Category Archives: de rebus familiaribus

Celebrate MLK Day: join Tracie and our family at the historic MLK March in Orange, Texas, and then stand up to white supremacy at our protest of the Neo-Confederate monument there.

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Happy MLK Day, everyone! Our protest will take place as planned, 2-4 p.m. at the site. The organizers of the march have also confirmed that the events are happening as planned. See you later today! Updated Monday, January 15, 8:40 a.m.

Please join Tracie and our family on MLK Day, January 15, as we take part in historic MLK Day March in Orange, Texas, where Tracie grew up and her family still lives.

The march will be followed by speeches by local leaders.

The march starts at 10 a.m. at Salem UMC Church. Click here for details.

And then, when all is said and done, Tracie and I will head over to the Neo-Confederate memorial (unveiled in 2017) on MLK Dr. at Interstate 10 for our protest of the site.

We will be there from 2-4 p.m. We will have waters and plenty of signs. Click here for location.

(The memorial was built by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the current-day Ku Klux Klan, and has been opposed by the local government and local pastors; the city of Orange has done everything in its power to stymie the Neo-Confederates but the monument stands on private land; for seven years now Tracie and I have been raising money to post an MLK billboard that looks out over the monument on MLK Day; read about our campaign to repurpose the site, now in its seventh year, here.)

Feel free to reach out to me if you have questions: jparzen@gmail.com, 917-405-3426.

Happy MLK Day! We hope to see you on Monday but wherever you are, please take time out to remember, celebrate, and share Dr. King’s teachings and legacy.

Thank you to everyone who donated to our MLK campaign: there is now an MLK billboard looking down over the Neo-Confederate monument in Orange, Texas.

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Tracie and I share our heartfelt thanks with everyone who contributed to our GoFundMe campaign to raise an MLK billboard over the Neo-Confederate memorial in Orange, Texas, where Tracie grew up and her family still lives.

We’ve worked with the billboard company for many years now and they were extra cool this time around: they put the billboard up a week or so ago and it will remain in place until March 5. We paid for eight weeks but they ended up giving us nearly 11 weeks, which is awesome.

It will be in place on MLK Day, Monday, January 15, and it will remain there throughout Black History Month (February).

In 2013 the Sons of Confederate Veterans began fund raising to build a Greek atrium and a series of flag poles to display Confederate battle flags (warning: link contains graphic material).

In 2017, the group — the contemporary incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan — completed construction and began displaying the flags. Despite Herculean efforts by the City of Orange to block them, nothing could be done because the monument stands on private land.

It’s located on MLK Dr., a major thoroughfare where thousands of cars pass every day to get to work, school, and church. The city passed a law limiting the height of new flagpoles in the city. But it can still be seen from Interstate 10.

As we do every year, Tracie and I will be organizing a protest of the site on MLK Day. Please stay tuned for details and please join us if you can.

Our goal is to repurpose the site so that it reflects the community (which is half Black) and community values. We recognize the Quixotic nature of our objective. But sometimes the battles you know you are going to lose are the ones that you need to fight.

It’s a cold stretch of road out there. But today it’s a little bit warmer.

Thanks to everyone who contributed. Please join us on MLK Day as we celebrate the legacy of Dr. King.

Read more about our efforts on our blog RepurposeMemorial.com.

Parzen family Christmas letter 2023. Merry Christmas!

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Please consider giving to our yearly GoFundMe campaign to raise an MLK billboard over the Neo-Confederate memorial in Orange, Texas in time for MLK Day (January 15) and Black History Month (February). If you can’t donate, please share. Thank you for your support and solidarity! Click here to donate.

As 2023 comes to an end, Tracie, the girls, and I have so much to be thankful for.

Georgia, who turned 12 this month, is in her first year in middle school, a legacy music magnet program where she plays violin. Over the summer, she auditioned and was placed in the top performing orchestra. She is also taking private lessons and loves her teacher.

Lila Jane, who turned 10 in July, not only plays cello in the performing orchestra at her elementary school, also a legacy magnet. But she plays with a small chamber group of select cello players as well. We are so sad that it’s her last year at our beloved elementary school. But it’s been thrilling to see/follow all of her end-of-the-year concerts.

Both girls are studying Italian at home (!!!) and getting straight A’s at school and you can only imagine how proud we are of them. Our home and lives are filled with music and it’s a dream come true for both Tracie and me.

Tracie’s 2023 as a realtor has been challenging. But she’s still loving her new career. It’s been a tough year but she’s still bringing home the bacon, which is awesome.

My work has really come together again. I spent most of October and November on the road, which wasn’t easy. But I got to see some truly interesting places and interact with some really cool wine pros.

We spent our summer vacation in Orange Beach, Alabama (above). And not long after we headed to La Jolla for my mom’s 90th. She asked me to organize a wine tasting for her friends and we all had a blast.

We feel so blessed for each other, for our community, and we pray for peace and for our country.

Merry Christmas! May G-d bless us all.

A prayer for peace in the Middle East.

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Like households of American Jews across our country, we have been glued to our television over the weekend as we watched the new, horrific war between Hamas and Israel unfold.

Our girls, ages 10 and 11, are too young to understand the historical events that led the world to this moment. But they know that they are connected to Israel through their father’s family. They know that we have deep ties to this — what must seem to them — mythical land so far, far away.

“Thousands of Americans have loved ones in Israel. I’m one of them.” That was the title of Jennifer Rubin’s opinion piece for the Washington Post this morning.

For so many families in the U.S., there is a cousin on a kibbutz, a retired uncle in a coastal community, a child at university, friends from Hebrew school days who work in the tech sector…

May G-d bless them and keep them safe. May G-d protect all human life there and everywhere. And may we all say a prayer for peace for all — all — our sisters and brothers in the Middle East and beyond.

Shanah tovah! Happy new year! This year we celebrate grandma’s 90th birthday. A blessing.

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Please consider giving to Unicef relief efforts in Libya. Click here for more ways to give.

Shanah tovah, everyone! Happy new year!

May your new year be filled with light, joy, and good health!

Every year for the holiday, we eat apples and honey to remember life’s sweetness.

This year we have something special to celebrate: grandma (my mother Judy) is turning 90 next week. We’ll be flying out to San Diego to spend the weekend with her. And she’s asked me to organize a wine tasting for her and her friends. We’re all looking forward to it.

Georgia (above, left), age 11 going on 12, started middle school at the end of last month. She’s enjoying playing violin in the orchestra and her creative writing elective.

Lila Jane (right), just turned 10 and starting 5th grade, is now a “big kid” at her elementary school. She’s one of the top cello players in her class and says she wants to be a music teacher.

Poo, poo, poo… we have a lot to be thankful for. Too many blessings to count.

Every year before the High Holidays, I turn to the excellent writers at Chabad.org for inspiration for the year ahead.

Here’s the passage that I can’t stop thinking about:

Our Sages tell us that when we emulate G‑d to provide new life to others with generosity and love, this paves the way for the awesome gift of Rosh Hashanah, the gift of new life, that G‑d lovingly grants every one of us.

Happy new year.

Happy Juneteenth! Here’s a book that totally changed my perspective on the holiday and its meaning in Texas and beyond.

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Above: one of the earliest celebrations of Juneteenth at Emancipation Park in Houston in 1880. The park was created especially by local business leaders to serve as a gathering place for future Juneteenth celebrations. That tradition continues today in Houston. Image via the John Marshall Center (Creative Commons).

Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

It’s so awesome to see people celebrating this year, two years after it became an official U.S. holiday.

Houston has a deep connection to the holiday because it was first observed here in our city not long after the earliest celebrations in Galveston.

For anyone who wants to learn more about the holiday, I highly recommend Annette Gordon-Reed’s wonderful book, On Juneteenth, a memoir of her growing up in Texas (not far from where we live), published a few years ago. It’s a great read and it totally changed my perspective on the holiday and its meaning in Texas and beyond.

Happy Juneteenth! Enjoy the holiday!

The bunga bunga party is over. Berlusconi, Italy’s long-time buffoon prime minister and political huckster, has died.

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Image via Wikipedia Creative Commons.

By the time a wide-eyed U.C.L.A. undergrad made their way to Italy in 1987, the country’s socialist government was thriving, the economy was booming, a year of university studies, even at a top school, cost around $300, and “there was a Benetton on every corner in Manhattan,” as one of their professor’s put it.

But by the early 1990s, that had all collapsed as the government led by socialist leader Bettino Craxi went down in flames and scandal.

That power vacuum led to the rise of the first post-modern politician, as many have called him, Silvio Berlusconi. As he himself openly put it, he got into politics so that he could change laws in order to make himself richer, pay fewer taxes, and avoid legal jeopardy. As he achieved all three of those personal goals, he drove the country’s economy into the toilet with bloated borrowing and destroyed Italy’s image as a progressive nation who protected its vulnerable and cherished its cultural legacy.

He also became the first, in his own words, to legitimize the far and fringe right. Today, the roots of Italy’s first post-fascist (in other words, its first post-war bona fide fascist) government can be traced to his tenure.

Back in the early 2000s, when Italy was the president of the European Union, I was recruited to be an interpreter at the Italian Mission to the United Nations. Because Berlusconi, prime minister at the time, was tasked to address the General Assembly as the president of the EU, the mission needed an extra full-time interpreter. I was assigned to foreign minister Franco Frattini, who represented Italy at the gathering, while the senior interpreter was assigned to Berlusconi.

I never met him but I did attend a meeting where he spoke — and I held my nose.

After his notorious sexual predation parties became well documented by the media, my bandmates and I wrote and produced a song about his bunga bunga. We recorded it in Austin, Texas for our 2011 album “Freudian Slip” (Aeronaut Records). You may have heard it on season 1 (episode 2) of “Emily in Paris” (listen below).

Many have said that Berlusconi created the paradigm, the road map for our country’s own post-fascist, post-supremacist political monster.

But let us not mention the name of that Devil… lest he appear.

Read the Times obit here.

“I am not my geography.” Thank you American Tributaries Podcast for having me on your show! Plus: a song I wrote about the experience.

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Big shout out and thanks today to my friend and fellow wine professional and activist Michael Whidden for asking me to join him on his American Tributaries Podcast.

Listen on YouTube here or below.

Michael contacted me after I published a post in March entitled “Stop telling me I’m a bad person because I live in Texas.”

After having an encounter with a now former friend who made some extreme, severe comments about our family’s life in Texas, I asked the two people who read my blog to consider that “state boundaries do not represent monolithic ethical, moral, and aesthetic divides. There are all kinds of people in [my adoptive state] Texas, just as there are all kinds of people in California (including plenty of ultraconservative racists, among others, in my home state).”

I was thrilled to get a chance to discuss the unfortunate episode. Thanks for checking it out.

I also wrote a song about my experience. Warning: it’s profanity laden. But it really captures the absurdity of those situations.

The only thing that mattered to the person in question was that I live in Texas. Nothing else about my persona interested them. As it turns out, there’s a lot more to me (and everyone) than just geography.

Thanks for checking out the song as well. Heartfelt thanks to Michael for having me on his show.

The tale of a social media influencer: Imp of the Perverse.

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Above: Alicia Lini, right, with my longtime friend and social media influencer, Giovanni Contrada, aka Imp of the Perverse.

When Italy first went into lockdown mode in March 2020, my longtime friend and fashion designer Giovanni Contrada (above, left) was living in Milan where he was building his Imp of the Perverse label and brand.

The boredom of the closures led him to start documenting his (at first modest) culinary adventures in Italy’s fashion and culture capital. What started with handful of simpatico videos on TikTok, where Giovanni would interact with owners of neighborhood cafés and restaurants, soon blossomed into an increasing number of likes and shares. And before long, that number started to grow — exponentially.

When he called me at the end of the year, he told me, “dude, I’m huge on TikTok.” And he wasn’t kidding.

He already had close to one million followers at the time. Today, he has 1.5 million followers — yes, one and a half million.

He also has an agent and scores of requests for product placements and endorsements. And his fashion line has exploded as well.

When Giovanni’s unique line of jackets and suits first took off, he was a favorite among the glitterati crowd. Ellen Degeneres and Melissa Etheridge were among the first celebrities to wear his clothes. Remember when Melissa Etheridge performed at the Grammys during her battle with cancer in 2005? She was wearing a Giovanni jacket.

As Giovanni was rising in the fashion world, he would often dress our band Nous Non Plus for our shows. Over the years, he’s even designed a few special pieces that he’s gifted to me (including “The Jar” hoodie). When I was up for a prize in Milan some years ago, he dressed me for the awards ceremony.

Last week, I traveled to Los Angeles to meet another dear friend and longtime client of mine, Alicia Lini. On Thursday morning, we sat down with Giovanni for breakfast at this fantastic Italian bakery and café on Sunset Blvd. called Ceci’s (everything was great, the erbazzone exceptional).

Click here to see the TikTok they made together. Click here for the Instagram. Giovanni also posted a wonderful clip of him enjoying Alicia’s traditional balsamic vinegar.

It was one of the ages. But that’s no surprise. Giovanni has always been such a loving and generous friend to me, a big brother who has comforted me in my worst times and shared my joy in my best.

Giovanni, I love you. Thanks for carving out an hour of your morning for us. I’ll never forget that chilly overcast day in LA as long as I live.

If you’re wondering where the handle “Imp of the Perverse” came from, look no further than Edgar Allen Poe.

Tracie named “rising star” realtor!

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In less than two years, Tracie went from stay-at-home mom with a couple of side gigs to a million-dollar-listing realtor in one of the hottest real estate markets in the country.

In spring of 2021, she got her license. And this week, she was named “rising star” and a top earner by her firm Greenwood King.

That’s the screen (above) at her agency’s annual award ceremony as they announced the accolade on Tuesday.

Our daughters and I are so proud of her. She’s an amazing model for the girls (ages 9 and 11) in terms of what a person can accomplish when they put their mind to it and heart in it.

And as her mother-in-law loves to say, “You know she makes more money than her husband, don’t you?”

It’s been an incredible time in our lives as her income has helped us dig out of the financial lows of the health crisis. On Thanksgiving weekend last year, we moved into our new house. Even with the rising rates at the time, she got us a great deal and a great mortgage. And we are just in love with our home.

Tracie, the girls and I love you so much and are so proud of you. You are such a fantastic role model for our children and you are most wonderful partner I could have ever hoped for or dreamed of. It has been such a joy and inspiration to watch you become a leader in your field. And I just have to say it one more time, I love sleeping with my realtor! You have made our lives and future so bright. You are the love of my life.