I know I owe y’all pictures from Istanbul and a food post at some point, but this will have to tide you over for the moment.

The first part of this week was mainly spent watching the local news report on the sever flooding in the Houston area.  This was very reminiscent of Tropical Storm Allison, and less than a year after the Memorial Day floods on 2015, so the local stations were pretty much on Flood-Watch 24/7.  The main difference is that this time it was actually reported OUTSIDE of Houston.  I don’t know if you remember, but when TS Allison hit in June of 2001, the worst of the flooding occurred on the same weekend that convicted terrorist Timothy McVeigh was executed.  If you didn’t live in the immediate Houston environs, you might not have heard a peep about the catastrophic conditions in Houston.

This time, I actually saw national and international news stories about the flooding.  Yay?  There are times when it feels like Houston is totally off of the radar for the rest of the country and world, never mind that we are the 4th largest city in the nation.  I hate that when we do make the news, it takes something like this to remind people that we exist.

Perhaps the biggest cultural news of the week is the death of Prince, musical genius and master of persona.  The outpouring of grief that we saw occur worldwide shows just how much he influenced popular music and popular culture.  I also think there is an element of purity when it comes to Prince.  Michael and Whitney’s legacies were at times overshadowed by their personal demons and drama.  With Prince, we are allowed to mourn someone who meant so much to us without the asterisk(*) that is their personal legacy.  We are allowed to revel in his weirdness, because for so many people it helped us embrace our own oddity.