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.