Annunciation

 As is often the case, I got the news as I was sitting at my desk at school. Outside my door I could hear the mild torrent of activity associated with my job: children. The news that I received was about yet another school shooting. This one was at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. And eight and a ten year old were killed. Fourteen other children were injured and three elderly parishoners who were in the chapel when the killer opened fire. 

Outside of my room, I could hear the screams and cries of eight and ten year olds. They were cries of excitement, frustration and garden variety childish behavior. What I heard were not screams of horror or pain. 

As the day wore on, media reports scrambled to fill the void and make sense out of the senseless. In Minneapolis, the killer was "contained." The rest of the children were safe. They were safe from the killer because they had saved the last shot for themselves. Authorities believe the killer was "acting alone." Most of these revelations came as "breaking news" as I returned to my job of shuffling groups of kids to and from my room. The reality of my own experience blurred slightly at the edges as I tried not to imagine what terrors filled those moments in the morning of their third day of the school year. 

What I did not bear witness to was the avalanche of TV news coverage that rains down in a flood at these all-too-familiar events. What I caught up to later in the day after I had my normally chaotic day teaching elementary school was this: Former Republican Representative Trey Gowdy and current Fox News host weighed in with his thoughts on yet another school shooting. Mister Gowdy said,  “The only way to stop it is to identify the shooter ahead of time or keep the weapons out of their hands. We’re going to have to have a conversation of freedom versus protecting children. I mean, how many school shootings does it take before we’re going to have a conversation about keeping firearms out - " He paused. Then went on to make the mostly unspoken observation that most of these killers are white males. 

So in the midst of a day that saw business as usual occurring in schools across this great land of ours, including the fuss and struggles at my school as well as the slaughter of innocents in Minneapolis, a crack appeared in the firmament. Trey Gowdy, who once addressed an NRA "leadership forum" and suggested after the Parkland shootings in 2018, “Before we began to advocate for new laws, I think it is eminently fair to say, ‘How are we doing enforcing the ones we currently have?’”

Just to round out the day, reaction was swift from the MAGAts, insisting, “Trey Gowdy hates you and wants to take your guns, and that he was “pushing for gun control and anti-white hatred.”

That came from a very dark place. Two children where shot and killed as they knelt in prayer. I have a suggestion for where others might choose to put their "thoughts and prayers" at this time. A very dark place. 

The Words

 “The fact that he duped us all with one of the most anti-American songs ever and called it ‘Born in the USA’ as some sort of celebration of how great it is to be born in the USA. I’m angry at myself for not seeing it for so long and actually giving him, in my mind, the credit of being a representation of blue-collar America.” 

That was just a portion of the tirade that Aaron Lewis, lead singer for a "nu-metal" band called Staind, went off on during an appearance on Tucker "Everlasting" Carlson's podcast last week. It was this MAGAty country-rock-conservative's opinion that Bruce Springsteen “has forgotten where he came from” and “lost touch with the struggle.” 

I won't bother you with the old saw about everybody having an opinion, but let's back up the tape long enough to review just how Mr. Lewis was "duped."

Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
End up like a dog that's been beat too much
'Til you spend half your life just coverin' up, now

Those are the first words from the song by which Mr. Lewis was "duped." I don't see a lot of rah-rah flag waving going on there. Perhaps, like Ronald Reagan back in 1984, he came in for that big fist-pumping chorus: "Born in the USA." That sounds downright patriotic, but the verses tell the story of a Vietnam veteran who watched his buddies get killed in a war he didn't comprehend only to return to a country that didn't want or need him any more. 

Which, by the way, does not negate the potential for patriotism. It does speak to the right we all have to speak out when we feel there has been injustice or corruption on the part of our government. The one that is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people, if you happen to be into that whole Abraham Lincoln thing. 

I am a Bruce Springsteen fan. I continue to be even when I sometimes find myself sniffing around the edge of that whole "blue collar billionaire" trope, but I know that the words he writes are the most important thing. Once upon a time the state of New Jersey, which is home to Mister Springsteen, decided that to fill the void where the Garden State had no official song they would select "Born To Run." Someone had the lyric sheet and noticed that lines like

 "Oh, baby this town rips the bones from your back/It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap/We gotta get out while we're young"

That's why you were Born To Run. 

As for Mister Lewis, I wish him all the success in the world promoting his own songs, but cherry picking a forty-one year old song about the disillusionment of a Vietnam veteran probably isn't the place to start when you're looking for an anthem to rile up your MAGA fans. Might I suggest "King of All Excuses?"

Blowing The Lid Off

 You may remember about nine months ago when I wrote about an irritant named Mace. At that time I was addressing the ugliness brought by one Nancy Mace to the halls of Congress last Fall when she decided to make an issue about bathrooms and who should use them. At the time, the transphobic argument brought by Macey was taken up by her nominal boss, the Speaker of the House Mike "he won't eat it, he hates everything" Johnson and he issued his command: "Go where we tell you to go!"

With that issue solved, Congress went back to working on being the least productive legislative body in our nation's history. 

It might be the bathroom thing, or it could be the lack of passing any meaningful bills, but when only eight people showed up for a speech in her home state of South Carolina, the event was cancelled. Organizers had encouraged guests to RSVP since "space will be limited." As it turns out, this was not an issue. The entire production could have taken place inside a Kia Telluride. In spite of the ridiculously low attendance at this gathering, Macey insisted that she had plenty of support for her upcoming run for the office of governor of her state. Moms For Liberty, who sponsored the big show, couldn't seem to drum up enough support for their gubernatorial aspirant to get past the "meet and greet" threshold. 

Which might be why later in the week, Macey decided to put herself out there once again, this time on social media, warning students and staff of an active shooter on the University of South Carolina campus. Very civic minded of her, except that there was no shooter. Just some kid carrying an umbrella, whose picture was posted by Ms. Mace. A picture that was not initially posted by any law enforcement agency. A picture that might possibly have gotten this young man killed.  The active shooting alert turned out to be a swatting incident, after two calls were made to university police saying that there were shots being fired in the school's library. Members of Columbia Police, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, SLED, the FBI, ATF, Columbia Fire, and EMS were put on alert. 

As it turned out, the incident was not unlike the rest of Ms. Mace's recent political agenda. 

A hoax. 

Tune in next week when Nancy uncovers a plot by aliens from another world to steal the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken. 

Doctor Doom

 I can remember when I first encountered a Tesla in the wild. My son was working as an "explainer" at the Chabot Space And Science Center, and as a special treat for their young employees, the museum had an early version Roadster up for the nerds to look at. I happened to be there, having driven up the hill in my hybrid car and immediately began wondering how quickly I might be able to exchange my Prius for a Tesla. 

Did I mention that I am a public school teacher? That dream died hard when I discovered that the base price was just a little below what we paid, and continued to make payments on, for our house. 

At this point, my objections to the cars made by this mysterious entrepreneur were strictly financial. If his goal was to save the planet, why was he making vehicles that were out of the price range of the average public school teacher. For example. 

Over the next few years, the man who presented himself as the mind behind Tesla made a cameo in Iron Man 2, in which he pitches the fictional self-describe "genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" plans for an electric jet. At this point, Tony Stark and Elon Musk were both essentially fictional. Their exploits were the stuff of legend.

Then one of them decided to use his powers for evil instead of good. No, I am not talking about the spoiler alert in which Robert Downey Jr. will be playing Doctor Doom in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. I am referring to the moment when Musky the World Saver morphed into Mushy the Oligarch.

It is entirely possible that Elon Musk was never anything more than the hateful misanthrope we are currently watching as his empire crumbles around him. His most recent attempt to conquer outer space was put on hold when Starship 10's launch was delayed. Again. Which is probably better than just shooting another rocket up into the sky and watching it blow up. If only he would have used that kind of discretion when it came time to unleash his vision of an electric truck. Delaying the release of a stainless steel brick held together primarily with glue until it could be determined if anyone wanted to spend a hundred thousand dollars on it might have fared better than the lot full of unwanted "futuristic pickups" that are currently cluttering the factory lots.

What to do? Mister Mush has a plan! Raise the price an additional fifteen thousand dollars.

Meanwhile, his threat of a third party after he was kicked out of the MAGAts has been met with a hush that can only be described as appropriate. He may eventually have to sell his DOGE chainsaw just to get a lawyer to draw up yet another non-disclosure agreement with his seemingly endless list of baby mamas. As users flee Twitter, or as he so cleverly rebranded it, X, fewer and fewer folks around this country seem interested in his racist, transphobic, hate machine.

Please understand that I look forward to a playboy billionaire who wants to save the planet. Sincerely. For now, we'll just have to wait for whatever the next whim Mushy wants to throw at us.

So we can duck.

Verisimilitude

 Stormtroopers in the streets of our cities.

Free speech being challenged on late night TV.

The Department of Education is being dismantled.

Overseeing all this chaos is a former game show host and convicted felon who is desperately trying to cover up his penchant for little girls. 

What can a person believe in?

Professional wrestling? 

Nope. Not even that once shining light in the firmament of entertainment. Even though there has been a resurgence in the popularity of men and women hurling themselves off the top rope for the adulation of the masses, there seems to be less and less of an attempt to convince us that it is real. 

Apologies to those of you who might have been harboring a notion that all those hammerlocks and clotheslines and suplexes were anything more than carefully choreographed martial ballet. I have written in this spot prior to today about my own awakening to this showbiz sham, but I confess that as a teacher of elementary school boys and some of the girls, I have felt compelled to keep a lid on the truth. We are still talking about the cash value of losing a tooth, so why not just go ahead and assume all that mayhem on TNT and now on Netflix is happening in real time?

Maybe because they don't always remember to get it right. Like the other night when actor, entrepreneur, boxer, actor and recently recruited professional actor Logan Paul was supposed to take a big surprise swing at wrestler, actor, and now wrestler again John Cena. Logan missed. Badly. Prompting the WWE Smackdown crew to back up and try to recreate the move from another angle. The second take was even worse than the first, and so the viewing public was left to have to fill in the reality bubble in which the on screen flailing about was actually something potentially dangerous. 

Traditionally I think you could say that the worst security in the world is that surrounding the world of professional wrestlers. Someone is always breaking into the middle of a planned backstage interview, or appearing suddenly at ringside with a folding chair. Why isn't someone doing more to keep these highly trained professional athletes safe from one another's steroid inflected rages? 

Perhaps because they are just staged for our less-than-evolved sense of what is amusing. To this end, I offer a suggestion: Instead of deploying them to Chicago or Oakland, dispatch the National Guard to the WWE studios. Since they seem to be in on the whole military theater sham, this might be a worthwhile use of our country's resources. Ten year olds and really dumb adults might believe that there was really something dangerous happening if the National Guard showed up. 

Out Of Focus

 More often than not, when I feature a celebrity death here at Entropical Paradise, it is to shine a light on someone whose work I admire. It's usually someone who has touched or affected my life in significant ways. Someone whose passing made me say, "Awwww." 

Not so here. This man's death left me with a sense of relief. Evangelical Christian author and psychologist James C. Dobson made his way to the Pearly Gates last week. Whether or not Saint Peter lets him in is a matter of some discussion. Mister Dobson was the founder of Focus On The Family, an evangelical group that sprang to life in 1977. His mission, as he chose to make it, was to recruit foot soldiers in what he called "The Civil War of Values." His side was that of heterosexual marriage and "traditional" family values. The other side was filled with feminists and homosexuals and anyone that didn't fit in his narrow-minded reading of The Bible. It should be noted from the outset that Mister C. Dobson was never an ordained minister, but he did tend to play on the radio and TV.

He resigned from The American Psychological Association in 1973 when that organization removed homosexuality from their list of mental disorders. A few years later he left the University of Southern California and Children's Hospital on Sabbatical. And never went back. 

Instead, he turned his narrow mind to The Family, which he believed was headed by a male breadwinner and a female caregiver. When Jimmy Carter organized a White House Conference on Families, eighty thousand letters were sent to the President to protest C. Dobson being left off the guest list. His influence was felt even more when Reagan was elected, and gave rise to the Family Research Council. The FRC has the distinction of being an echo chamber for Dobson's ideas as well as being designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a Hate Group. 

So, there's all that political and social hysteria, but the part that makes me truly glad to have James C. Dobson move on to another plane is his book, Dare To Discipline, in which he advocated for spanking children as young as fifteen months old. Parents should use switches or belts kept on the child's dresser as a reminder of who the boss is. His book was the "answer" to the one by Dr. Spock. The pediatrician, not the Science Officer on the Enterprise. Dobson's answer: "I'll give you something to cry about!"

Like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson before him, James C. Dobson will now have eternity to sort out his vision of the world with The Powers That Be. 

I hope he can stand the heat. 

Bye bye Jimmy. You won't be missed. 

Why Do We Call Them Crackers?

 Let's start at the beginning: I have never been inside a Cracker Barrel. Not the eponymous barrel which once contained soda crackers, nor the Southern-style food and retail store that began springing up in 1969 to emulate that "down-home" experience that we all crave. The barrel in question was where folks used to gather when they came to socialize and toss around the news of the day inside the country store. This chain is found primarily along the U.S. Interstate highway system, allowing weary travelers to find a home away from home while they are traveling. Attempting to escape from home. 

Go figure. 

My family's travels were predominantly in the Southwest corner of this great land of ours, where a Cracker Barrel can be found, but certainly not in the concentration that exists in states like Texas and Florida. 

Which may be why there was a great deal of fuss made recently when, after more than fifty years, the powers that be at Cracker Barrel decided to change their company's logo. The original version featured an old-timer leaning up against, you guessed it: A Cracker Barrel. Beneath the name of the establishment, there was a reminder of just what your average consumer might find inside: Old Country Store. The fresh new logo gets rid of that reminder and jettisons the old-timer. Just the words: Cracker Barrel. Critics were quick to rage at the corporate machine that took away all that extra art and explanation. They kept the gold and brown palette, For the first time since 1977, there was no old-timer on the sign to welcome weary travelers. Or ironic visitors looking for a chance to sneer. 

The Tennessee-based company introduced their grand new scheme, called "All the More." Cracker Barrel heads announced  "refreshed restaurant remodels" and "an enhanced brand look and feel" while remaining committed to their old values and priorities.  Sarah Moore, Chief Marketing Officer of Cracker Barrel, wanted everyone to know, “Our story hasn’t changed. Our values haven’t changed. With ‘All the More,’ we’re honoring our legacy while bringing fresh energy, thoughtful craftsmanship, and heartfelt hospitality to our guests this fall.”

Faux News and their viewers beg to differ. "It takes away from heritage. When you're eighty-one years old, you kind of remember the way the place started," Pensacola resident Joseph Crawford, a Vietnam veteran, told Fox News Digital. "And this has taken away from it. It's the old things that the country was founded on. The honesty. The truthfulness. Your word meaning something seems to be forgotten." 

Okay. But it's not like Cracker Barrel is going to start serving avocado toast or selling Pride flags in their gift shops. They changed their logo. This little dalliance with brand loyalty cost the company one hundred million dollars in value. Even the former game show host's son had to weigh in. I say we shouldn't judge a company by their loge, bur rather by the content of their hash brown casserole. 

Don't Follow Your Bliss

 They didn't change the name. Shortly after its construction in 1848, the United States Army chose to name this fort in El Paso, Texas after Brevet Lieutenant Colonel William WS Bliss, son-in-law of then President Zacahary Taylor. 

The name has nothing to do with perfect happiness or great joy. Before it was called "Bliss," it was simply called the Post of El Paso. 

Fast forward almost a century later to 1942 when the fort became one of several internment camps for Japanese Americans who were kept prisoner there without any sort of due process. In the middle of the desert where they could not destroy their adopted country from within. Of course, neither could they defend it, since they were being kept behind barbed wire fences for the specific crime of not being white. 

You many have already figured out where this one is headed. The Second Trumpreich is hastily reviving that portion of the now fundamentally ironically named Fort Bliss by turning a portion of its 1,700 square miles back into an internment camp. This time for detainees kidnapped by ICE. The yeeha faction of MAGAts refer to it as "Lone Star Lockup," in hopes of competing with "Alligator Alcatraz" in sunny Florida. Fans of this new prison camp are excited to tell you that it is the largest facility of its kind in the country. ICE would like you to know as well that they expect the one billion dollar investment in turning the one thousand bed capacity to five thousand will “streamline and expedite removal processes, which is one of the Trump administration’s priorities."

Maybe now would be a good time to remind everyone that the Epstein Files have yet to be released and all this "bigger, faster, stronger" hoo-ha is meant to obfuscate the central problem of having a convicted felon orchestrating the incarceration of anyone but himself.

Oh, and the good news for those being kept in what the government calls "soft-sided facilities" and we call "tents," unlike its counterpart in Florida this prison camp is less likely to be ravaged by hurricanes. Just flash floods, extreme heat and high winds associated with monsoon season. And while Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas insists that the people being taken to Fort Bliss would not be “gardeners or housekeepers,” I hasten to remind everyone that seventy-two percent of those being taken off our streets have no criminal convictions. All the stories about daring apprehensions of an ice cream man are more in line with reality than the shootouts that you might imagine these heavily armed goons in which these heavily armed goons might be involved. Mostly they hang around outside immigration courts and wait for those who are showing up for their ordered appearances to grab them. 

And what do you get for trying to follow the law? A trip to Fort Bliss! 

These are ugly times indeed. 

Fun With History

 Here are some things that the "president" of the "United" States has said about the Smithsonian Institute. One of them is completely made up. 

He wanted references to his impeachment during his first term as "president" removed from the exhibit titled "The American Presidency - A Glorious Burden." Instead, the exhibit only refers to the "only three presidents have seriously faced removal from office." For you history buffs, those three would be Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Richard Nixon. 

The Second Trumpreich issued an executive order in March  calling for the Smithsonian to overhaul its collection and present a more celebratory view of the country. Probably because there is so very much to celebrate in a nation created by the genocide of its native peoples and the outright theft of their lands. 

And what celebration needs a downer like slavery being rubbed in our collective noses? Why, the convicted felon wonders, does the Smithsonian have to focus on "how bad slavery was?"

Ha, ha, ha. I was just kidding. All three of those are real. In that they really issued forth from an administration flailing desperately to cover up the attention being paid to connection between its leader and the client list of notorious pedophile Jeffery Epstein. This particular show is taking the place of the embarrassing shadow play of a "summit" with Putin the Puppetmaster, or the National Guard being sent into the terror-filled squalor that is our nation's capitol. The reasoning on that one seems a little sketchy, since the last attack on our capitol was (checks notes) January 6, 2021 and the guy in charge that day refused to send troops to protect Congress from the angry mobs attempting to take over the building. 

But that's history. The kind of thing that you might see in a museum. If you were living in a country that was alternately proud and ashamed of its past. One of the major accomplishments of the past two hundred fifty years was the foundational principles that kept our country on track for two and a half centuries. We added amendments to the documents that didn't seems to cover all the eventualities covered as our brains and realities grew. Letting women vote. Abolishing slavery. A woman's right to choose. 

Sorry. I was just joking about that last one. 

See? History can be fun!

Bat Signal

 I looked it up. 

Virtue signaling: the public expression of opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or social conscience or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.

It also says that it's a noun, then a little note that says, "derogatory." 

I suppose I knew that. Just like "woke" is a bad thing. Being asleep for decades at a time is somehow preferable. And keeping your opinions and sentiments to yourself is best because the last thing we want to do is express them and make someone question their own morals. 

If this is your first visit to Entropical Paradise, let me put you at ease: This is not how I view the world in which we live. Take, for example, how I managed to keep that last sentence from ending in a preposition. That's just a tiny sliver of how correct I try to live my life. 

I have spent nearly half my life teaching at an East Oakland public elementary school. I have bicycled to work for the vast majority of those days, and when the kids ask me if I have a car, I explain that I do own a car, in fact two of them. Then I go on to let them know that one of them is a hybrid that we use primarily for long trips and the other is a little electric car that we charge with the power we get from the solar panels on our roof. I tell them that I like riding my bike because it's good exercise and I am not using gas or polluting, and I don't have to pay for insurance for that good time. 

If it sounds like I am hectoring my little charges, I would respond by saying that I am a teacher and I am happy to be sharing with the students at my school visions of a world in which they did not have to follow the path that has been worn before them. The dog we had was adopted from a shelter, and our cat was rescued by our neighborhood and we took over after his teeth had all been removed and he needed a soft place to land. 

Our cat landed in a place where we use the gray water from our sink and bathtub to water our garden. And even though our cat is an obligate carnivore, his humans practice Meatless Mondays to keep ourselves one notch closer to the earth on which we live.

And once again, I put that preposition in the middle of a sentence because it's the right thing to do. 

Does all of this make me some sort of super hero? Not at all, but I suppose I prefer it to the lifestyles of those who feel content to stomp on the gas and accelerate into the End Times. Apologies for the mess my bleeding heart creates. 

Game Night

 So, you invite the neighbors over for game night. You bought all the chips and dip. You've got the place all decked out nice and fancy. You even put out the red carpet. 

Then it's time to pick out a game. How about parcheesi? Jenga? Twister? That last one might be a little rough on the cankles. Turns out, your neighbor has a suggestion.

"Let's play Risk."

Now, you consider yourself a pretty clever competitor, but you haven't played a lot of Risk. Your best game is Monopoly, even though you tend to end up going bankrupt. 

But even though you're not so good at playing Risk, you wouldn't want to disappoint your guest. Even though you've heard this guy is a real hard case, you want to make an impression. Hence the red carpet and all. 

A good impression.

Even if that means you have to give in to some or all of your guest's demands.

Turns out he doesn't really care for chips. Or dip. Or any of the decorations. He just really wants to sit down and play Risk. 

So what does a good host do? He puts up the card table in the middle of the room and starts to set up the game. 

Except his guest has all kinds of ideas about how the game should "really be played." He starts arranging the pieces to suit his special rules and you just sit there, waiting for your turn. 

Three hours later, you still haven't even had a chance to roll the dice. At which point, your neighbor declares himself the winner, thanks you for a lovely time and takes a selfie of the two of you looking dumbstruck while he shakes your hand. 

And just like that, he's gone. 

Can't wait 'til next week when you get to play at his house. 

Something's Missing

 I confess that there was a moment of mild panic on my part when I toggled past HBO Signature and landed on HBO Family to find that there was no more HBO Family. My cable company, yes I still have a cable company, left a message on an orange and pink swirling background informing me that "This channel is no longer broadcasting." 

No longer broadcasting? How can this be? It was only a few days before that I had been watching Charlie avoiding all the perils faced by bad kids in that chocolate factory right there. This was the channel. I was sure of it. I flipped back up. There was HBO doing that Signature thing just like always, and two below that was HBO's Comedy channel, yukking it up as if nothing was happening next door. 

Which was the problem: Nothing was happening next door. All that wholesome feel-good family content had just stopped. As my wife would earnestly point out, one of the few spots on the dial where she could tune and feel reasonably assured that she would not be witnessing a gun battle was gone. 

Then it occurred to me: As comfortable as I am pretending that the benevolent TV gods are out there to keep me safe, warm and entertained, there are people or rather corporations out there trying to make as much money as they can off of that feeling. Television, it turns out, is a business. You have to pay someone to stand by and make sure that the family faucet stays on and doesn't get mixed up with Comedy or Signature or Zone or Latino. It costs money to keep the Gilded Age from slipping in there or some naked lady with pet dragons. 

Now it seems that fewer and fewer people are getting their dose of entertainment from "channels." Maintaining "channels" requires vast and costly resources that could be used to line the pockets of CEOs and CFOs and not the Family Faucet minders. If you want your family content, why not just pop on over to the big vat of streaming HBO Max (as in Maximus) to pick and choose how you'd like your entertainment: just a little bit of gun violence, a modicum of gun violence, or gun violence that doesn't even stop to reload. It shouldn't take more than forty-five minutes to locate Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And don't go looking for Sesame Street in that ever-shrinking basket of family-friendly shows. That little bit of corporate synergy ended but you can still find reruns of Elmo's World where he gets his federal funding cut. 

It just doesn't make sense to program for kids anymore. Cents, anyway. As for me, you can probably find me staring wistfully at that shifting orange and pink screen, remembering the good old days when TV was free. It just came into your house through the air. Cartoons in the morning. Mister Rogers in the afternoon. And after midnight, there was just static. Not even a slide that said no more Family Channel. So we turned it off and went to sleep. 

Hold The Pickles

 I'm an outlaw

With a ham and Swiss I ride - with apologies to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead Or Alive"

Sean Dunn was taken into custody on charges of assault with a tasty hoagie. Witnesses described the assailant carrying a "sub style" sandwich just before he unleashed his weapon. For those of you unfamiliar with the nomenclature, a "sub" sandwich generally characterized by the elongated, cylindrical roll split lengthwise and packed with various sliced meats, vegetables and condiments. In this freewheeling society in which we live, civilians are allowed to purchase and carry "sub sandwiches" without a permit. 

Which is precisely how tragedies like this occur. 

On Sunday, August 10, Mister Dunn approached a group of heavily armed multiagency officers and began shouting. "Why are you here? I don't want you in my city," he cried before calling them all "fascists." As tensions continued to mount, Mister Dunn let his weapon of choice fly, hitting one a Customs and Border Patrol officer in the chest. Luckily, the victim was wearing full tactical gear and a bulletproof vest. At this point, Dunn ran away, only to be pursued by the victim and several of his cohort. 

The mild twist in this saga comes as it was revealed that Sean Dunn was an international affairs specialist in the Justice Department's criminal division. "Was" because after he confessed to his crime in his first court appearance, Mister Dunn was, well, done with the DOJ. His former boss, Attorney General Pam "Perma" Bondi insisted, "This is an example of the Deep State we have been up against for seven months as we work to refocus DOJ. You will NOT work in this administration while disrespecting our government and law enforcement."

I believe that someday, when the story of how a convicted felon decided to crack down on crime in our nation's capitol to continue his attempt to obscure his involvement in his good friend's pedophile trafficking scheme, Sean Dunn will be our version of that guy in Tiananmen Square standing in front of a column of tanks. A little known fact about that moment back in June 1989: The shopping back that lone protestor was carrying was full of, you guessed it, sandwiches. 

When sandwiches are outlawed, only outlaws will have sandwiches. 

Pass the mayo. 

Honorific

 Okay, KISS Army, bring it on. 

I did not sneer when your favorite band was inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Forty years of stomping around stages across the globe in silver platform boots in kabuki makeup should count for something. 

I didn't complain that they received this honor ahead of DEVO. For the record, the Supdboys are still waiting for their call. 

To make it abundantly clear: This kind of perceived "snub" is part of any organization that makes arbitrary subjective choices based on a very ambiguous criteria. Hence the inclusion of Dolly Parton to the list of those who have been invited to be enshrined.

Which brings us to the Kennedy Center Honors. Previous honorees include luminaries such as Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Aaron Copeland, Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, Charlton Heston, Chuck Berry, Stevie Wonder, Mel Brooks and a singer songwriter by the name of Bruce Springsteen. In 2019 the creators of Sesame Street, Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrissett, were awarded for their work. 

You might see where this is going.

To be clear, I have no issues with rock bands being invited to be feted by the Kennedy Center. Groups like Led Zeppelin, The Who, and the Grateful Dead have had their special evenings of lavish praise. Why not the band whose most significant contribution to Americana is their ode to bacchanalia, "I Just Want To Rock And Roll All Night (And Party Every Day)" and the pinball machine that bears their likeness? 

It's that second point that might shine a light on how this selection was made. For a very long time, KISS has made a business out of their show by merchandising virtually any and every product upon which their logo could be stamped. If all of these assorted tchotchkes put you in mind of a certain "president" who has is own line of fragrances, steaks, trading cards, sneakers and so forth, maybe now would be the time to remind you of the time "Demon" Gene Simmons showed up on a reality TV show called Celebrity Apprentice. Gene got fired. As most apprentices did. Which may be why in the aftermath of the former game show host's first try at being "president," Gene had this to say:  “Look, we all lie to some extent, but what happened in the last four years was just beyond anything I ever thought imaginable for people who have lots of power—not just him, but the administration, everybody … all these QAnon people.” Or how about, “He’s out for himself, any way you can get there. And in the last election, over seventy million people bought it hook, line and sinker.”

But when the call went out for the "Kennedy Center" honor, Gene's redundant reply was, We are deeply honored to receive the Kennedy Center Honor." Apparently Kid Rock was unavailable. 

Together

 I think I mentioned that a new school year is beginning. Each time we round this corner, there are days of preparation that go into starting over. As much as we would like to believe that we have seen and done it all, there are plenty of reminders that need to be inserted in all of our educator brains to help ensure a productive voyage to next August when we will crank it over again.

One of those reminders is that of Restorative Justice. If you have never heard of this school of thought, I point you to my local chapter of the folks who are working to break the cycle of violence and incarceration that has pervaded in our cities and towns for far too long. If this sounds like bleeding heart gobbledygook to you, I would only encourage you to think about how you responded to being spanked or sent to your room as a child. If you immediately stopped crying and came to the crystalline realization that your parents must have a point and of course you should "do the right thing," then maybe this school of thought isn't for you. If you continued to cry and grumble and stomp off into some required isolation, certain that "nobody understands," then you might start to grasp what we're trying to do here. 

Just a few days ago, I witnessed a first grader being told that he was going to lose his recess after he continued to stick his tongue out at a classmate. The woman who made this decision for the not-quite six year old was acting on behalf of the classroom teacher, believing that she was creating order and that surely this boy would keep his tongue in his mouth when he returned from watching his friends enjoying their time on the playground. If you don't behave, you don't get recess. Seems simple enough. 

Too simple. The chances that that little boy will remember exactly why he had to sit on the bench for fifteen minutes after those fifteen minutes are up are slim to none. Instead, having a conversation on the way out to recess with the owner of the offending tongue and the children who were affected by this breach of etiquette with an eye toward making understanding about why this behavior is something we could all do without as well as making a practice of connecting whatever restoration needs to take place. In this case, the simple apology to the adult who had a problem with this kind of childish behavior from (checks notes) a child would probably be sufficient. 

It's a teaching moment. Hearing both sides and making sense of a situation is what educators do. Suspending a kid because he "doesn't know how to behave" is shirking the responsibility for teaching that kid "how to behave." 

And here is the reason why the convicted felon's plan to "restore order" in America's cities is doomed to failure. Millions of dollars are being spent to apprehend and prosecute "bad guys." Not a penny is being committed to social programs that could help keep crime from happening before it starts. Locking people up does not impact the reasons why they are being locked up. Just like the time you spent sitting on the edge of your bed after you were sent to your room, wishing your parents were dead, In most cases, your parents didn't die, and you "learned your lesson." But what if that lesson was what happens to you when you do things right? And what about the people you hurt with your notions about interior decorating with crayons? Maybe helping mom and dad clean up the mess and learning all the places where crayons can be completely valid. 

Letting everyone in on the process is how we grow stronger. Together.  

It Is

 Sometimes I write about being caught in a reverie. That is what truly happened to me this past Monday morning. 

At 7:55 AM, I was standing in the doorway of the classroom building of my school. The school I refer to as "mine" because I have spent nearly half my life there. I was staring off into the middle distance, somewhere in the direction of the windows of the office of our Teacher on Special Assignment. The plastic sign screwed into the wall next to that office reads "Assistant Principal." There is a laminated piece of paper that has been carefully handwritten and taped over that sign that says "Teacher On Special Assignment," in case there was any confusion. We don't have an assistant principal. My school is not big enough to afford such a position. 

Which doesn't mean that we don't occasionally need one. When our principal is off site for a meeting or up to her elbows in some other business on campus that doesn't allow her to rush to the scene of whatever major or mild emergency needs attention. Someone has to show up and be that calm voice of authority until our Actual Principal is free to work her magic. Sometimes it's our Teacher on Special Assignment. Sometimes it's our Restorative Justice Coordinator. Sometimes it's our Admin Assistant. Sometimes it's me. We all acknowledge that we are happy to step in and help out, but even happier when the Actual Principal shows up. This same scenario can be played out using the absence of a third grade teacher. Someone will step in and fill that void until that teacher shows up after being caught in traffic or late from a doctor's appointment, or a substitute will appear and then we can get them settled while the kids wonder what awaits them in a day without their "regular teacher."

In the moments before the gates opened on the First Day Of School, I was standing in that doorway trying to recall any or all of the dozens that proceeded it. I was not nearly as nervous as I had been decades ago. In a previous century. There was some anticipation. I ran through lists of students' names that I knew would be returning. How many of them would remember my name?

It was while I was flipping through the rolodex in my mind when I noticed that our staff had begun to gather at the gate. Usually, these folks would be busy rushing about making copies or preparing their rooms for whatever was about to take place that day. But not now. They were all there to greet the reason for our work: The Kids. 

"Mister Caven?" 

It was our Math Tutor. She brought me back to the here and now. 

"Is it time?"

Yes. It is. 

Location, Location, Location

 Okay, here's the setup:

The convicted felon and top of Epstein's List started going on about his trip to Russia at the beginning of this week. “You know, I’m going to see Putin. I’m going to Russia on Friday. I don’t like being up here, talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once-beautiful capital was.” That last bit was yet another shot at the place where he spends his off days from the senior's gold cheaters tour. He's sending in the National Guard to correct the trajectory of Washington D.C. which has seen crime rates falling since before the pandemic. You may not remember the global pandemic. The nation's top former game show host sure doesn't. 

But let's get back to that Russia visit.

He's not going to Russia. The meeting is set in Alaska. And though certain Republican firebrands might claim to be able to see that Evil Empire from their log cabin on the Bering Strait, they are on different continents. 

Different continents. 

Yes, proximity is on his side, but since we live in a time in which it is continually difficult to discern what is stupid policy and what is just garden variety stupid, it is possible that a deal was made somewhere in the misty midst of bad decisions by the Second Trump Reich to give up our forty-ninth state in exchange for Hunter Biden's laptop. 

My main concern here is one of geography. How can we let a guy who can't distinguish Fairbanks from Moscow out to make bad deals about territory in other parts of the world? Like his AI vision of "Trump Gaza?" Or his continual ignorance of the facts surrounding the war in Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine. Why should they "swap" territory? 

Maybe these bromancers can play some golf in St. Petersburg and figure it out. The St. Petersburg in Russia, not in Florida. 

But they're not going to be in Russia.

They're going to be in Alaska. 

It's almost too stupid to be believed. 

Breakin' The Law

 Liberation is a tricky term. I was once liberated from a Saturn station wagon. I was liberated from having to go to my job at a video store when it closed down. I'm suggesting that "liberation" is usually in the eyes of the liberators, not the liberated. Women's liberation, for example, would have men believing that those uppity women folk don't know how good they have it. For those who continue to do the same job as men for eighty-five percent of the pay might disagree. 

Much in the same way that the citizens of Washington D.C. may disagree with the "liberation" they are experiencing at the behest of the top of Epstein's list. In order to distract America from his obvious and nefarious connection to the trafficker of underage women, the Cheeto In Chief has sent eight hundred  National Guard troops into the streets of our nation's capitol to bolster the hundreds of federal law enforcement officials already on the case. 

What case? Why cracking down on the crime that has been going down steadily over the past two years. He put United States Attorney General Pam Bondi, who couldn't manage to find a file on her desk but now she's going to spearhead the "historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse," in the words of her uber-agitated boss. 

What's worse that squalor, I ask? How about having a "president" who wasn't upset about his buddy being a pedophile, but rather because the pedophile in question was poaching all the teenage girls from his spa. 

That's some pretty solid squalor there, if you ask me. 

Then there's the matter of Posse Comitatus. For the second time in the past few months, the former gameshow host and current top of the Epstein List has deployed federal troops for domestic law enforcement. This is against the law. The convicted felon is breaking the law by sending the National Guard to clean up the city that has already seen a reduction in the amount of violent crime over the past two years. It should be noted that back in 1993, the District of Columbia experienced a twenty-three percent drop in violent crime not because they sent in heavily armed federal soldiers, but because four thousand people meditated for two to four hours a day. 

Please understand that I believe this same kind of stunt today would probably not have the same shock and awe as a bunch of armored personnel carriers rumbling through the streets. Then again, that sort of thing was normalized back in June when the Royal Buffoon decided to have tanks show up for his birthday. 

Oh, and did I mention that that same "president" is at the top of the Epstein List? 

I just figured I should mention that in case anyone had forgotten.  

Games With Frontiers

 The sometimes avowed King of our little cul-de-sac when in the neighborhood where I grew up was almost always at the center of the games that all the kids played. When it was football season, we played football. When it was time to play basketball, we played on his driveway. On rainy afternoons there was some version of make believe taking place in his basement: wrestling, trapped on a raft at sea, hounded by monsters of all shapes and sizes. The most important feature of all of these activities was that he alone was the arbiter of how any  of these games progressed. When we played tag, he was the one who always insisted that no one had touched him event when there were plenty of witnesses. No one wanted to contradict him because it would end the game. 

So we played on. By his rules. 

Which is how I feel about the gerrymandering of districts in Texas. This sort of political trick has a history of political corruption ever since Elbridge Gerry first proposed a salamander-shaped district in Massachusetts where he was governor at the time. Far from being a tribute to amphibians, this move was intended to bolster Republican control of the legislature. 

His last name was Gerry. I leave it to you to determine the true etymology of "mander," since it may have something to do with "meander" or possibly a French word meaning to call or summon. Whatever its origin, the term has plenty of history behind it that suggests that it is not the democratic ideal solution to a problem, but rather a way to shift focus to allow your team to win. 

That's why the folks down there in the Lone Star State who want to ensure Republican dominance in that state are referring to their process as "redistricting." Their hope is to carve intricate patterns out of the state that will keep it red in perpetuity. A pretty obvious ploy considering the fact that there are more than eight million registered Democrats down there and less than seven million Republicans according to numbers last updated on August 8, 2025. By pinching and squeezing district boundaries to suit their purpose, Governor "Hey" Abbott hopes to keep his party in control.

By Gerrymandering. 

Clever Texas Democrats did something in response that never fully occurred to me back in the day. I could just go somewhere else and play. Which is what the did. They fled Texas to keep this process from thundering on through the state legislature. Games, after all, are more fun and competitive when everyone agrees on the rules. Or at least agrees that that one shot from behind the planter next to the driveway should be worth five points for everybody.  

Ramping Up

 Last week it was a pleasure to get back to work. 

I could tell you that I was inspired by the challenge of taking on the repsonsibility of molding all those young minds once again. 

Because I am. 

I could tell you what a pleasure it was to meet some of our new families and greet many of our students who were returning for registration. 

It was. 

Mostly I was glad to have long days where my concerns were not that of pedophiles and interior decoration. I was allowed to focus on things like curriculum for reading and math. I was encouraged to think about all the ways we can interact with the children at our school in ways to build them up.

And not have to worry for the time being about how our country continues to find distractions beyond the education of this next generation. For a while, thoughts of Gaza and ICE were pushed to the background as I stapled miles of border across miles of bulletin boards. I moved furniture from one room to another. I cleaned this and I fixed that all in the anticipation of another school year. 

It wasn't until I came home and looked at the news that I confronted the extraordinary torment continues on virtually all fronts. I know that it is only a matter of time before the lack of public broadcasting or a Departent of Education comes roaring into this tranquil place where we are trying to teach kids to read and write. 

It is a tough way to have to start a new year. 

Unnecessary Revisions

 One of the stable of Faux News Stars currently serving the former game show host in the capacity of Secretary of "Defense" has reminded me of one of the enduring image from the arrival of U.S. troops in Baghdad back in 2003. Iraqi citizens, with the able assistance of the aforementioned troops, pulled down a larger than life statue of deposed leader Saddam Hussein. The head of the statue was pulled off and subsequently dragged through the streets in celebration of the end of the authoritarian regime. 

That may have served as a "bright spot" during the nearly nine years we spent cleaning up the mess we made in Iraq. Reports that the event was staged by the United States Military linger, but no one ever suggested putting back up. Everyone agreed: Saddam=Bad.

Back to "Pistol Pete." By his declaration, a statue honoring the Confederacy of the United States will be put back up in Arlington National Cemetery. Perhaps one of the high points of the Black Lives Matter movement from just a few years back was the reevaluation of our monuments. What part of our history do we want to memorialize? Pete answers, “It never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history—we honor it.” 

This particular statue was the work of Moses Ezekiel, a former Confederate soldier who moved to Rome after the defeat of (checks notes) the Confederacy in 1865. Moses was a purveyor of the "Lost Cause" revision of U.S. history that sought to have the South depicted as a noble, chivalric band of gentlemen and women who just happened to be living where there were a bunch of human beings kept as slaves. The statue in question was erected in 1914 thanks to a commission from the United Daughters of the Confederacy. 

It should be noted that in 2017, years before the BLM movement gained the traction to have these ugly reminders of an oppressive regime removed, the family of Moses Ezekiel wrote an open letter to The Washington Post, stating that “All of us agree that monuments to the Confederacy are racist justifications of slavery, of owning people. We wanted to say that although Ezekiel is a relative of ours, we still believe it’s a relic of a racist past.” The statue stood for another six years while the country wrestled with its ongoing struggle dealing with the ugly reality of the Civil War. 

Pete and his boss are anxious to have America turn back the clock to a time when we could raise our flag high and be proud of our history. You probably know to which flag I refer. The cost of this revision to American taxpayers is estimated to be around ten million dollars. 

MAGAts don't want our kids to have to learn about slavery, but if they do, they should be taught wrong

Just in case someone failed to mention this: The Confederacy, according to many of the books that are being banned around the country, were the bad guys. Like Saddam Hussein. 

Get it? 

Full Of Oneder

 Sixty one-derful years. 

It has been my distinct pleasure to have spent most of my wife's life being her husband. 

If you were to track back into those hazy days of high school, you might find us there.

Strangers who grew up within a block of one another for a while. 

Those two years that separated us was an eternity. 

Now it's part of history. The history we have shared. 

Today marks another year on the road, for her, for me, for us. 

I don't want you to believe that there is no story without me. 

Every day there are adventures and triumphs and the occasional speed bump. 

We celebrate the roses and endure the thorns. 

We celebrate one another and endure one another. 

But mostly today we celebrate the entrée of Kristen upon this earth.

None of these things could have happened without that spark.

Without that light. 

We begin another of those highly anticipated trips around the sun.

Another beginning.

Another year. 

One-derful. 

Sense a la Common

 The Florida Department of Health has warning about the risks of drinking raw, unpasteurized milk. Twenty-one people in the Sunshine State including six children under the age of ten, became ill from E. coli and campylobacter bacteria linked to raw milk from the same farm. Seven people have been hospitalized. Two of them have severe complications. 

There's a lot to unpack in that paragraph, but let's start with the location: Florida. The setting for so very many punchlines, this is the place that tends to ban books and insists that you have a license to skateboard. Of course this is also the state where it is illegal to feed alligators, which makes some mild sense, which makes it all the more curious why they would promote their version of "Alcatraz" by suggesting that anyone who escapes from this prison camp for immigration detainees might end up doing just that. 

Now let's explore that "unpasteurized" part. In 1882, German chemist Franz von Soxhlet first suggested using pasteurization for milk. In 1893, American physician Henry L. Koplik advocated for pasteurization to prevent milk-borne diseases. By the early twentieth century, many United States municipalities made pasteurization of milk mandatory.  It's a little bit of public health that fell into practice to keep human beings from getting sick from drinking milk from cows. Most of us aren't used to seeing Pasteurizing spelled with a capital P. Because there was a time when this French scientist who coincidentally was named Pasteur figured out that germs cause disease. Not only that, but germs could grow spontaneously in sealed containers. Killing those germs before they are consumed in food or beverages was considered a clever bit of scientific progress. 

Which is where this bus stalls, especially in Florida. Mostly because of that whole "science" thing. Climate Change, Evolution, we all live on a ball flying through space, these are ideas that might fly somewhere like New York City, but don't try to peddle that kind of nonsense to Floridians. They can see that kind of highfalutin nonsense a mile away. If they're not doubled over in pain from attempting to feed a carnivorous reptile or from drinking rotten milk. 

This is why I am happy to congratulate the Florida Department of Health for taking the somewhat limited stand for science, and health, since it's in the title. 

Just don't tell them that this Pasteur guy also promoted vaccines to keep us safe from things like rabies and anthrax. That might upset the whole apple cart. Then we'd have to try to explain how fruit rots in the sun. And they've got a lot of both of those down there In Florida. 

I Saw It On TV

 "I know it's true, oh, so true 'cause I saw it on TV." - John Fogerty

Before Billy Joel denied starting the fire, Mister Fogerty wrote a song about the decades of news and pop culture that he witnessed via what was colloquially known as "The Idiot Box." In the first verse, he confesses, "Though I saw them all, I can't recall which cartoon were real."

You may recall that recently the convicted felon currently ignoring the US Constitution lauded his acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration for her efforts to reduce the suffering of those affected by the floods in Texas because he "saw her on TV." Not that she was actively pursuing any sort of rescue or reclamation efforts, but because she appeared in her best "take charge" costume and gave the impression that she was, in fact, in charge. Couple this with the rumor that swirled around a few months ago about a reality TV show being in development centering on the efforts of immigrants attempting to achieve citizenship. Given the reality that we have all witnessed on our screens, television and otherwise, it was determined that now might not be the best time to unleash this kind of "non-scripted" entertainment. 

It is certainly true that the line between what appears on television and reality has always been a sticky bit. In a previous century, after MTV tired of showing those little promotional films for pop music, somebody pitched the idea for a show called The Real World. This was not the first time that "reality" was trotted out for us to watch at home, but this was perhaps the most confounding use of the word "real" in television history. It is perhaps notable that the third season of this long-running series introduced us to Rachel Campos, a conservative voice in a house filled with a bunch of liberal twenty-somethings who had an ax to grind about all manner of thins. When she grew up, she got a job on Fox News. 

Around that same time, somebody got the clever idea of making a showcase for America's worst boss, who spent the bulk of his time on screen bellowing, "You're fired." This buffoon never managed to have his own show on Fox, but he did manage to find his way into the Oval Office. Twice. Under the guise of being "president." This is the guy who set about hiring a great many of the "stars" of Fox News to sit on his cabinet. What better qualification could there be for this tiny-brained slumlord than to look for the best and brightest based on their appearances on "the idiot box?"

Most recently, this adjudicated rapist declared his appreciation for recently confirmed US Prosecutor for Washington DC, Jeanine Pirro: “Don’t forget, Jeanine Pirro was a great judge and a great prosecutor. Because she was so good, they drafted her into show business, and she did fantastic. You know, The Five was the number-one show, etc., etc.”

Never mind that Judge Jeanine's political career was cut short by a scandal that had her attempting to bug the boat of her philandering husband. 

I know all of this because I saw it on TV. 

God help us all. 

And don't forget to turn it off when you leave. 

And One

 Shouldn't the guy who has been ruthlessly cutting programs and jobs in the public sector be glad to hear that more people are out of work? Apparently not, since the Orange Buffoon decided to throw a hissy fit after the July jobs report suggested that economic growth had slowed significantly. His response? Firing the  the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer. 

The counterintuitive nature of this action is obvious to anyone who has spent any time at all in their life counting. If you're three years old, you pretty much expect to be four on your next birthday. You might also get a little flummoxed when it comes to numbers bigger than ten, but at least you comprehend the natural progression of things. This tangerine chucklehead has a history of misunderstanding these kinds of things. We give pictures of objects for Kindergartners to compare and ask them, "Which one has more?" Why would we expect a self-professed billionaire to be able to reckon on that level?

When things don't go his way, this convicted felon tends to make up numbers. Which it would seem is what he expects others will do. He insists that the July report numbers ""were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad." Well, let's take a look at some other numbers that seem to float around in the former game show host's tiny brain: He claimed that he would  drive down drug prices by as much as 1,500 percent. A magical precedent, since the most a price can actually go down would be one hundred percent. That would mean that the consumer would now pay nothing. Or perhaps you've been out driving around searching in vain for the $1.99 gasoline that existed in "five states." A little hint for you scam-watchers: If they don't mention which states, it probably isn't true. 

If yo're a student of recent history, you may recall a years-long baseless challenge to the vote tally of the 2020 election. This is a guy who bankrupted casinos. Not by winning at games of chance, but by running them into the ground. This very stable genius does have something on his side: He doesn't have to be good at math. He just has to be better than the pinheads who hang on his every utterance. 

MTPTFA! Make Two Plus Two Five Again.

Measure For Measure

 Football season is upon us. 

I know this because there was a news item about how the National Football League used their first preseason game to test out their "virtual first down system." For those of you who don't follow the game of American Football or are simply waiting for the games to count, you may have missed this event. 

After more than a century of using two sticks and a chain between them to determine just how far ten yards is, science has provided a way to do that same thing with some very fancy and expensive new cameras. You may have been thinking that the 4K TV you have in your living room is a pretty amazing piece of technology, but Sony has 8K which gives twice as many Ks as your TV. This allows the game to be monitored from above by machines that can pinpoint the placement of the ball on the field and allow the game to progress without those lengthy time-outs for measurement. Since games can be won or lost based on a few inches here or there, this comes as a boon to those of us who have held our breath while that chain has been stretched and then that far stick is somewhat ceremoniously put down to show once again just how far ten yards is. 

No kinks in the chain. No "friendly measurement." No excuses to nip out to the kitchen for more chips while the best union in the world continues to hold sway in the twenty-first century. 

For decades now, people like me have wondered why there wasn't a chip placed in the ball with sensors on the field that could detect whether or not the line to gain had been reached. Still more adults across the globe have wondered why this matters so much. Meanwhile, those three guys with their orange vest and sticks have had job security more than anyone else in the league. These folks are getting paid the princely sum of seventy-five to one hundred fifty dollars per game. This feels like a pittance compared to the responsibility these stalwart keepers of the yards carry on their shoulders. My guess is that the Hawk-Eye camera system will be quite a bit more expensive to operate and maintain. 

And starts to meander in the direction of Artificial Intelligence. "Hey Google, was that a first down?"

"I'm sorry Dave. I don't think I can help you with that right now. Why don't you take a stress pill?"

Speaking of stress, you don't have to feel bad about those poles and vests and so forth. They will continue to show up for this season anyway. They'll be there to remind us just how important ten yards really is. 

Did You Miss Me?

 Go away for a few days and, well, things continue their downward spiral. 

My wife and I wandered off on a short trip to the Central Coast for a respite before the new school year springs to life with all its myriad complexity and challenge. In preparation, I wrote a series of blog posts that would fill the void for you, dear reader, while I was gone. 

This also allowed me to focus on anything but the "breaking news" that flows in torrents from our nation's capitol. 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting its doors. Not a surprise exactly, but one that confirms the mission of Project 2025 continues apace. 

The convicted felon plans to spend two hundred million dollars building a grand ballroom as a part of his scheme to recreate his own personal Versailles. This regime will be different from Louis XVI's in that they won't even bother bringing up serving the peasants "cake." Gotta save the cake for washing down with Diet Coke. 

That same convicted felon is doing a favor for another convicted felon, Ghislaine Maxwell, who will be moved from a maximum security prison in Florida to a more relaxed setting in Texas: a prison "camp" in the Lone Star State. Here she will be hobnobbing with celebrity felons such as Elizabeth Holmes and Jen Shah. Here she will no doubt be awaiting her day in court or a pardon from the guy who claims to have little or no knowledge of anybody connected to (checks list) Jeffery Epstein. 

You may not remember Ms. Holmes or Ms. Shah, but you probably remember Mr. Epstein. He's the guy who may or may not have killed himself in jail. Subsequently, all the charges of sex trafficking against him were dropped, which turned the spotlight on his right hand trafficker, Ms. Maxwell. 

Meanwhile, the felon who is tearing up the White House just recalled that his relationship with Mr. Epstein fell apart after the sex trafficker "stole employees" from Mar-A-Lago. "He took people, I say 'don't do it anymore', you know they work for me... beyond that, he took some others. Once he did that, that was the end of him." One of these purloined employees was Virginia Giuffre, who had said she began working at Mar-a-Lago in the summer of 2000, when she was sixteen. 

If the name Virginia Giuffre sounds familiar, it could be because you have heard the story about how she was procured for Prince Andrew by Mr. Epstein and later sought to bring charges against her traffickers, Maxwell and Epstein. You may also recall that Ms. Giuffre committed suicide back in April. 

And if you didn't remember all of this, please try and remember that the same guy who is wreaking havoc with our public media and the People's House is also the one who would like you to forget any and all of the details I have just laid out here. 

I should have stayed on vacation. 

First Day

 My son was just a few months old when I went to my first day of school as a teacher. To say that we have both grown up a lot over the course of the past twenty-eight years would be a massive understatement. When I first reported to Horace Mann Elementary, I was a brand new hire. I had been assured a position through the internship program the district was running in concert with Cal State Hayward. As the summer turned into fall, I waited for word, and with just a week or two left before the new school year was going to begin, I got the notice: I would be the prep teacher at this year-round school in east Oakland. 

Oh, and didn't you say that you knew "a lot" about computers? 

Back in those days, I was going to school in the evenings to learn how to be a teacher and then trying things out the following day. Each morning was an opportunity to start fresh. It was terrifying. I was learning to be a father at the same time, and there were certainly moments when I thought that maybe I was taking on too much. There was not, however, a pause button on my life at that point. I was, to quote the song, running to stand still. 

That was back in the twentieth century. Before the shootings at Columbine. Before 9/11. Before COVID. Before I had fully surrendered to the idea that this would be my career, my calling. Over the past three decades, there have been times when I thought there might be a place for me somewhere else. I considered becoming a middle school math teacher. At least the kids might get a few more of my very funny jokes. This was after I had sampled teaching a fourth grade class of my own for a few years. I liked the mildly autonomous feeling, but I missed being connected to every kid in the school. 

Now I've been doing this job for (checks watch) ever. I am headed in for the warmup week during which we all get together to talk about how we're going to do many things new, but some of them just the same. I get anxious around this time, just like I used to when I was a student. What fresh challenges await me when that front gate opens up for real a week from today? 

Will I be ready?

Well, it just so happens that I know the answer to that one: It doesn't matter. The gate will open and we will start this new year with the same mix of excitement and dread that we have all those years prior. My son will most likely reach out, having left behind those first day jitters once he graduated from college. He'll aske me how it went. And I'll tell him a story about how this year started.