Today is Father’s Day. Yesterday, I had to let my father know that “oriental” has not been an accepted descriptor since the nineties.

In his defense, he hasn’t been calling people that, but has been saying he wants to visit the “Harvard Oriental Museum” for years now, but never gets around to it. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt by believing the museum, likely funded by Sackler dollars and full of looted artifacts, was once called that, even if colloquially although neither Google nor Wikipedia are supporting this claim, because today is Father’s Day–the holiday that, more than any other, calls for grace–and I’m going to take him to Harvard’s Museum of the Ancient Near East, as it is now, and perhaps has always been, known.

Otherwise, today is also the tenth anniversary of Yeezus; one of my favorite albums of all time, an album that was exactly what I needed at exactly the time in my life that I needed it, and, I would argue, Kanye’s best work. One thing I think about a lot in regards to the album and its stark, minimal production, is how many moments, even if brief, of pure silence there are on it. Which is a quality not found on any Kanye album before it, but apparent on every release after it. Dieter Rams said the best design is as little design as possible, and Yeezus is, more than a collection of rap songs, a an exercise in sound design. Give it a listen today.

Wishing We kept Juneteenth to ourselves,
SD