I Thought Of This All By Myself

 I am old enough to remember that little paperclip that used to show up in the corner of a new document who offered "helpful" suggestions like "It looks like you're writing a ransom note. Would you like some help?" This none-too-clever anthromorphic paper fastener was called "Clippy," and after a ten year run of "helping" users of Microsoft Office, he was sent to the bottom of the drawer where all paper clips go to die. 

Did you like having Clippy around for those moments of hesitation? Do you wish you could still have his obsequious presence in your life? Welcome to the age of Artificial Intelligence. Looking for something on Al Gore's Internet? Google will be happy to distill any potential learning that could take place by distilling your search into pre-chewed nuggets of fact-pablum that can be easily digested. 

Have you ever wondered what you and your loved ones might look like if they were in a film by Nick Park. 

What's that? You say you don't know who Nick Park is? You might know him as the creator of Wallace and Gromit. Or maybe you'd like to sidestep that whole painstaking world of creating films by animating clay figures one frame at a time and use a filter to see what you would look like as one of those clay figures. 

For free.

Or maybe you're a fan of the work of Hayao Miyazaki and you'd like to have your next selfie look like something that came from one of his films. ChatGPT can do that for you.

For Free. 

Intellectual property? Don't worry your funny-looking head about it. It's all a part of the brave new world of machines doing the work for us. 

Somebody else's work. 

I know the difference between "homage" and "rip-off." If I used these "free" machine assistants I might pose that question to one of them. 

But that would be surrender, wouldn't it?

When I run out of words, I'll stop writing. 

So Much

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

This was the poem that played over and over again in my mind as my wife struggled to move a dozen railroad ties from our front yard where they had been so unceremoniously delivered to the back yard where they were going to be employed in the seemingly straightforward task of replacing the terracing. There was a time when the thought of moving a ton of lumber around would have been an amusing way to spend a weekend. Those days are gone. 

But that didn't keep my wife and I from making the grand gesture of Do It Yourself as my Spring Vacation was just beginning. There would be time for relaxing and recreation after the work was done. The work was negotiating all that wood into a configuration both useful and pleasant to look at. The first step in this endeavor was the most daunting. As I have mentioned far too often in this space, I am not the hale and hearty thirty year old who needs a challenge. There was a time when this would have been a great opportunity to maximize my dad and husband points by accomplishing something superhuman. 

Instead, I saw the opportunity to use my age and wisdom by finding a simple machine that would help us in our time of need. There was a moment when I truly believed that our garden wheelbarrow might just do the trick. Alas, it was strong on appearance, but short on balance. Instead, I opted for what amounts to the red wheelbarrow at our house: The Radio Flyer wagon that provided hours of amusement for my son when he was still captivated by wheeled contraptions without motors. Then over time, it became a utility vehicle for moving this and that here and there. 

And it continues, with a few rusty spots, to be red. 

The transport of railroad ties was accomplished without injury and not just a bit of pride. It occurred to both my wife and I that the next part of the job might best be taken on by elves if we simply left all the pieces strewn about the yard, but we knew that we were most likely in for the long haul after the long haul. Retaining walls don't just spring up out of the ground like you'd like them to. 

But that red wagon. 

So much depends on it. 

Bravo, and thank you William Carlos Williams. 

   

I Don't Get It

 I have a history of making some pretty solid April Fools jokes. The "secret" was based on having some minor toehold in truth. "It's funny because it's true," is an expression that gets a lot of play in the comedy business. The punch line comes at the moment when the level of abstraction where you have been operating switches suddenly and it creates a momentary confusion in the audience. Of course, if you shift too abruptly or not enough, the response will almost invariably be, "I don't get it." 

Which pretty much sums up my feelings about the Second Trumpreich. I know what a gift comedians felt that those first four years would be for comedy. You see, there's the regular way to do things, and then there's the absolutely worse way to do them. This where the humor that can be mined from Goofus And Gallant. This suggests that there is a Gallant to go along with the Goofus. 

Not so in the current regime. 

If there is a wrong or difficult way to do something, the MAGAts will find it. There is no comfort here. There is no landing place. Just a series of straight lines. 

Like, "Hey, you know what would be cool? If we invaded Greenland."

Or how about, "You know who really needs to date? Lauren Boebert and Kid Rock." 

Are these setups or punchlines? "Let's include a journalist on our secret war thread."

The folks at Saturday Night Live have to be pretty fed up with these clowns doing their job for them. 

Because it's not funny anymore. 

It's tedious. It's depressing. It's painful. 

It's currently scheduled to go on for four years. 

Get it? 

The Mouth Than Roared

 I suppose the lesson I take away from all this is: Never send a sycophant to do a sociopath's work. 

Julius Domingo Vance was in Greenland a few days back, nominally to visit the United States airbase we have up there, but also to chastise the folks who live there as well as spew disdain for their nominal leadership back in Denmark. "Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have underinvested in the people of Greenland, and you have underinvested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful landmass filled with incredible people. That has to change, and because it hasn't changed, this is why President Trump's policy in Greenland is what it is."

Perhaps you weren't aware of the massive unrest in that arctic nation. Perhaps because there wasn't any massive unrest. 

Except for that created by the guy who was replaced by Elongated Mush. 

Which brings a couple of movie references to mind. This is my blog, so of course you would expect a couple movie references. The first one being the closing minutes of Stripes, in which the fates of the main characters are played out in magazine covers. Except for their former commanding officer, played by John Larroquette. He gets a tiny article buried inside the Nome News announcing his arrival in the Arctic wastes amid a record cold spell. 

There was a media event scheduled for Jimmy Duggan Vance to meet and greet Greenalnders. They could not find anyone in Greenland to accept that invitation. 

The second movie reference would be that of The Mouse That Roared, a little Peter Sellers comedy about how the Duchy of Grand Fenwick once attempted to take over the United States in hopes that their soldiers would be quickly vanquished and then US aid would come flooding back into their country. Except it didn't work out that way. 

Watch the movie. 

Don't watch the continued shenanigans of Joaquin Dizzy Vance as he continues to get things backward, threatening a sovereign nation that is busy going about their peaceful existence. The "mouse" in this equation wants nothing to do with the nation of roaring MAGAts. They would much rather get back to the concerns of trawling for halibut. 

And living their lives without the sound and fury coming from America, which signifies nothing.   

Garden Genome

 My wife and I were, I suppose, fortunate for each of us to have a sibling who was willing to donate a swab of spit to the genetic research the roots of our combined family tree. There were no surprises. If anything there was a calming affirmation of just how direct a line our ancestors had followed compared to the legends that had been shared over the years about our respective clans. 

My younger brother's trip into the mists of time revealed not a panoply of influences from across the globe, but a large red dot that was centered on one particular neighborhood in London. Compared to his wife that looked like a globe that had been infected with measles, tiny dots scattered across continents and time, his was pretty solidly a one note affair. 

My wife's mother has spent decades researching her family's trek from Germany to the mean streets of Detroit, something that a test tube of DNA only confirmed when my brother-in-law sealed his up and sent it away for observation. No side trips to points previously unknown or hidden relatives waiting to be revealed. His report was a somewhat less colorful version of the stories he had been told all his life. 

There were no missing inheritances or outstanding debts to be cleared, financially or emotionally. 23andMe failed to open any mystery doors. Which is why I find myself currently wondering with some relief what brought me several months ago to the edge of redundancy by ordering a kit for my wife's sixtieth birthday.

What was I thinking? Maybe there was some hidden piece of straggling genetic code that was missing from the year that separated her birth from that of her older brother. Maybe I was hoping to give her the experience of exploring her lineage within the extraordinarily safe limits of a test that had already been taken. 

Or maybe I could fess up to the truth: Amazon had a PrimeDay sale of 23andMe and it seemed like too good a deal to pass up. 

So I didn't. 

And that sealed package has floated from our coffee table to her desk to the window seat next to our bed in the intervening months, waiting for some reason to roll those loaded dice. 

Now 23andMe is filing for bankruptcy, and as part of the fire sale they are conducting, everyone's genetic code is up for grabs to the highest bidder. It's on sale for a limited time, not unlike PrimeDay, but only if you are silly enough to leave it sitting there on their website. If you don't delete your data, the 23andMe folks insist that you will be providing an enormous service: tracking down killers who escaped justice and providing a possible cure for the common cold. 

But I suppose it would be nice if that information had been given willingly, and not part of a legal settlement. 

Me? I'm willing to send a vial of my spit to Tesla. In case they need it. 

Cruelty Free

 It will be good to take a break. 

It's Spring, after all. 

Whoever said "March is the cruelest month," was probably an elementary school teacher. T.S. Eliot may have been on a different calendar, but it has been a month and a half since we have experienced anything like a standing eight count here in the trenches, and we are ready. 

More than ready.

I have written here before about the mild shame I sometimes feel when I remember previous jobs, like when I worked at a book warehouse where the only days we got off were those taken by UPS. Those were ten hour days, and plenty of times when we had to work a little longer just to be sure that we got the orders out the door. 

Now I live in a world with an "academic calendar," which includes the last Friday of March "in lieu of Cesar Chavez Day." I'll be taking that, thank you very much. I will happily avoid my school site for the week following, with the added incentive of having just forty school days left once we return.

I am not certain at all whether I have always felt this level of exhaustion creeping into Spring Break. I know that the days leading up to Winter Break were tenuous, but the idea of being wrung out and spent like I am currently suggests that it is a cumulative effect. The number of Springs that have been broken over the course of my teaching career is beginning to limit my capacity to rebound. The phrase, "I could really use a vacation," comes far more easily to mind than it used to. 

Then again, a fourth grade girl, one possessed with a rather large personality, showed up just after lunch this past Tuesday. When our principal asked where she had been, expecting a doctor or dentist appointment as the excuse, this personality-laden fourth grader replied lazily, "I was sleeping." I've done a few tours of Fourth Grade. I get it. 

We could all use a break.  

Thread

 PH: My dudes! What's shakin' for this weekend?

MW: Lookin' forward to getting my March Madness on. 

JDV: Maybe chug some nachos?

MR: How 'bout some wangs?

PH: Love me some wangs!

TG: You boys have your fun. I'm catching up on some work.

MW: Work?

PH: Yeah, what's that?

SM: Right. Some of us have to work this weekend.

PH: Oh, I can fix that.

TG: Whaddya mean?

MR: He means he can just send a msg to a base in the Middle East and poof.

TG: Which base?

PH: Don't you worry your pretty little had about that. 

JDV: Yeah. You should be checking up on that bracket of yours.

MW: Anyone else got Gonzaga?

JG: I do.

SM: Goldberg? Who let him on this thread?

JG: Your pal Pete. 

MR: No way. 

JG: Way. 

PH: Hey Jeff, you're not going to tell anybody about this, right?

JDV: Yeah. Who would believe you?

JDV: Right. Who would believe you?

TG: I'm out, boys. You explain this to the boss. 

MR: Not me. If anybody asks, I was out mowing the lawn.

MW: You guys still talking about the air strike on the Houthis?

TG: Mike - ixnay on the outhishay. 

MW: What?

JDV: How 'bout that Gonzaga?

JG: You're right. Who would believe that senior administration officials would be planning an military strike on an unencrypted text thread?

PH: Right. 

SM: Right. Now can we get back to deciding who to send anyone with the last name Cortez to Guantanamo Bay?

What'd I Say?

 Can I take you out to dinner?

Would you like to go for coffee sometime?

How about a ride in my car?

Opening salvos in a courtship process I never fully understood. I certainly had my fill of them from the hours upon hours of television and movies I watched in which dating took place. Successfully or unsuccessfully, I had a storehouse of options at my disposal. From Rick Blaine to Lloyd Christmas, my head swam with opportunities and time-tested lines that would hopefully put me in the driver's seat when it came to getting the girl. 

Well, guess what? 

I'll tell you what: None of those approaches worked for me. I did not possess the "killer instinct" when it came time to sidle up to some fair lass and let her know what was in my heart. In this way I fulfilled yet another time-honored trope: The Strike-Out King. And not like Nolan Ryan, either. 

As my thirtieth birthday approached, I had begun to make plans for a celebration of my singleness. I was going to make a big fuss about how I was going to be just fine alone and that was just fine even though all my friends seemed to be pairing off and finding true love and living stories that looked from my perspective like "happily ever after." 

Then somewhere in there came a carom shot that changed my life once and for all. Smack in the middle of that big fuss I was making about being "just good friends" with the planet, a door opened. Not because of some slick line I was able to summon at just the right moment. It was because of a willingness to be the person I was and to speak my own truth when the moment to leap finally arrived. Improvisation, as it turned out, was infinitely more important than prepared speeches that lived in my mind for all those years. 

Now, some thirty five years after the fact, I dredge up those speeches as an exercise in sentimentality. I have a place for all those monologues that were going to be the start of my love resume. Now they are references, footnotes to the words and moments spoken in real life. Which is fine, because we'll always have Paris. 

Soulless

 Let them eat cake. 

This suggestion was made a long time ago by a woman who was in a position to have a lot of cake delivered to her by servants. It was dismissive and one of the all-time hallmarks of the arrogance of the rich. So much so that once the "them" in that equation had a chance, they chopped Marie Antionette's head off for it. 

Of course, the attribution of this quote is subject to a great deal of discussion, since there was not a lot of digital evidence to suggest that the late queen said any such thing. And if she did, it was probably in French so it wouldn't have come off nearly as harsh: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,”or literally "Let them eat brioche." 

Still, it remains a standard by which we all imagine was an aristocracy completely out of touch with the working class of its time. 

It now has competition. 

“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who’s ninety-four, she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t. She’d think something got messed up and she’ll get it next month,” said current Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick whose estimated net worth is in the fifteen billion dollar range. 

He went on to say, “The easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing, because my mother-in-law is not calling me. Come on, your mother ― eighty-year-olds, ninety-year-olds ― they trust the government.”

This is a documented exchange. No misattribution. No cake. No brioche. Just the heartless out-of-touch oligarchy that now sits up in the palace having theirs. 

And eating it too. 

The Price You Pay

 This is nothing new.

The Oakland Unified School District is struggling to live within its means. Sitting on this side of the fence, it would be easy enough to say that the problem is that they are spending too much money. This side of the fence is where the teachers live. We don't have to make choices about how money gets spent. We also get very uptight when we feel as if we are not being paid what we should. 

If I were to levitate above the fence, creating a perspective from both sides, I could see that there are a myriad of factors that keep OUSD from being able to pay their bills. One of these just happens to be the benefits package that fills in some of the void created by a lower paycheck for its employees. Those benefits are what keeps many of us "front line" folks from going in search of greener pastures. Having my family's medical bills covered has been a blessing during a time when those costs have crushed a great many citizens of this great land of ours. And, after a slow but steady climb up the salary ladder, I can report that I am finally making a living wage. 

Which is part of the reason that the Oakland Unified School District continues to flounder. Not my salary in particular, but rather the increases that have been given to all of us union types after a series of successful work actions. The same can be said of the way those work actions helped keep a number of smaller schools open, including the one where I work, when the economic realities might have shuttered them. 

And all of this struggle comes at the feet of a beast that expects public schools to run like a business. The idea that K-12 schools would turn a profit is ridiculous and illusory. The way we "earn" our money is based almost entirely on Average Daily Attendance, or ADA. If anything, like say a global pandemic, disrupts that average, our funding suffers. The same cannot be said of military spending. It does not matter how many people are volunteering for our armed services or what wars we may or may not be fighting, that number continues to climb almost exponentially. One might imagine that a governmental agency looking into "efficiency" might have taken a look at that model. 

Nope. Sorry. They have been far too busy closing the Department of Education and other agencies that might end up benefitting children. This, as near as I can tell, is the basis for that ethereal notion of "school choice." 

Meanwhile, back here in Oakland, we struggle to keep the lights on because choosing our schools hase become more of a marketing chore than a public service. I continue to ponder how much longer I want to stick around in this environment, but the truth is this: I can't afford to quit. And that's not just a financial decision. It's a deep-seated conviction that this is a job worth doing for more than a paycheck. 

That's A Wrap

 They set up a school room inside the White House just so they could tear it down. 

In a move that surprised absolutely no one, the demonstrably dumbest "president" this country has ever had signed an executive order last Thursday that would dismantle the Department of Education. The expectation that this photo-op and getting children to "sign-along" with the head MAGAt would somehow drive a stake through the heart of "wokeness" illustrates once again just how desperate this guy is to be seen as "a very stable genius." 

By attempting to limit access to knowledge that threatens the historical imperfections of our great nation, The Second Trumpreich is trying to paint over reality with the thinnest of whitewash. Much in the same way that Bomont, Utah banned dancing, the MAGAts truly believe that they can make slavery disappear. They can make the rotten portions of the American apple disappear. They can make "woke" disappear. 

This would be a much more effective purge if the Department of Education actually set curriculum. 

They don't. 

That is a duty that is already almost completely controlled by state and local governments. All of that critical thinking is going to go on n spite of the efforts of the set designers who painstakingly created one of the very few classrooms in which the convicted felon has every found himself. 

In Ray Bradbuy's ironically banned novel Fahrenheit 451, clever people just took the ideas from books and kept them in their heads. Burning the pages of those books did nothing to the ideas printed on them. Thoughts, history, stories and lives live on inside the hearts of those of us with hearts and minds to hold them. 

Will it be difficult to be without federal funds for things like Title I? Yes, especially in school districts that are deeply affected by poverty. The fact that I teach at one of those schools that will be impacted by the disappearance of money that we use to fill in those holes and blanks where others might have a tax base that can fill those voids. Those of us in the education biz are familiar with The Williams Act, in which the California State Department of Education was compelled to compensate schools in areas affected by poverty such that their materials and facilities would be on a par with those of the schools that had what they needed to do their job. 

The job of education. 

That's your state Department of Education. I am not foolish enough to imagine that the carrion won't come crawling after those next, but at least we have a firewall of policy and infrastructure that might take us through the darkness. 

Before they start tearing down actual classrooms. 

Paving The Way

 They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

I don't imagine that anyone would suggest that any corner of The White House might be considered "paradise," especially during the occupation by the Second Trumpreich, but the irony of the following might go by unnoticed amidst the flurry of nonsense. 

The former game show host and slumlord announced that the grass section of the Rose Garden would soon be paved over. This is in keeping with the unseemly "restoration" undertaken by the game show host's "wife" back in 2020. This composting of one of the most iconic spaces within The People's House was solidly on par with her Christmas decorations.

On a recent stroll through the grounds, the current tenant and adjudicated rapist showed Faux News correspondent and conservative star Laura Ingraham where the newest devastation would be unleashed. “The grass just doesn’t work. And we have a gorgeous stone and everything else. But, you know, we use it for press conferences, and it doesn’t work because the people fall into the … you know, into the wet, the soaking wet.”

His royal impeachedness says "I think it will be beautiful." 

The list of things that fall into the category of "beautiful" makes one wonder how his aesthetic works exactly. Currently there are no plans to place a giant golden T in the middle of it, so this will count as a relief for some. The fact that there will still be roses is mildly encouraging, but it's only a matter of time before they get bulldozed as well.

Especially when they find out there's oil under there somewhere. 

All of this news came at approximately the same moment that it was announced that 2024 was the hottest year on record. All that grass is going to be scorched earth in a few years anyway...

Entertaining

 "If I have a choice between two things, I pick the most entertaining."

You might imagine that these words came from some luminary: a rock star, a movie star, a pop culture star. Someone who had it in their head to live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse. It's the kind of statement that might feed into the legend of a James Dean or John Belushi. You might expect to read that phrase on a book jacket quoting Hunter S. Thompson. 

None of those celebrities offered up this epigraph. 

It was a fifth grade boy sitting in the principal's office. He had been caught with a number of his associates sneaking around behind the dumpsters after lunch, attempting to skip computer class. This feat was accomplished, after a fashion, since he did not end up attending computer class. Instead, he ended up with the aforementioned associates cooling his heels in the aforementioned principal's office. 

Troy is rounding out his sixth year of enrollment in our school. He came in as a kindergartner, and if he can hold it together for two more months, he will be promoted on out of here with the rest of his fifth grade class. 

It should be noted here that Troy is by no means the toughest nut to walk through the doors of Horace Mann Elementary. That's a distinction that remains open to some discussion and lengthy reflection. He does share something with a number of his predecessors: A distinct lack of consequence. 

I suppose this would be a good place to let you know that by taking his merry band on their ridiculous mission to avoid my class, I was able to teach the rest of the fifth graders without much interruption. Without all the desperate attempts at trying to disrupt, one would assume for "entertainment," there were a few moments of active learning allowed to take place. 

Which is kind of a shame, since Troy has a solid native intelligence that allows him on those rare occasions that being in a classroom appeals to him to participate in meaningful ways. The challenge being that those opportunities have become fewer and further between as he approaches the nominal finish line of elementary school. He is heading out into the cold, cruel world that awaits him in middle school. 

On the long and ever-expanding list of kids I have taught over the years, I know of just two who did not manage to make it to their eighteenth birthday. Both of them died from gun violence. And though that number is only two, they haunt me. Was there anything that might have spared them and their families that tragedy. I try not to consider the number of former students whose paths I lost track of who might have encountered a similar fate without the aid of the grapevine that brings those stories back to me. 

Instead I focus on the kid who just recently applied to Stanford. He spent his time in the principal's office back in the day. Somewhere along the line, he made a different choice. A relief for all concerned. I am clever enough to know that Troy is not ready to hear the rest of this story, but I hope his ends well. 

I really do. 

Calming

 For a short time, it was an oasis. 

We went out to dinner Monday night with a friend. A very old friend in that he is both a contemporary of ours as well as a person that my wife and I have known for more than forty years. There was an overwhelming sense of comfort as we sat down to pore over the menu, even though we had walked several blocks in the rain and the place was nearly empty. Nothing was going to creep into our evening to tip things away from the satisfaction of connecting with our tribe. 

This is not to say that there was no discussion of world events. We touched lightly on the burning topics of the day, but we did so without having to set an agenda. We were commiserating. There was no need to convince or cajole. We were all in accord with just how onerous and difficult being a thinking individual had become over the past four months. 

We also discussed books and movies. We shared stories of the past week as well as the past four decades. We ordered dinner and didn't mind the haphazard manner in which our obsequious server made his way to and from our table, answering the phone, bringing takeout orders to the front, and always remembering to circle back to us. In other circumstances this might have been cause for frustration, but not this evening. 

We talked about the olden days, including the geography of the high school we all attended. Which way to the band room? Where was American Studies? The front lawn where touch football games sometimes took precedence over attending class. We talked about the places and times we shared and left the details of the planet and politics aside in favor of the reverie of the recall of our youth. 

Somewhere in there was an earthquake. 

A real one. I know this because I received a text from the thread my co-workers share with me. Apparently it was quite the shake. 

For those who felt it. 

Less than thirty miles away from the epicenter, what we felt was safe. Fellowship. The rest of the Bay Area was trying to find calm. 

We found ours. 

Tired And Poor

 France called.

They want the Statue of Liberty back. 1885

Specifically, Raphael Glucksmann, a member of the center-left Place Publique party was speaking to a convention:  "We're going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: 'Give us back the Statue of Liberty.' We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So, it will be just fine here at home."

Certainly there were times in the not-so-distant past that the twice-impeached "president" and former game show host might have looked out the window of the tower that has his spray-painted gold initial out front in case he ever got lost wandering the city and marveled at one of the singularly most iconic landmarks in the United States. Do you wonder if he ever bothered to get close enough to read the plaque at the base of Lady Liberty? There is a poem, The New Colossus, that reads in part:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Since the National Park Service is in charge of Ellis Island and Liberty Islands it seems likely that no one will be visiting those places anytime soon. Elongated Mush will probably appropriate them both for a combination car showroom and launch pad for errant Space-X rockets. In which case Manhattan residents had better keep their wits about them, since both of those Mush-backed products tend to explode at inconvenient intervals. 

So if a cargo ship pulls up into into the Upper New York Bay, accompanied by the sound of heavy equipment, have no fear. It's just our allies coming back for the gift they gave us back in 1885. A hundred forty years is a pretty good run, but if we don't want it, maybe the French can still give it to Egypt like they originally wanted. 

Au Revoir, Liberty. 

Standing Up For Democracy?

 The phrase "strange bedfellows" seems both antiquated and limited when it comes to describing the nine Democrats who chose to vote for the Republican sponsored budget that was passed last week. 

Caught between the choice of a bill that would gut health care, increase military spending, and fubond mass deportation or a government shutdown, Chuck Schumer and eight other Democratic senators signed on to support this further erosion of the ideals that were once held dear by those in his party. The opinion expressed by Chuck and his subordinates was that they didn't want to be blamed for a shutdown that could result in all those things that government shutdowns bring with it. 

Of course, this is a song most often sung by those on the other side of the aisle, as it has been for decades now. Republicans traditionally are the ones who want to keep those pesky Democrats from floating extra money in their bills to be spent on things like health care and keeping people in their homes. This kind of brinkmanship occurs on a far too regular basis for my tastes, with the House of the Senate routinely working right up until the last minute to keep the doors of our government offices and the gates of our National Parks open. The ugly truth here is that this threat is being felt on a daily basis with Mister Chainsaw and his crew running about in their matching nerd shirts firing people and shuttering programs in the name of "governmental efficiency." 

This apparent surrender by the leader of the Senate Minority comes with the suggestion that if the shutdown had happened, the former game show host and his DOGEy henchmen would be allowed free reign to hack and slash at what is left of our Democratic principles while waiting for the lock-step Republicans to make some sort of compromise. This system of checks and balances put forth in our Constitution seems to have all but disappeared with the Executive Branch holding all the cards: Reverse, Draw 4, and Skip. Chuck Schumer seems to be left with just the one: Submit. 

Keeping in mind that this current bill funds the government until September 30. Maybe by then Democrats will be able to find their collective spine. Right next to that stack of strongly worded letters and disappointed faces. 

Have To

 I teach kids how to write.

This comes shortly after I have taught them how to read. 

The real challenge here is that both of these activities are seen by many of them as torture. 

I am in the awkward position of not being able to relate. At all. 

I do not remember a time in my life when I did not read. Books. Voraciously. 

I can remember when I started to write. It was in the second grade. It was a story called "The Drunken Snake." The encouragement I received from my teacher, Ms. Hof, powered me through until fourth grade where I became something of a cottage industry unto myself, writing and illustrating then taking the stories I wrote to Kindergarten and first grade classes to read aloud. 

Meanwhile, I was reading every fantasy book my fourth grade teacher, Ms. Stuart, could provide. When it was announced that we would have silent reading time, I never asked, "Do we have to?" When it was time to write, I did not write a sentence or two and beg to be released from this painful task. I never said, "Can I be done now?"

And so you see that when I encounter this marked lack of enthusiasm for the written word in my classroom, I struggle with some sort of empathetic response. I understand that their struggle is real, but I cannot relate. Whatever magical switch was flipped in me when I was very young or whatever genetic predisposition I have to be doing all this reading and writing sixty plus years down the path is a mystery to me.

I have spent my life in this neighborhood of words. I cannot imagine life without them. I am resolved with the mission to keep trying to deliver this love to a new generation. 

Because I have to. 

Auto Asphyxia

 There was a time, not too long ago, when I would have celebrated the sales pitch of an American President for electric cars. 

Things change. 

The terribly awkward ersatz Joe Girard moment came in front of The Incredibly White House last Thursday and featured a man who has been convicted of business fraud attempting to sell the world a car made by the company owned by Elongated Mush. It came in the guise of the former game show host "buying" a Model S from the guy who has seen his tax records. 

Platitudes rained down, about how beautiful the car was and what a great patriot Mush is. Later, the twice-impeached "president" wrote, “Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for.”

This comes at a time when Tesla stock has dropped nearly forty percent since the installation of Mush's DOGE chainsaw attack on our country's financials. It should be noted that a vast majority of the cuts made by the DOGErs have either been held up in court or proven to be lies. Buy a car from the world's richest man to show your support for America. 

And best of all, Elongated Mush keeps trotting out his clone, little RGuPlehX-9 Mush, for yet another creepily modulated press event. He was able to keep his finger out of his nose during this photo op. 

I confess that I flinched a bit when I saw Joe Biden rev up his Corvette Stingray with Jay Leno. I had a similar reaction to seeing Barack Obama and his pal Bruce Springsteen roaring off into the distance in another Corvette, much to the ire of Secret Service agents. 

Why not drive an electric car? 

Now I can see the whole thing in perspective: None of it makes any sense. The future is not ours. I surrender to the bizarre and impossible to predict timestream in which I find myself. 

Boycott Tesla. Buy an electric car. You don't have to enjoy it. And don't pick your nose. People are watching. 

Bad Guys

 It would be an oversimplification to suggest that Republicans don't care for the environment. Much in the same way it would be unfair to say that George W. Bush doesn't like black people. He seems to get along with Michelle Obama just fine. Interestingly, it was Kanye West who first suggested that George W. Bush doesn't care about black people. Spin that big wheel just a little harder and you might wonder if it wasn't Kanye who doesn't care about black people. We have a pretty clear picture of how he feels about Jewish people. His alignment with the red baseball cap crowd probably says it all. 

But back to the environment. It was a Republican president, one Richard Milhouse Nixon, who first established the Environmental Protection Agency way back in 1970. For the past fifty-five years, there has been a number of successes and a few failures by this governmental agency assigned to keep our planet from turning into that scary scene we all saw Iron Eyes Cody witness: Keep America Beautiful. 

Beautiful would be nice, but these days I believe it would be nice to keep America off life support. 

This past week the newly installed Director of the EPA Lee Zeldin announced that“a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion” had been placed by the Second Trumpreich after the rollback of a number of environmental regulations. Rather than ending the commercial with a single tear, Iron Eyes Cody might next be renamed "Iron Lung" Cody after having water and air pollution limits repealed as well as the mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions. The MAGAts in charge have declared that the 2009 legal decision that says greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are warming the Earth and that warming presents a threat to public health and welfare is the problem. Not the solution. 

Remember when Sarah Palin was the creepy outlier with her cry, "Drill Baby, Drill?" That's where we find ourselves as Project 2025 rolls on through, leaving behind it images of a devastated planet, like what happened in Ferngully, or the "live-action" remake Avatar. But this isn't science fiction. It's not a dystopian fever dream. It's what is happening to the Earth while Nero the adjudicated rapist fiddles. 

Which brings to mind yet another movie reference: "Some men just want to watch the world burn." These were the words Alfred used to describe The Joker to Bruce Wayne. Just to be clear, The Joker is the bad guy in this scenario. Those who just want to watch the world burn are the bad guys. Which wouldn't be such an awful thing if there was a Batman out there to bring justice to Gotham City. If we had the luxury of time. 

We don't. 

We are running out of time. And these Jokers are literally stepping on the gas. 

Really

 We have arrived at that point in the school year when we start to threaten and cajole. The second of three report cards have been passed out. Parents and caregivers have been sent a clear message about their child's progress. 

Or lack thereof. 

Now we begin the push toward the cliff that is the End Of The Year. The end of May is actually much closer to the end of the calendar year, and in terms of the continuum that all my years in public education allows me it is only a pause, a mere two months and change before we fire up the engines once again to start the whole cycle over. And over. And over again. 

But for now we can look for those threads that can be pulled to tease out those leaps in understanding that are still available for our third trimester together. This is the one with the standardized test. The one that third, fourth and fifth graders are asked to take in hopes of showing the academic growth they have made since they landed in their classrooms back in August. Teachers are a sneaky bunch, and it isn't as if we will be walking blindly into this fray. There have been a number of assessments given ahead of The State Test (insert ominous chord here). 

But these are not the ones that the folks up in Sacramento will be staring out over the summer. The grownups will spend those months wondering just what those scores will look like. Those folks up in Sacramento will send us a bunch of numbers and graphs that will show us all what we have already anticipated. What we already knew. Those folks up in Sacramento are primarily confirming the reality we experience in our little school in East Oakland every Monday through Friday from August to May. 

We already have a pretty good "hunch," an educational term that I had to go to teacher school to learn. Our pretty good "hunch" can sometimes be wrong. Which is exactly why we start making the pitch in March to those kids we hope will be a surprise. How can we get every single one of those boys and girls to meet or exceed those expectations we have for them? 

Ultimately I believe that any and all of these Big Tests are just as telling as the little ones. They are snapshots of where each kid is on the path toward being ready to join their friends and neighbors in the next grade. Even if they are not quite ready. Holding one of them back is a process that begins far in advance of The Big Test. Their score on The Big Test will not be the single mitigating factor in their promotion. 

Which doesn't mean we aren't above suggesting that. We teachers are a wily bunch, capable of much subterfuge as Ed Code will allow. We want our students to achieve. We want our students to excel. Even if that means we have to give them prizes for showing up on time, ready to learn. 

Because we know what the real prize is: Education. 

Aw, c'mon Mister Caven. Really?

Yes. Really. 

All Time

 I was fortunate to be witness to a period of time when John Elway was rushing about and hurling touchdown passes with seemingly reckless abandon. I spent a lot of Sundays watching from my couch, and on a couple of occasions, I was able to take all that quarterback magic in from the stands of Mile High Stadium. This vantage point was in many ways inferior to the one that offered me close-ups and instant replays and unfettered access to the bathroom at home, but there was something mildly magical about being in rough proximity to that greatness. 

This was much the same feeling I had when I sat down in the Chase Center to watch The Golden State Warriors take on The Portland Trailblazers. Not a playoff game. Not a marquee matchup of stars, but it was my first opportunity to see Steph Curry play basketball in the flesh. 

Not being predisposed to attending professional basketball games, it had been a couple decades since I was in the stands for any NBA game, let alone one that featured the talents of Mister Curry. It just so happened that our school was selected to be a part of a Reading Partnership with the Warriors organization, and at halftime our principal was to be introduced and recognized for her tireless efforts to make readers out of the kids at our school. We were offered sixty tickets to a Monday night game, the aforementioned Warriors/Trailblazers tilt. It was decided that we would take fifty kids who had shown themselves worthy of such distinction, and ten staff members who would ride herd on this field trip. Across the bay. At night. With all manner of distractions and confusions. 

Where's the bathroom? Where's the food? Where's the bathroom again?

I went along on the chaperoning gig to help out. And to support our principal. And to try an squeeze in a peek at the extra-human efforts of one of the greatest natural shooters to ever toss a basketball at a hoop. I did not spend much time in the seat that was provided for me. Instead, I was up and down the steep stairs of the arena, leading or following eight to eleven year olds to the facilities and to explain that none of the vendors in the stadium was taking cash. They would need a credit card. 

This provided some sad faces, so I did what any chaperone might do: I bought four overly-expensive orders of french fries for my group to inhale. This combined with the mass of Lunchables, cookies, chips and bottled water we had served them on the bus ride over didn't seem to dampen their hunger in the slightest. It also did not keep the bulk of them in their seats for more than a few minutes at a time. They were not there to watch basketball. They were there to test the Chase Center plumbing. 

But somewhere in there, in a brief lull between trips up and down the aisle, I was allowed to watch a bit of the game. Just enough to take in the effortless or appearance of effortlessness of Steph Curry shooting a basketball. His motion on the court was similar to the other players, but his was more focused, more a matter of fact. Even his misses looked pretty. And he wasn't just there to put up three point shots. He was hustling on defense, creating opportunities for his teammates, and playing the game as hard as anyone on the court. 

I thought of John Elway breaking away from would-be tacklers to fling a dart to a receiver coming open in the end zone. I thought about how fortunate I was to see that kind of physical ablitlity combined with an ingrained sense of the game. I thought of Steph Curry. 

Just before it was time for another trip down the stairs to the bathroom. 

Book Learnin'

 Horace Mann believed that political stability and social harmony depended on education. "A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one."

That's the Father of Public Education talking there. I should know, since I've spent most of my adult life within walls and halls named for him. When I first got my job at Horace Mann Elementary, my mother sent me a slim volume entitled On The Art of Teaching. After skimming through it briefly, I did what every child does with notes related to school: I shoved it in my backpack where it stayed for a dozen years without much thought. 

I am thinking about that book a lot these days. I am thinking a lot about being a teacher in a public school. I am thinking a lot more about it than the tiny brains that would like to see public education go away. 

At the end of January of this year, the convicted felon currently taking up space in the White House issued an Executive Order entitled, Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling. Our public schools have been accused of "Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children." This comes as some news to me, since I struggle along with my colleagues each and every day to try and find time to teach them how to read, write, add and subtract. If those are "harmful and false ideologies," then we are guilty as charged. 

But we all know what the former game show host is getting at. He's pointing a finger at public schools for shining a light on the historical shortcomings of our democratic ideal. It's the alphabet soup of CRT and DEI that terrifies him and his fear-mongering rich white neo-conservatives. Suggesting that, at times, the United States wasn't so great is the bedrock of the Make America Great Again campaign, right? This suggests that at some point America wasn't so great. 

But let's not leave that kind of distinction left in the hands of professional educators. Instead, let's have the wife of the former head wrestler of the World Wildlife Fund decide how things should roll. Like heads. She recently offered twenty-five thousand dollar buyouts to three hundred employees of the Department of Education. The message is pretty clear: Jump before you're pushed. 

I looked and I looked in Horace Mann's book for wisdom on this matter, and there were quite a few from which to choose. But the one I will leave you with is this one: "The best teachers teach from the heart, not the book. The most ignorant are the most conceited."

A Teachable Moment

 There's a lot to unravel here. 

The first execution by firing squad in these United States in more than fifteen years took place in South Carolina. Brad Sigmon, who had been convicted of killing his girlfriend's parents with a baseball bat was pronounced dead at 6:08 PM on Friday. 

Really dead. 

Three prison system volunteer shooters took care of their business cleanly, or at least as clean as three bullets fired into the chest of a target strapped to a chair fifteen feet away could be. Like shooting convicted murderers in a barrel. 

And this is how we teach "Thou shalt not kill." 

It should be noted that Mister Sigmon, who spent twenty-four years on death row for his crimes, selected being shot from a menu that included lethal injection and the electric chair. An interesting logistical note: The electric chair was in the same room as the firing squad, but the gurney used for lethal injections was wheeled out for the occasion. 

I find it curious that in the moments just before the state doles out its harshest punishment that suddenly the world is your oyster: "What would you like to eat? Surf and turf? Maybe a nice cannoli?" And we certainly want to make sure that when that final moment comes, it should be in as calm and businesslike as possible. Someone once noticed the inherent ridiculousness of the cotton swab used to clean the area where a lethal injection is given. You wouldn't want to get a nasty infection. Like the bullets used in the firing squad, made to break apart causing maximum damage and limiting any possible harm to bystanders. 

Thank goodness they thought of safety.

Thou shalt not kill, but if you absolutely have to in order to teach a lesson, offer a wide selection of alternatives and try not to make a mess of things. Why not just slide some arsenic into his cannoli? 

O, Canada

 O Canada. 

There was a time when we used to keep track of all the "famous Americans" who were actually Canadian. It was a pretty neat trick, sneaking down here as they did and pretending to be just like us when they were actually Canucks. 

We needed them to fill out our hockey rosters. We needed them to tell us the news. We needed them for Double Jeopardy. And we needed them because they are so darn funny. 

When did all this hostility begin? Why are those traditionally polite denizens of the Great White North booing the Star Spangled Banner? 

Was it something we said? 

Was it something they said? 

How about (aboot) saying "No thank you" to the offer of becoming our fifty-first state? I mean I suppose it makes sense from the perspective of a former game show host who was never that good at geography in the first place, or even that good a game show host. But is it really worth all this fuss? 

Probably. 

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: "If you want to be a numbskull like Justin Trudeau and say, 'Oh we're going to do this,' then tariffs are going to go up. If you want to sit back and have a discussion with the Commerce Department, USTR—they have my phone number too—then I am happy to have a discussion with our foreign counterparts."

It would seem that the Seocnd Trumpreich is willing to start a trade war with the one ally we have had in virtually every armed conflict we have found ourselves in for the past hundred years. Yeah, but what have they done for us lately? 

O, Canada. I miss you. 

Something

 "Hey man, I'm thinking about getting back together with Donna."

"Um...."

"What?"

"You mean the Donna you broke up with four years ago?"

"Yeah."

"The same Donna you spent the past four years with in court, trying to get free from all her lies?"

"That's not the way it is at all."

"The same Donna that ended up taking all your money and then handing it out to all her richie-rich friends to impress them?"

"Well..."

"The same Donna that ended up running your business into the ground and left you nothing but a ton of lawsuits?"

"Yes but..."

"The same Donna who messed things up with all your friends so bad that they won't even call you back anymore?"

"You still took my call."

"Look, I figured you'd come back to your senses soon enough, but I never imagined you'd be getting back together with her." 

"You probably wish I would have stayed with Joanne."

"Actually, yes. She was boring but you didn't end up losing all that money and all those friends."

"But she was boring!"

"Boring as in she didn't run around during COVID without a mask, babbling about getting injections of horse de-wormer and insisting that it would all be over by April." 

"I just want things to be exciting again."

"Do you mean 'exciting,' or 'dangerous?'"

"She makes me feel, I dunno, important."

"You know she doesn't really love you."

"But when I'm with her, I feel seen."

"Seen by law enforcement?"

"You know what I mean. She's got a certain something."

"I just hope that something isn't terminal."

"I get it. But you've got to trust me. I know what I'm doing with this one."

"We'll just have to agree to disagree on that."

"I just figure you should know."

"You don't have to worry about that. She's letting the whole world know."

"Yeah. She's like that."

"Yeah. One more thing?"

"What's that?" 

"Is she still going to make you wear that stupid red hat?"

Another R

 I know what many of you will say: "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!"

To be fully transparent, I was always more of a Jan person myself, being a middle child, but this past week it was the eldest Brady Daughter who brought massive perspective to me. 

Yes, I understand that Marcia Brady is a fictional character, but the woman who played her all those years ago, Maureen McCormick would like us all to stop using the R word. If you are struggling with your internal dictionary looking for just exactly which R word she is referencing, congratulations. If you found yourself immediately landing on "oh, that one," then this would be a chance for you to listen carefully. 

Last Wednesday, Maureen posted this on her Instagram account: “Words—they can lift up or tear down. I do not understand how anyone can use the R word as a joke, for a laugh, or to bully or hurt someone. Please join me on Spread the Word Day and everyday in helping to end the R word. Let’s stand up against derogatory language, bullying and exclusion. Take the pledge now & make your voice count! brnw.ch/21wR7wG #ChooseToInclude”

I wonder who many Readers paused abruptly up there to click on the link to do what Marcia told you to do. I understand that the actual date for Spread The Word Day was March 5, but as an elementary school teacher, I will tell you that not only is the R word still in vogue, but in the past year or so it has experienced a kind of Renaissance. Unfortunately, Renaissance is not the R word to which we are Referring. 

I confess that there was a time when I used to preach the relative harmlessness of words. Sticks, stones, and those sort of things are what breaks bones. I used to insist this even though I know exactly which words were employed to break my spirit when I was a kid. I can also confess that there was definitely a time in my youth when I tossed many of those same words around with Reckless abandon. If I had been hurt by these words and survived, why shouldn't everyone have to deal with that reality? 

Simple answer: Because it's wrong. I can further my confession to say that it wasn't until our school welcomed in a special education class that I began to question my own Relationship to the R word. One of my favorite times of the week are the days that I get to spend an hour with my friends in Room 13. The patience, courage and excitement that I get to share with them provides me with a highlight for my week just about every time I walk in. It ahs been a solid Reminder to me of exactly how powerful words can be. No one should be diminished or dismissed with a single word. No one should be put down with a word that is so sadly limited. It only exists to degrade. 

Again, my apologies for the whole "Marcia" thing, but I'm pretty sure Jan would back her up on this. And I would like to ask your indulgence here if you have already made this change in your life and you were willing to listen to me work through some of my own demons. 

Choose To Include. 

Lie Still

 At the end of his last term, the twice-impeached former game show host was reported to have made 30,573 untruths during his time in office. That averages about twenty-one erroneous claims each day. These statistics come form a Washington Post report from back in the day when The Washington Post was a news source and not the advertising circular for Amazon. 

Given that trend, it was not unexpected that the convicted felon that found his way back to the White House had saved up some whoppers for his first address to Congress of his second Reich. He opened by saying that “We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe.” Followed up by, “We’re going to have growth in the auto industry like nobody’s ever seen. Plants are opening up all over the place.” I don't know about the "springing up" part, but maybe that "nobody's ever seen" might be the sparkle of truth in there since if it's not really happening, nobody's ever seen it.

He insisted that towns like Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio, were “destroyed” by immigrants. This will no doubt be a surprise to the people that live in those cities, but at least their pets are safe. For now. 

The adjudicated rapist expected us to believe that the Biden administration had created an electric vehicle mandate. Elongated Mush was in the room, and he didn't seem to bat an eye at this, since he knows it wasn't true. 

The man that kicked the Associated Press off his plane because they would not cave to his demands to refer to The Gulf of Mexico as The Gulf of America wanted us to know, “I’ve stopped all government censorship.” Which does rub a little raw from the administration that insisted that CBS "deserves a long prison sentence." 

How about this one: “Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119.” If you have a choice, I would suggest the "not." This was a nugget he had trotted out a couple of weeks ago at Elongated Mush's insistence, but turned out to be false. 

These were not the only lies told by the only convicted felon to hold the highest office in the land. There was a steady stream. But I can't say for certain because, in the interest of transparency, I did not watch the speech. 

It could be that news outlets across the globe have taken to the barricades, spreading untruths of their own. It could also be that two plus two equals five. I confess that I have not spent the kind of time needed to investigate this claim more fully. But for now, remember that up is down, left is right, and the truth will set you free. But first it will make you miserable. 

What Blows Up, Must Come Down

 Inquiring minds would like to know: How is it that Tesla made an overture to the State Department last year to produce four hundred million dollars worth of armored Cybertrucks? Obviously it would be an even bigger deal of it was earlier this year that the proposal had been tossed out on the porch, as they say, to see if the cat would lick it up. That big, fat, surly cat who doesn't tend to eat healthy things in the first place. 

Senator Richard Blumenthal decided to check in with the obviously traumatized Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. This quandary comes as kind of a package deal along with the conflict of interest that exists in a contract between Starlink, a company owned by the same guy who owns Tesla, and Verizon concerning a contract with the Federal Aviation Administration. 

All of which of course stinks on ice. 

The challenge I am having is the way my view of Elongated Mush has evolved over the past few years. There was most definitely a time when I saw this renegade electric car manufacturer as a revolutionary. Someone who would lead us all out of the darkness and into the light of an energy-efficient new day. That time has passed. Whatever hope I might have once gleaned from the existence of an electric car company that was going to save our planet was solidly extinguished by the time he had shifted his focus to launching us all into space. Nothing left here to contaminate. Time to go wreck a new planet. 

Right about the time he tore up Twitter. 

And started pouring money and attention into the aforementioned fat orange cat's campaign for president. Hundreds of millions of dollars. This came about just after he appeared on stage to promote the indestructibility of his cleverly named Cybertruck. Since then, his rockets and trucks and all manner of other investments have continued to blow up, washing away that faint patina of hope that had once been connected to him. 

But don't just take it from me. Take it from Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Elvira, also known as Cassandra Peterson, decided to donate her 2015 Tesla to NPR in hopes of raising a little money and getting a little attention to the backward progress being offered by "the world's richest man." 

Ladies and gentlemen, we have come to a point in our history when a hokey-horror-movie-host boasts more credibility than "the richest man in the world." 

Sleep tight, America. 

Counting On It

 I am the Physical Fitness Testing coordinator at my school site. This means I get to stand around with a clipboard for the next couple of weeks and count things like pushups and Pacer laps. I will be writing them down on a scoresheet and eventually sending them along to the district Physical Fitness Test coordinator. This has been my job for many years now. 

But something is different. 

It all started back during the year we were doing distance learning because of COVID. Giving students any sort of standardized test was essentially impossible, or at least too difficult to plan for while we were all merely talking heads on Zoom. Talking heads were excused from taking Physical Fitness tests. 

The next year, when we returned from isolation, the powers that be decided to go ahead and administer standardized tests with the asterisk associated with "we have not been in school together for a year." That meant that I was told to count the attempts our fifth grade students made at proving their fitness, physically, but the numbers were not consequential. Participation was the focus. All of them were required to participate, but the number of pushups, curl-ups and so forth were written down only for show.

How well each student performed was eventually just a matter of pride. 

Not that they were made aware of this. 

The very tenuous grip we have on this exchange is based almost completely on the idea that the effort each of our little data points are putting in has some real-life measure. The suggestion that all these kids are competing for what amounts to a participant's ribbon would take the quite limited energy that is currently being used to create a checkmark next to their names and that would be that. 

Check.

But somewhere in the back of my mind I harbor memories of The Presidential Physical Fitness Challenge. I was never able to achieve the goal of receiving the Award, but I certainly had a dream or two associated with it. Little did I know that program stayed in place until 2018, when it was replaced by the Fitnessgram assessment program that I currently find myself administering. No prizes. No plaques. No ribbons. Just a solid reminder that you are being watched. And accounted for. 

For showing up. 

Not Yet

 My mother once asked me if there would come a time when it would be okay for her to stop giving me "stupid plastic toys." I believe this came at a time when she felt that I had reached an age when I should be receiving more practical gifts for a more mature person. I let her know that as far as I was concerned, "never" would be the answer I would choose to her speculation.

Now fully ensconced in my sixties, I continue to appreciate that just over my shoulder is the Lego Batmobile my son bought for me this past Christmas. It sits on the piano right next to the Lego Captain America shield I built in the weeks after my most recent birthday, another gift from my son. It was also his influence that got my wife to buy me a Thor action figure, lovingly placed on our living room mantle next to the other bobble heads and action figures. 

When I was in college, my apartment looked a little like Pee-Wee Herman lived there more than a twenty-something trying to lure chicks to his pad. My reckoning was that if a girl didn't what to play Nerf Basketball in my living room, I probably didn't really need her to be in my living room. Feel free at this point to remind me that I spent a great many years alone.

But that meant there was more room for my inflatable Godzilla and six foot tall stuffed Woody Woodpecker. Not to mention the full-sized Battlezone arcade game. 

I am reminded of a time when I was in high school and it occurred to me that if I wanted to buy myself a Stretch Monster, I could. My disposable income could just as easily be spent on toys as it could on any other vice. Which is how I ended up with one of the best toys ever: Big Trak. It was a programmable vehicle that looked for all the world like the model for the Cybertruck. But this was in the late seventies, and I wasn't trying to impress anyone. Only to entertain myself and any of my friends who only wished they were as free as I was to unleash my inner eight year old. 

Yes, there were some rough years in there when the bulk of the plastic toys ended up in my son's room. Which allowed me a certain laissez faire when we went shopping, leaning hard on my son's tastes: "Don't you think this would be cool in your room?" Because dad wanted to play with it. 

And now I am the happy recipient of a return in kind. He understands, even as my sainted mother looks down from the heavens, shaking her head. Not old enough yet, ma!

Not So Sartorial Splendor

It has now been more than three years since Russia invaded Ukraine. Since that time we have all had a chance to learn where on a map you could find this former Soviet State. This does not, however, mean that your average American has taken the time to do so. Nor does it mean that your average American has taken the time to understand any of the history involved in this conflict. 

To be completely transparent, your average American President over these past three years didn't happen to be a Republican. All the hand-wringing and tough talk about pushing back against the Russian invaders has come primarily from (checks notes) The Biden Administration. Not wanting to tip the scales in the direction of all-out World War, American aid to this country that is twice the size of Italy but only slightly smaller than Texas. I would expect that if Texas or Italy came under attack from Russia, Joe Biden would probably have moved more decisively to protect either one. 

But let's all remember that over these past three years, there was something called "checks and balances" in place in the government of the United States. This meant that the Biden Administration was regularly at odds with a Congress that did not simply sign the checks that might have gone to pay for military aid to Ukraine. Instead, this war has been something of a political football match, keeping in mind that we are the country on the planet that thinks we know what football is. 

And so the war continues in Ukraine. More than forty thousand civilians have lost their lives while brave Ukranian fighters have fought back against the imperially minded Russian forces. 

Yes. I have taken a stand here that has become somewhat unpopular here in a MAGAt-infested United States. I see Ukraine as the good guys. Their president,  Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian and TV personality has taken to wearing clothes befitting of a man whose country is at war. This stands in contrast to his earliest days in office when he showed up to meet the US "president" at that time who happened to be Not Joe Biden. This was in 2019, right around the time that Not Joe Biden made his "perfect phone call" asking President Zelenskyy to try and dig up some dirt on Joe Biden's son. In exchange, Not Joe Biden would look into getting some military aid for Ukraine in exchange for this dirt to stave off what appeared to be Russian aggression on their borders. Not Texas or Italy. 

For this Not-So-Perfect phone call, Not Joe Biden was impeached. The first time. For election interference. Not Joe Biden was also impeached later for still more election interference, but that time it was more about him inciting an insurrection on his own Capitol. 

When Volodymr Zelenskyy showed up this past week to play let's make a deal with the guy whose name is on a book called "Art of the Deal," to try and get more military aid for his sovereign nation that is still under attack from the country I like to call The Bad Guys, Not Joe Biden started the day by criticizing Zelenskyy's lack of a suit and tie. 

Things went downhill from there. Rather than signing a treaty that would have given the United States a stake in Ukraine's vast mineral wealth, the meeting degenerated into a shouting match that ended abruptly without lunch and without a signature. Zelenskyy once again gave a pretty solid "no" to Not Joe Biden's request for a quid pro quo. Without a suit and tie, but with his dignity and authority over his own country, Volodymyr Zelenskyy returned home to keep fighting The Bad Guys, leaving Not Joe Biden with egg on his orange tinted face and an uphill battle left to be decided on his eastern border. 

Clothes, it would seem, do not make the man.