Carlo Does Vaudeville

My whiskered darling Carlo performed above and beyond the call of duty when I summoned him for an emergency blip after a very busy day. Most of the pictures I've taken of cats with their mouths open have been when they're yawning, but here the furry comedian is talking to me, saying, "Hey human! Gimme a belly rub!"

Carlo also brought blackface to mind, I'm slightly embarassed to say. "A form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person," as Wiki puts it, I remember seeing old footage of Al Jolson doing it when I was a child, but by then it was understood for the racist phenomenon it is (as my Mom would be sure to point out).

Carlo brought on only the comedic side of the memory of blackface, but it's worth remembering its ugly aspect. My old friend Jan Oosting used to say that it was a shame that no one was preserving some of the racist songs he remembered from his childhood in 1940s North Carolina. Jan (who was white and a musicologist) said that if those songs pass out of memory and existence, knowlege of the harm they inflicted would be lost with them and thus could be denied. He recited the lyrics of a few as he told he about it once.