the world around us. After all, wherever we are, we can create a home filled with endless possibilities. pic.twitter.com/VouZAtLpHU

— First Lady Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) December 1, 2025

I laughed when I saw the picture of Trump on the windowsill, like Trump — mugshot Trump! — is a Christmas character — along with Santa and Jesus. But on rewatch, I see the emphasis on the United States as a political entity, in its 250th year. And there's George Washington on the other windowsill as if the windows are a time line from the origin point in the past to the present day. We see Jesus, but not Santa. There's nothing aimed at children here. It's elegant, not fun or cute.

Melanie reaches out to one of the frosted white ornaments. There must be one for every state, because it says "Georgia." We see the slogans "Fostering the Future" and "Be Best." [ADDED: I said there is "nothing aimed at children" in the decorations, but both of those these slogans indicate programs aimed at children.]

The animal that represents Christmas in this display is a blue butterfly. Is that a real species of butterfly or just a monarch butterfly rendered in blue?

Let's talk about the home page of The New York Times.

As it looks right now:

1. I had thought the Jeffrey Epstein story was running out of energy, but here it is back on the front page and in the top spot. But it's a real estate story: "A Look Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan Lair." As if we're into his mystique!

2. Sharing the top of the page is "How to Break Free From Your Phone" — a generic self-help topic, not news at all. The pretty blue of the sky in the illustration lines up with the blue sky in Jeffrey Epstein's stairwell. The legs of the phoneless woman in the grass chime with the legs of the stairwell woman. Both women grip something tubular — one, a flower stem and the other, a rope. We are reminded that Jeffrey hanged himself — reminded whether he did it or not. 

3. 2 things to angst over: declining school enrollment and a nuclear reactor on the moon.

4. Something that isn't even vaguely surprising — an old bookshelf contained a particular old book. It might be worth $20,000. Who cares!? This is like the news that somebody won the lottery. The winning ticket is rare, but you know it's in the great mass of tickets, and somebody found it.

5. Suddenly, it's time to talk about your intestines. That seems to scream: slow news day.

6. At last, the name Trump appears. Tariff business. The ongoing story. The photo is of immigrants — caption (outside of my screen shot): "Trump’s New Tactic to Separate Immigrant Families."

7. And then, there's Thomas Friedman, supplying the overarching and very high-level-abstract theme: "The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away." It begins: "Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president, the most dangerous one just happened...."

***

Strangely low-level anxiety wafts up from the usual jumble of well-worn topics.

Eric Lee's photograph of Gretchen Whitmer in the Oval Office is a sublime work of art.

 

From the golden eagle under the table in the lower left to George Washington's camel-toe pants to the 3 shades of blue in the too-tight clothing of the 3 human figures to the insane line-up of gold objects on the mantle to the now-iconic desperate gesture of hiding behind binders, the photograph is perfect.

Link to NYT page: here.

You're either there or you're not. You can't concoct a way to not be there when you are there. It's like the way a baby might think in the early stages of learning the game of peek-a-boo. It's reminiscent of thousands of photos of perps — walked in front of the press — trying to hide behind their collar.

It made me think of Magritte....

"While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?"

Wrote Henry David Thoreau, quoted in "Oxford’s 2024 Word of the Year Is… Brain Rot" (NYT).

Thoreau published that sentence in 1854 — it's in "Walden" — but somehow, 170 years later, his word/phrase is the official Word of the Year. I'm just going to guess that Thoreau would consider choosing a word of the year to be a rotten-brain activity. 

Is this word-of-the-year-choosing "Oxford" really the same as the Oxford English Dictionary? The NYT says it's "the publisher of the august Oxford English Dictionary," but I look up the word in the OED, and I get:

"Many are drawn to Steinberg for his claim to have a 92 per cent accuracy rate in predicting eye colour."

"'We are not making blue eyes,' he says. Rather, his clinicians implant the embryo that carries the DNA for blue eyes. 'But we are learning that there are five different shades of blue, because parents might call up with a five-year-old and say, "Well, this isn’t quite the blue we were thinking about."' IVF at his clinic — involving hormone treatment of the mother, egg extraction and fertilisation — costs about $30,000, then $10,000 for each test for genetic abnormalities. Two famous singers came to see him who wanted their child to be a singer too — which he could not facilitate...."

I'm reading "Want a girl with blue eyes? Inside California’s VIP IVF industry/In the state’s low-regulation fertility clinics the perfect child may soon be available — for a price. Megan Agnew meets the doctors, mums and surrogates" (London Times).

From the anecdote that begins the article: "The couple conceived their first daughter, Aspen, the old-fashioned (and free) way, and she was born four years ago — her hair fiery red like her father’s. Soon afterwards Hartley wanted a second daughter. 'I grew up in a family full of girls,' says the stay-at-home mother. 'It was, like, girl family vibes.'... 'I thought, we have one redhead, let’s have a blonde. But my doctor said you can’t do that — yet. So then we were, like, OK, we’ll just have the girl.'...The couple received one round of IVF treatment at the Southern California Reproductive Center... It worked. Bardot arrived very quickly one night in autumn and is now nearly two — and, by chance, strawberry blonde. 'It was perfect... Bardot has my features, so I have my mini-me and Neil has his. So I got what I wanted in the end.'"

Imagine naming your little girl Bardot, then going around enthusing about how she looks like you. Imagine going public about using IVF to sex-select and to try to get blue eyes.

"You might recall the epic 2008 Beijing opening ceremony, which showcased the four great Chinese inventions: the compass, gunpowder, paper, and typesetting."

"This one in Paris, put up last Friday, celebrated analogous French contributions like threesomes, the Minions franchise, and dressing like a clown...."

Begins Suzy Weiss, in "Was the Opening Ceremony Demonic, or Just Cringe? Don’t feel bad for Christians—feel bad for the French" (Free Press).

Ha ha. Very well put.

Sunrise — 6:41, 6:55.

The light changes from blue...

... to gray:

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

The woods at sunrise — 7:32 and 7:47 — notice how the color shifts from blue to brown in 15 minutes.

Bob Dylan, rhapsodizing about blue.

In "The Philosophy of Modern Song," Bob Dylan — writer of "Tangled Up in Blue" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" — gets carried away by the color blue a few times:

About "Volare (Nel Blu, DiPinto Di Blu)" — "To Fly (In Blue, Painted Blue") — he writes:

You get the mental picture, Utopia, and it’s painted blue. Oil paint, cosmetics and greasepaint, frescoes with blue slapped on, and you’re singing like a canary. You’re tickled pink and walking on air, and there’s no end to space.... Supposedly it’s about a man who wants to paint himself blue and then fly away. Volare, it means, “Let’s fly away into the cielo infinito.” Obviously, the endless sky. The entire world can disappear but I’m in my own head.

About "Blue Suede Shoes":

These shoes are not like other shifty things that perish or change or transform themselves. They symbolize church and state, and have the substance of the universe in them, nothing benefits me more than my shoes.... They neither move nor speak, yet they vibrate with life, and contain the infinite power of the sun. They’re as good as the day I found them. Perhaps you’ve heard of them, blue suede shoes. They’re blue, royal blue. Not low down in the dumps blue, they’re killer blue, like the moon is blue, they’re precious. Don’t try to suffocate their spirit, try to be a saint, try to stay as far away from them as you possibly can.

There's other blue in the book — singing the blues, "Blue Bayou," "Blue Moon," "Blue Moon of Kentucky," blue veined, blue blooded, baby blue eyes, Bobby Blue Bland, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes...

"Deep greens and blues are not the colors you choose, but he’s painted your entire apartment in a mind-bending swirl of them anyway."

From "Why You Shouldn’t Room With James Taylor" by Jenn Knott (The New Yorker).

I love James Taylor and the referenced song, and I'm not saying the whole humor piece is great, but it's there and it might amuse you if your quirky sense of humor aligns. I'm blogging it because I can imagine feeling so bonded to James Taylor that deep greens and blues would be the colors you choose, and because I've been thinking about the trend these days to drain color out of everything. Here's a TikTok I ran into yesterday, from Interstellar Isabellar, complaining about chromophobia in interior design:

Blueberries.

"I am Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her, and I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit."

I do not know the context, but that happened today. I'd just like to say that if she's trying to display respect for the new "pronouns" convention, she's doing a terrible job. To follow "My pronouns are she and her" with "I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit" is like saying "My pronouns are she and her — duh!"

ADDED: Now, I'm remembering the viral Microsoft clip from last year:

If you’re not announcing your pronouns, race, hairstyle and accessories, you’re on the wrong side of history.pic.twitter.com/cfmynPoFX4

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) November 5, 2021

The idea there, we were told, was to be inclusive toward the visually impaired.

I have 6 TikToks for you tonight and no idea which one you'll like best. So let me know.

1. Random boy doesn't seem to know what freckles are.

2. The Italian husband makes caprese salad.

3. Do you think your happiness depends on finding that special someone?

4. Why not paint your car Tiffany blue?

5. Time to practice hippie dancing.

6. The Canadian guy was warned: Don't let New York City change you.

"We don’t have any literature that says he made the painting for Tiffany... But we know a little bit about Basquiat... We know he loved New York, and that he loved luxury and he loved jewelry."

"My guess is that the [blue painting] is not by chance. The color is so specific that it has to be some kind of homage. As you can see, there is zero Tiffany blue in the [ad] campaign other than the painting... It’s a way to modernize Tiffany blue."

Said Alexandre Arnault, a communications vice president at Tiffany, quoted in "Basquiat’s friends ‘horrified’ by Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Tiffany campaign" (NY Post). 

I was going to quote the expressions of horror by Basquiat's friends, but when I got to Arnault's defense of Tiffany, I saw that those expressions were surplusage. You've heard the phrase "The best defense is a good offense." But sometimes the best offense is a bad defense. Defense is self-serving, so when it works against you, it really works. 

Jean-Michel Basquiat died of a heroin overdose 33 years ago at the age of 27.

But Beyonce and Jay-Z are living well and posing artfully....

It's all so stilted, this "modernization." To my eye, Jay-Z is a tribute to the Maxell blown-away guy of the 1980s...

... and Beyonce is a tribute to John Singer Sargent's "Portrait of Madame X":

Not too "modern." 

Then again I could be wrong in my mental associations. At least they are — unlike Arnault's idea that Basquiat mixed that color blue to say "Tiffany!" — unaffected by commercial interests.

What if there were a color that could drive (some) people mad?

Nope. pic.twitter.com/BgtT2wvFx1

— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) July 12, 2021

It's some kind of litmus test, so take the test: 

What is your reaction to this Ivanka family photo?

Why are they doing that? Why? Why! What does it mean? That color?!! It's nuts!

How lovely for them to dress up, coordinated like that, embodying family harmony.

Absurd, stylish clowns, tweaking the uptight lefties, with just — a color!

Sometimes pure color comes to the fore and overshadows celebrity, politics, and all that is mundane.

An evil color, for an evil family — it's all so wrong, so perfectly wrong.

 

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: My theory is that they adjusted the color until Arabella was dressed in the shade of blue associated with Tiffany & Co. — see it here — and the other clothing (and the sky) went along for the ride. It came out so cute and hilarious that they put it up on Instagram, and the haters made it viral.

BUT: I looked through her Instagram but didn't see the picture. Others dug all the way back to last year — I didn't go that far — and found it: