The biggest news for us:
Rocco Anson Weinberg
born November 9, 2021 at 17:03 CST to Diane Tran Weinberg and Jesse Gold Weinberg.
He’s the calmest of any baby I’ve ever seen. So chill! And adorable. Now, three weeks old, he’s a world-class sleeper with a charming smile. So far, he seems to be getting all he wants and has a wonderful attitude.
We had so much to be thankful for on Thanksgiving!
IS THE WORLD INSANE?
R. Crumb, (Robert Dennis Crumb) had it right in 1987. Now, 34 years later, most of us know for sure: The world IS insane. And it’s not a secret.
R. Crumb was my generation’s wise prophet and go-to comics guy, from the East Village Other in 1968 to Zap Comix. Probably the most famous thing he did was to invent Keep On Truckin’ which became an anthem of people like us who were always on the road, going to new places and seeking new ways to be in the world. He became a hero to the anti-war movement. His influence was immense.
Crumb, now 79, Is still truckin’ around in Philadephia where he was born.
On your suggestion “Insane World”
Lately, I’ve been thinking about R.D. Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist whose books were best-sellers in the 1960s and ‘70s. Laing’s thinking was revolutionary and unorthodox because he expanded the notion of insanity and how external realities caused people to go nuts in various ways…not only their own brain function. (i.e., people were crazy because the world we had created was crazy.)
In 1970, like Laing, I was convinced the world was insane. I never met him (though we lived three subway stops apart in New York.) His best-selling book, Knots, catapulted this mild-mannered shrink into a world intellectual celebrity.
Fifty-one years later, it’s still stuck in my brain. I haven’t reread it so I can be fast and loose with what he wrote.
Knots was a short book, about 100 pages, definitely more my kind of read (then and now) than Crime and Punishment. Thin paperbacks with fat ideas have always been my strong suit.
“Bannon Arrested for Contempt of Soap”
Many of you will recall the pieces I’ve written over the years about “No-Fool” Steve Bannon. At the same time he’s a brilliant (and evil) tactician, he’s also a bit of a slob.
The great satirist Andy Borowitz, wrote about Bannon in The New Yorker a couple weeks ago after his charge for Contempt of Congress.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what congressional Republicans are calling an act of flagrant overreach by the Department of Justice, the former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon has been arrested for contempt of soap.
The basis for the arrest is a rarely enforced 1858 statute requiring White House employees to conform to minimal standards of hygiene during their tenure with the executive branch.
A defiant Bannon said that he would fight the federal government’s “outrageous” attempt to make him come into contact with soap and water, and declared that his avoidance of both was a life-style choice.
“You can lock me up but you can’t hose me down,” he thundered.
December Update
Looking back a year to December 1, 2020, here’s what I wrote:
Yeah, 2020 was a tough year in many ways. Except for politics and governing, 2021 and COVID-19 could be as horrendous or worse. We all have to do all we can. Nobody is exempt, even if and when a vaccine is working. Stay the course of the curse. And have some fun in ’21.
Like most of you, I like to be right. At least I’d rather be right than wrong. But, in this case, I wish I had been wrong about, “Nobody’s exempt, even if and when a vaccine is working.” The vaccine seems to be working. I had my three shots in March, April, and September. The COVID has not darkened the door of our immediate family.
But just last week, three people who are close to Eleanor, each of whom had three vaxxes, tested positive. Now, one has symptoms and is struggling. So yeah, nobody’s exempt. And that applies to plenty of other things than the virus.
So in 2022, nobody will be exempt either. But we have to go on living our lives as carefully as we can. And push for nearly all children to get vaccinated.
SCREEN Power
As most PY-O-MY Letter/Weinberg House Organ “subscribers” know, my life and thoughts are intertwined with screens: filling them up with video, analyzing what’s on them and being addicted to them during nearly all my waking hours.
On Thanksgiving, a beautiful closest-family feast, the four kids, my grandkids, took a screen break while we were all still at the table eating. This picture says it all: the screen is the most compelling thing in our lives. They were watching a Disney cartoon feature.
For over an hour, they were mesmerized. That’s the thing about screens.
I was with them for much of the screenfest. But it had an equal and opposite force on me. I sat on the L-part of the couch and napped a bit.
That seems to happen fairly regularly during my visits with the grandkids, particularly after eating. That’s what inspired Maggie to give me this drawing after I woke up
I plan to be back next year, January 1 edition. Have good times with your olders and youngers in December. And avoid crowded indoor places. A few more safe months, or even a year, are the wise choices.
As ever,
P.S. And just in case you missed it, here’s a link to last month’s edition which I sent via email only (no Internet.).
PY-O-MY 
mazel tov
Happy holiday from the Leming family