robertissimus.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

robertissimus.bsky.social

Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at USC | Author of “Latin America and the Transports of Opera” | Platonic Cyclist, Public Transit Rider | 🇨🇺🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇬🇱🇩🇰🇵🇦🇨🇦🇲🇽🇵🇸🇺🇦🇪🇺

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My fiftieth Queen Bee, as golden as honey.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Good energy.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

This is a garden in Washington, D.C., but this morning it felt a little like the steppes of Asia. It’s Embassy Day in the city, and I stopped by the super friendly Embassy of Kazakhstan.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

City of origins and final destination, maybe.

submitted 32 days ago • 0 comments

The Cubans are coming to ... the Kennedy Center!

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

Many years ago, my mother wrote down her memories of our departure from Cuba in 1963. I’m happy to report it’s all about me. Here she tells of the stopover in Gander, Newfoundland, as we flew from Havana to Madrid. I was crying because I wanted my penniless parents to buy me a red toy car.

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

A total surprise that I found all twenty-three words; these were the letters from hell.

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

Mario Vargas Llosa en Machu Picchu. Enorme escritor latinoamericano. Descanse en paz.

submitted 50 days ago • 0 comments

Bernie is right. All senators should be saying this all the time.

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

Visions in Los Angeles. Nine years ago, on a cloudy afternoon, I saw these monks on the old Gold Line train from Little Tokyo to Union Station. I wonder where they are now and whether I can just join them wherever that might be.

submitted 52 days ago • 1 comment

Is there a time machine to take me back to this motorcycle race near Havana, far away and long ago?

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

Jim adored Handel: elegant, lofty, deep — just gorgeous. Last week I saw “Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno” at Disney Hall. Yes, time may pass, all may end in disillusion, but that night I had the loftiest seat in the house: the last row in the orchestra section that seems to float like a boat.

submitted 61 days ago • 1 comment

Spring break in Washington, D.C. What a fine city our nation’s capital is, no matter what the powers-that-be may think.

submitted 71 days ago • 0 comments

This is my grandmother in Cuba in the mid-1960s. Waiting for years to get permission to leave, she listened nightly to Voice of America, her sole link to the outside world. That VOA should have been suspended just weeks after a Cuban American became Secretary of State is disorienting and painful.

submitted 79 days ago • 0 comments

A few years ago I went to the very foggy Faroe Islands 🇫🇴. That same year, for Christmas, Jim gave me this mystery by Chris Ould set in the archipelago. Now Jim is gone and I’m reading the book, wearing these wool socks I got in Tórshavn. It’s raining in L.A. and I’m thinking of Jim as I read.

submitted 89 days ago • 0 comments

Benjamin Appl sang “Winterreise” tonight in the music room at Dumbarton Oaks. Such an operatic performance — tender, mournful, melancholy, passionate, furious. Bryan Wagorn was magnificent too.

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

I’m no good at taking pictures of Mies van der Rohe’s architecture, but maybe some of his genius is visible in these images of his only building in D.C. — the only library he designed. It’s great what you see inside all that glass: readers & librarians & right now a moving exhibit on the Green Book.

submitted 100 days ago • 1 comment

Our lives are rivers, gliding free To that unfathomed, boundless sea, The silent grave! Thither all earthly pomp and boast Roll, to be swallowed up and lost In one dark wave. (Longfellow, after Manrique)

submitted 109 days ago • 0 comments

Danify California Now! Personally, I wholeheartedly support Denmark purchasing California and renaming Disneyland “Hans Christian Andersenland” and L.A. becoming Løs Ångeles. Plus avocado toast for all Danes.

submitted 112 days ago • 0 comments

An old Madrid friend, Mariana is in Pasadena as part of an exchange between the Prado and the Norton Simon. Also in the museum: a lecture by Guillaume Kientz. The world can’t be all bad if so many folks, old and young, spend Saturday evening listening to a man talk about Velázquez for over an hour.

submitted 113 days ago • 2 comments

A man who has never shown any interest in the arts wants to impose his will on the arts. Given that everything he touches dies, we need to be ready to say goodbye to the Kennedy Center.

submitted 115 days ago • 0 comments

Memories of a winter day in Ordrupgaard, the awesomest museum, just a short S-train ride north from central Copenhagen.

submitted 118 days ago • 0 comments

I’m at a conference in Nuuk, my second visit to wondrous Greenland. Happy to see that its beautiful flag is still there. Let it fly forever.

submitted 133 days ago • 0 comments

Wednesday Monday there was a power outage. The light outside felt eerie because of a black cloud hanging over my part of Los Angeles. Inside, the light was uncannily dark. Let’s hope this all comes to an end soon.

submitted 141 days ago • 0 comments

A strange sunrise in Los Angeles. A dark cloud is hanging over us.

submitted 146 days ago • 0 comments

Last hours spent in Hong Kong before flying back to Los Angeles: walking from M+ to the Palace Museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District — carrying a heavy backpack but happy. Hoping to return soon to this City!

submitted 154 days ago • 0 comments

Zhang Xiaogang, “Bloodline—Big Family No. 17,” oil on canvas. I first saw a work by this artist many years ago in Tokyo as part of a show on the subject of love. It was love at first sight, and it was exciting to see yet another work by him here at Hong Kong’s M+.

submitted 157 days ago • 0 comments