The Writer's Allman Brother for Friday, May 1, 2026

May Day

Dick Swett

Judy Collins

"Emergency Warning" by Yrsa Daley-Ward 

Transcript

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And here is the Writer's Almond Brother for Friday, the 1st of May, 2026. Today is known as May Day, due to the small midgelike black flies who spontaneously wink into being every year at the stroke of midnight and vex mammalian orifices. In 1886, a cloud of flies organized in Chicago, agitating for better working conditions and, quote, less being swatted at. They wanted to rest two days a week with their families. When negotiation proved fruitless, they walked out. Or they flew out, whatever, you know, refusing to vex any orifices. Which was met with relief by their employers. As a final straw, they swarmed Mayor Carter Harrison's picnic in Lincoln Park, blackening the egg salad and befouling every strawberry in the first lady's parfait. A bludgeon of rolled up newsprint came raining down on their little fly bodies, sending more than half of them to the fly mortuary and D winging several others, at which point they couldn't technically be called flies anymore. This incident became known in labor relations history as the hay fever affair. But hey, at least we got to rest on Sundays now, in a stiff collar, sitting in a pew at ten AM with our wings folded. It's the birthday of Congressman Dick Sweat, born penis perspiration in nineteen fifty seven, Pennsylvania. They said you'll never get elected with that name penis, so we changed it. That's not really much better, they said. Completely mismeasuring the fartles the electorate will bear. Pennsylvanian Dick sweated in that august chamber for four years in the nineties, both pre and succeeded by dudes named Charles, one who chose Chuck for his diminutive, the other Charlie. No one got anything done in the government that decade. They were too busy laughing at the PA delegation. It gets better when you learn that Dick was the only architect to serve in Congress in the twentieth century. Meaning he, Dick Sweat, was the lone representative who was schooled in the civic physics of erection. And it's the birthday of Judy Collins, who is not Joni Mitchell, nor Anne Murray, nor Joan Collins, nor Tom Collins, nor is she Judy Blue Eyes, except she was that last one. Born 1939 in Seattle, she wore flannel before Kurt Cobain deemed it cool in thirty years before he existed. Growing up, her blind dad turned her on to folk music. It's just music for folks, he said, between twangs of mouth harp. She couldn't hear him. Are you also mute? she thought, but never got it out due to the polio. In 1968, Joni Mitchell approached Collins with a song called Both Sides Now, saying she couldn't sing tremulous nor high pitched nor whingy enough to pull off the vocals on it. Collins said, You're kidding, it's easy. It's just I've seen the world from both sides. Now just dig into your inner hepburn and mix it with a kind of Julia Child artificial Parkinson's and you know, rolls and falls of angel, you try it. Tenuously, Joni approached the mic, parted her trembling lips, and sang Rolls and Falls of Angel, I think you're right, I think I can do that. And that conversation was recorded and released on both Judy Collins' album Wildflowers and the second offering by Joni Mitchell, which is simply called Clouds. And now both recordings are the same recording, vibrating like a bird trapped in the ventricle of a failing Pentecostal minister who, on his deathbed, is finally able to admit his penchant for open toed sandals and the occasional Molly edible. Here's a poem for today by Yursa Daly Ward, entitled Emergency Warning. You are one of those people, it is clear, who needs help. I think you should stop speaking in a low attractive voice whenever you call. Stop making me think of velvet and fragrant tobacco and that first sip of bourbon. Stop inciting stirrings, movements between us, little rebellions, causing chaos in all of my darker places. The top half of my body is that gross political warfare with the lower. One part of me is roaring and the other wholly disapproves. You are a beautiful danger. Do not force me to open up. Some books are bound tightly for years for reasons. Some books are burned for their own good, love. Stop wearing clothes the way that you do. Don't allow them to cling to your body like that. Do not follow these effortless fashions where everything looks just so because really who could resist such a thing? The Lord knows you are beautiful and unfair. I think perhaps you should spare a thought, dear, for those who are sick over you, burning up with you, damp with you. You know what you do. You're a slow fever. Don't be so very engaging, amusing, or witty or bright. You are causing confusion and jams in tight spaces. You are an accident in waiting. The type of accident with casualties spanning from me to you and here to there, a potential tragedy, a stunning unborn disaster. Should I touch you, I will suffer, and you will suffer, and she will suffer. You are a danger zone. I must not enter. I should not enter. But I might. We derive it from the water your father cooked the pasta in last night. Would be too good for it. Where you going? Until next week, be well, have a brew, and play some tunes. Who's Doug?