Indian paintbrush

 

It’s common in the early spring here to see mixed colonies of Indian paintbrushes, Castilleja indivisa, and Texas bluebonnets, Lupinus texensis. The photograph above shows that mixture in the little town of Coupland on April 2nd. You’ll notice that the colony of paintbrushes contained several cream-colored individuals, which aren’t rare but aren’t all that common either. A commenter in the Texas Flora group reports that “They are actually a form of albino. They don’t produce the red pigment anthocyanin.” On March 30th at the intersection of E. Pflugerville Parkway and N. Heatherwilde Blvd. I’d made portraits of a few “pale” paintbrushes, including the fresh one below.

 

 

 

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Berkeley law school students staged an anti-Zionism protest inside a random professor’s house this week. And when the professor tried to stop them, the demonstrators just calmly repeated this is our First Amendment right, this is our First Amendment right. It is, in fact, not your right to enter a home and scream at the homeowners. But let’s back up: the protest was against Dean Erwin Chereminsky, who the anti-Zionists are obsessed with—they love making little antisemitic portraits of him. I can’t figure out what Erwin did exactly. He’s very, very left-wing (I once saw a viral video of him saying he illegally discriminates when hiring new professors to bring more diversity). Just to say: this is not someone who appears to be an enemy of the movement. But he is Jewish. And he hasn’t called on Berkeley to divest from all Jewish businesses, which is what the movement wants. And he was hosting a dinner party, which I guess extra-upset them. No Justice. No Peace. No Hors d’Oeuvres!

 

That’s from Nellie Bowles’s April 12th TGIF column in The Free Press. It doesn’t bode well for America when law students believe the First Amendment gives them the right to protest on someone’s private property.

 

 

© 2024 Steven Schwartzman