Ironical

 Meanwhile in Hamilton County: "We welcome people of diverse backgrounds, thoughts, and experiences,, And in a twist of irony, it is our country's legal framework protecting diversity of views that allows these hateful neo-Nazis to have a presence."

Those were the words of Prosecutor Connie Pillich, announcing that no charges would be filed against a group of neo-Nazis who took over an overpass on Interstate 75 in Ohio. For the rest of this report, I will be dropping the "neo" portion of that descriptor since a Nazi by any other name would smell as bad. Swastikas and hate-filled banners are pretty much your give-away. 

The "protest" took place back in February of this year, and over the past several months a team of prosecutors tried to put a case together reviewing several possible charges, including disorderly conduct, ethnic intimidation, inducing panic and being a Nazi. I tossed that last one in myself, knowing that being a Nazi is still completely legal here in the United States, even though we already beat them in a war. 

Maybe Ms. Pillich and her team should have considered my made up infraction since after all those months they were unable to find a way to legally discourage these displays of hate. The Nazis were protected by their First Amendment rights. And their Second Amendment rights as well, since many of the Nazis were carrying weapons. 

I suppose that's where the irony Ms. Pillich spoke of comes from. Would that the same careful adherence to our Constitution was being observed in Southern California. In Los Angeles the police are shooting at reporters. As arrests and detainment pile up in the City of Angels, you can bet that no charges will be filed against the police. Even after months of "careful consideration." 

Stay tuned. 

Wuffwy, Centurion

 “Oh and uh.. Throw him to the floor, sir?”

“What?”

“Throw him to the floor again, sir?”

“Oh yes. Frow him to the flaw, please.”

“ACK!!”

Depending on the settings of your blasphometer, this bit from Monty Python's Life of Brian might leave you in stitches, or it could send you in search of the unholy troupe who wrote it in the first place to give them stitches. I find it amusing. 

What I didn't find funny was the way this same scene played out in real life this past week in Los Angeles. Senator Alex Padilla was "frone to the flaw" by three federal officers after he attempted to ask Kristi "puppy killer" Noem a few questions about the ongoing situation in the City of Angels. The Trumpreich immediately went into denial, claiming that the Senator "lunged" at the killer of puppies and failed to identify himself. Video of the incident tells a different story.

Surprise, surprise. 

To be clear: Alex Padilla is a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety. He was at this press conference as part of his business. Official business. He was there to ask just what was going on in Southern California. On behalf of the citizens he was elected to represent. 

Nobody elected the puppy killer. As a matter of fact, up until the puppy killing revelation in the spring of 2024, there were those who felt that she might be a good running mate for a convicted felon. At least that's what the puppy killer herself believed. Instead, he went with the couch molester, but she got picked to be Secretary of Homeland Security. 

Currently there is no ongoing puppy crisis in Los Angeles that requires her attention. Just the wanton and reckless disruption of everyday life by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, rolling out in unmarked cars with masks on. The good people of Los Angeles were upset. 

So they took to the streets. That's when the puppy killer's boss illegally sent California National Guard troops in to "bring peace" to those streets. Along with seven hundred U.S. Marines. 

If you're a fan of "Life of Brian," you may find this an amusing solution, given the way Romans "brought peace" to Judea back in 33 AD. 

Except this is how things are really being handled in real time right now. Kristi and her stormtroopers are bringing peace the same way she brought it to her farm way back when: at the end of the barrel of a gun. 

My Father Who Art In Heaven

 The subject of Fathers Day is sometimes fraught with uncertainty. Not knowing or not connecting with half of your parental unit is a source of trepidation I carry with me from my earliest days as a teacher. "What would your father say?" is a question I have found that can sometimes lead to a different kind of revelation than was intended. 

Everyone has a father. Not everyone has the chance to experience that relationship to its fullest. In that regard, I consider myself very fortunate. I had a chance to get last tag on my father. I had moved out and was on my own and even had a chance to borrow a pair of pants from my old man on my wedding day when the ones I was supposed to wear got left down in town. 

I got married in the meadow below the cabin that I helped him build. The meadow where we played softball in the summers and where a drunken brawl of a volleyball game took place once a year at our family reunion. The pine tree hills surrounding that meadow is where I spent a lot of time dragging fallen timber back to that cabin in the woods where it could be sawed and chopped into fuel to keep ourselves warm and provide heat for cooking on the wood stove. My father ran a Wright reciprocating saw that he kept running night and day on the weekends. This is how he got his nickname: Beaver. 

He didn't have a lot of other pet names. "Dad" was good enough for him. Good enough for my brothers and I to call him that with the periodic needling we might give him by calling by his "real name." He was Donald long before there was another to worry about. He made such an impression that when it was time to go looking for a name for my son, it was already road tested. It was my hope that I would be passing along all those amazing and amusing things that came with that label.

Not the frailties and infidelities that hung around the edges. 

I am older now than my father ever was, and I am not foolish enough to know that for all the adoration I may have poured out in his honor, my father made some awful choices. He was a great dad, and one of the best storytellers I will ever know. He was not always the best husband. He struggled with a past that left him without a father figure of his own so he spent the later years of his life searching for the man he wanted to be. He didn't realize that he had spent his life becoming just that. His wife and children were left with that puzzle. The wreckage he left behind was not inconsiderable, but disrupted the American Dream we all felt we were living. 

I have had some years to forget and forgive. The family he helped build is still mighty and intact, and my wish of raising a namesake for him has worked out rather well. 

I knew my father. And I miss him today. 

Coming Attractions

 On a visit to our local cinema recently, I was reminded of the excitement generated by the trailers that are shown before the feature. It's a part of the movie-going experience that never gets old to me. My wife and I look at one another after each two minute reel unfolds in front of us, and we make secret agreements to return to the theater, "Ooo. I want to see that." Or occasionally, "I can skip that one." In many ways these introductory moments provide an agenda for the coming months. What sort of entertainment awaits us?

In the past I have had a similar feeling when summer approaches. Anticipating all the stops on my June calendar provide me with things for which I can look forward: The release from the daily grind of school. My sister-in-law's birthday. Father's Day. My own birthday. And thanks to a good friend's penchant for the arcane, Flag Day. 

Yes, June 14 sits on my schedule of events as the anticipatory week before the day of my birth and a reminder that we as a nation have a symbol in common. Celebrating is as simple as putting the flag out and then remembering to bring it back in at sunset. No big barbecues or need to invite friends over. Just a quiet celebration of our nation without all those fireworks in just a few weeks. 

And now that's spoiled because one of the planet's biggest egos requires that his birthday becomes some monstrous fete with marching troops and rolling tanks. Picture the streets of North Korea or Russia when their dictators demand a show of military might, but without a trace of irony on the Orange Clown's part. Not satisfied with sending three thousand troops into Los Angeles to pick a fight with peaceful protestors after the police department there had done a fine job of misusing their authority, the convicted felon now demands that his troops perform for him in a very public celebration of his declining years. 

A celebration fit for a king. 

As with the summer of 2020 as millions died from a pandemic the adjudicated rapist saw fit to ignore and the country rose up to remind us all that Black Lives Matter, the fool in the White House seems more than content to let our cities become immersed in conflict and struggle. The plans I had for a quiet, relaxing summer are gone. All those celebrations I had anticipated will be put to the side. 

It's time to fight the power. 

As Spike Lee reminded us, "Do the right thing." That's not a coming attraction, necessarily. It's more of a revival. 

Solace

  It's small solace I take from the words of California's governor, Gavin Newsom. 

But in this particular wave of awful, I will take solace in even the tiniest bites. 

This past Sunday, Newsom responded to the unprecedented act of the twice-impeached convicted felon federalizing his state's National Guard and sending them into Los Angeles. “Donald Trump has created the conditions you see on your TV tonight. He’s exacerbated the conditions. He’s, you know, lit the proverbial match. He’s putting fuel on this fire, ever since he announced he was taking over the National Guard — an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act.”

A nice start, but then it snowballed. Later in the same interview, Newsom was asked about border czar Tom Homan’s comments indicating he would not rule out arresting Newsom or Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass if they interfered in his efforts.“Come after me, arrest me. Let’s just get it over with, tough guy, you know? I don’t give a damn. But I care about my community. I care about this community." He ended with, “The hell are they doing? These guys need to grow up. They need to stop and we need to push back. And I’m sorry to be so clear, but that kind of bloviating is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go.”

It is perhaps worth noting that California has in its recent history a movie star governor who made his living prior to his political career by making tough guy statements in Hollywood. He took this act on the road to Vienna last week where he told environmentalists to "stop whining" about climate change and do something about it. 

The protests in Los Angeles were deemed unlawful by the Trumpreich and dozens were arrested. By masked "police."

But not Gavin Newsom. 

Climate Change was deemed a hoax by the Trumpreich and its only a matter of time before the Project 2025 gang has those activists arrested. 

But not Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

This is the sliver of solace I will carry with me while things go from bad to worse to unrecognizable. 

Everyday People

There is a blue one who can't accept the green one
for living with the black one trying to be a skinny one
Different strokes, for different folks!

And so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-doo. 

This is the way the world looked to Sly Stone back in 1968. Sly went to the big funkhouse in the sky this past Monday. It seems likely that circumstances here on earth were far too terrible for him to stick around. More than fifty years after he encouraged us all to live together in peace, the world seems to be tearing itself apart. The blue and green ones are no closer to living together now than they were back when Dick Nixon was president. 

I was six years old back then, and I carry memories of riots that raged across the country at that time. Many point to the assassination of Marting Luther King Jr. as the spark that lit the fuse. Racial tensions were at an all-time high, mixed with the frustrations stirred by the continued war in Vietnam. Public opinion was divided in ways that reached a boiling point, culminating in the election of the "law and order" candidate for president (checks notes), Dick Nixon. 

Sly Stone's was not the only voice calling for tolerance, but he put it so succinctly that school children could get it: 

I am no better, and neither are you.
We are the same whatever we do.
You love me, you hate me, you know me and then,
you can't figure out the bag I'm in. We've got to live together!

School children like myself who were taught the lyrics to that song in classrooms that fostered the kind of minds that might question authority. I grew up in a bit of hippie enclave. The peace and love that I heard about was not what I saw on the nightly news. That same hate-induced vacuum for understanding is on full display right now. I understood at that very early age that calling in the National Guard was not the answer to the question, "Why can't we live together in peace?"

And still the music of Sly Stone rings in my ears as I watch tear gas and rubber bullets being fired on protestors who are angry and afraid. 

Sometimes I'm right, I can be wrong.
My own beliefs are in my song.
A butcher, a banker, a drummer, and then
makes no difference what group I'm in

Sly Stone danced hard across the Terra. His music is n ithe DNA for all the songs about hope and freedom that came after. He will be missed by us Everyday People. 

Yeah Yeah. 

Next Season

 I have been out of school since May 30, but haven't spent much time away from my job since then. I have been participating in online interviews for  positions that have yet to be filled for the coming school year and attending meetings with our ILT regarding our MTSS that will hopefully help align our ELA and SEL programs to allow more more effective COST meetings to help those students with an IEP. 

Because after three decades of work I have finally banked enough sick leave that I could be absent for two full school years allowing me to review and comprehend all the TLA associated with my job. 

Three Letter Acronyms. 

Approximately one billion years ago when I first appeared on the scene I worked with a fellow newbie who, like myself, had done a variety of jobs before landing in the intern teacher credential program. We went to school by day and attended school by night. One was our job and the other was our way of maintaining our job. The circular irony of this process was not lost on either of us, and at one point he suggested that "someone" should write a sitcom based on the experiences of new teachers like us, "like MASH," he clarified. "It should be funny but full of the dark humor that exists just outside the tragedy we see every day." 

Over the past week as I have been less physically present at my school, I have been wading through the first season of The Pitt. It's not a comedy, but there are moments of dark humor to be found amid the interwoven narratives of a day in a Pittsburgh emergency room. I found it completely reminiscent of all those episodes of ER I watched thirty years ago. Without the distractions of a moment outside the titular emergency room. 

I found myself swallowed up once again by the Sissyphusian nature of my job. At the end of one of the Zoom interviews in which I participated, my principal carried her laptop out into the office. A few people were still hard at work there, preparing to close down the regular school year and prepare for the influx of a summer school program. She wanted me to see the monstrous monitor that the district had come to hang high on the wall just inside the office door. I asked what I was for, assuming that it was for parental announcements and calendaring information. Instead I was informed that it was a screen on which the office staff could watch the feed from all the various security cameras we have placed around our campus. 

We did not request this. It was a "gift" from the district. It comes to us at a time when budgets are being slashed and programs like the take-home computer program that our school had participated in to finally break down the digital divide that exists between those schools that have students with computers in their homes and those like ours that do not had ended. In that same office there were stacks of Chromebooks that had been returned by families in order to be refurbished and handed out to middle and high school students. Because we could no longer afford to share them with K to 5 kids.

My work faucet never actually turns off anymore. The job I took so many years ago has become my career. I know a Social Emotional Learning program from an English Language Arts curriculum and even though I don't attend our Coordination Of Service Team meetings every week, I stay appraised of their ongoing effect on the Individual Education Plans of our students. 

All of whom I could sit in our office and watch on our brand new big screen TV. Or more episodes of The Pitt. Or Abbot Elementary. Or maybe I should be outside on the playground making sure that there won't be anything that exciting to see on that new big screen TV. 

Just your every day happenings at an urban Oakland Elementay School. 

Strange Days Indeed

 Ah, what a time to be alive. 

On my daily runs I pass a number of different gas stations. Part of my schadenfreude experience as I look at the prices for fuel in my neighborhood can be traced directly to the recent purchase of an electric car. While I don't celebrate the seemingly inevitable creep upwards of prices at the pump, I know that I won't necessarily be affected by them. 

Or will I?

The obvious economic principle at play here is that when the price of gasoline trends upward it reflects the price of most everything. This upward trend has been in place for decades and I am one of those who can remember filling up a tank for less than ten dollars and how I used to walk uphill in a snowstorm to school. 

I'm old. Nothing is as it used to be. 

The really terrible thing, to me, is that there is a voice in my head that actively roots for things to get worse. Translate that to "more expensive." I have a vivid memory of how one of the focal points of the 2024 election was the price of eggs. We, as a nation, used to be on the gold standard, but a year ago there seemed too be a switch to the chicken ova standard wherein our economic health was determined by a vast conspiracy surrounding the cost of buying and selling these shelled bits of protein. 

This trend plays differently in our house as my wife and I continue to buy eggs even as our gasoline purchases have drifted off to insignificance. Part of our reaction to high prices on most things is the same as most any consumer. The other part is the one that concerns me. That is where we celebrate the failed fiscal plan of the convicted felon who somehow ended up in charge of our economy. 

Do I get any sort of satisfaction from paying more for everyday products and services? To be honest: yes. Do I feel embarrassed by this reaction? To be honest: a little. I confess that if our household was not already somewhat insulated from the storms in the sea of the marketplace, I might feel differently. 

Right now I don't. I feel every bit as entitled to chagrin as those who used to rail on about the previous administrations: Thanks Obama. Thanks Biden. Now I feel as though I can afford to turn up my nose at the struggles of the Second Trumpreich. Their losses, it would seem, are my gain. 

And isn't that what being an American is all about? 

Vacate And Shun

 A number of people have asked me if I had any plans for my summer vacation. The traditional response to this query is "vacate and shun." This allows me to reset and find my emotional center. Not be at school. Avoid commitments that might feel like school. 

Of course this is, according to my wife, a non-answer. She is correct. in her assessment. It cuts a wide swath through the list of potential fun traditionally enjoyed over the course of your standard summer. I won't be joining any clubs or organizations that require my presence. I shy away from things that require reservations. Plane flights, concert tickets, scheduling a special dinner. That doesn't mean that I won't be available for any of those activities, it just means that I flinch in anticipation of commitment. 

The model for this behavior can be traced back to my youth. In those bygone days of yore my mother would have us help load up the back end of the station wagon to drive a week's worth of supplies into the hills where we would set up camp in our mountain cabin. There we would stay with the exception of a weekly trip down to civilization for another round of groceries and a few loads of laundry. None of us boys were affiliated with a Little League team or day camp. Our days were filled with comic books and wandering in the woods. The chores we were asked to perform outstripped any of those we held during our city lives. Hauling water and chopping wood was a necessity. There was some mild rejoicing in the fact that cleaning up after our dog was not a concern for our frontier family, since he was happy to do his business al fresco across the meadows and forest that surrounded us.

Every so often, we might tag along with our dad who was the only member of the family to maintain an existence "downtown." This came in the form of our music lessons, usually held on Saturday mornings. The goal was to get up at dawn, stop in for half an hour each for us to learn just a little more about playing the tuba in my case or the clarinet for my younger brother. Then there would be some brief transactions with the expectation of landing back in the mountains before noon. On special occasions this might involve snaring one of our city friends to come along for a day or two in our frontier oasis. These visits would consist of a few hours of settling in our town mice to the ways of us country mice. The bathroom is out back. The playground is everywhere. The comic books are upstairs. Most of our guests didn't last very long. They were initially excited by the prospect of living without running water, electricity or telephone, but when the reality of No TV set in, they were happy to return to their lives in the real world. 

That was for three months every summer for a decade or more. My memories are filled with those empty days that somehow got filled with the business of being young. Climbing mountains, swinging from trees, and reading comic books. 

Those were, in fact, the days my friends. 

For Whom The Bell Tolls

 Read the room. That's all I'm asking. 

I have listened to complaints from my young charges during PE classes that I have taught. Somewhere around the half hour mark, no matter how much fun they are having, the cries for a water break go up. I am aware that water and bathroom breaks are a form of currency in elementary school. At some point during any period of instruction, inside or out, there will come a need to flee the oppressive burden of being told what to do. I am sensitive to the physical needs of the boys and girls under my tutelage, but I am also aware that they are all well-equipped to race around for longer periods if they are enjoying the "free play" of recess. There will be a water break for everyone at the end of class. 

"But Mister Caven, I'm dying!"

"We are all dying, just very slowly," has been my answer to some of the more pitiful wretches who complain the most bitterly about my water policy. 

I understand that this response is lost on a nine year old. I know that it is not the answer that they want to hear. I am also clear that I am doing a better job holding my decorum than Iowa's senator, Joni Ernst. 

Last Friday Senator Joni hosted a town hall for her constituents, many of whom had concerns about cuts to Medicaid in that "Big Beautiful Bill" her party wants to foist on the country in the guise of saving money. One of them insisted that people would die as a result of her party’s health care cuts, at which point Senator Joni replied, “Well, we all are going to die.” 

I am not outraged that she stole my bit. I am outraged because I make sure that after ten to fifteen minutes of histrionics from a third grader, I march them all into the hallway out of the sun to the water fountain. For her part, Senator Joni "apologized" to her fellow Iowans. In a video filmed while strolling through a cemetery, she said she “made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth," and finished up with, “So I apologize, and I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”

Mister Caven is a heartless tyrant at times, but eventually he surrenders to his constituent's concerns. Senator Ernst? Not so much. 

Another Mobile Home Broken Up

 And everyone said it wouldn't last. 

And everyone was right. 

The money-driven lust for power relationship that spawned the love child DOGE hit the rocks on June 5, 2025, less than a year after it went public. 

Do you remember when it all began? The world's richest man started to tweet about his admiration for the former game show host as the campaign of 2024 began to reach a boiling point. You may remember the crazed gunman who took a shot at the twice-impeached felon on the campaign trail. It was sometime around then that Elongated Mush went public with his rediscovered admiration for the man who, back in 2016, he said "I feel a bit stronger that he is not the right guy. He doesn’t seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States."

We all know how time heals all wounds, and the prospect of acquiring more wealth and power can also make political bedfellows that might otherwise seem to make no sense. These two oddfellows consolidated their grab for power after it became apparent that they both had something to gain: A Second Trumpreich offered Mush a way to revisit his youth in the shape of a new apartheid. The adjudicated rapist who was attempting to become the first convicted felon to be elected President of the United States saw star power in Mushie that outshone Kid Rock, so he accepted Mush's check for nearly three hundred million dollars and went back to praising "the late great Hannibal Lecter." 

After the Dear Orange Leader was elected in November, Elongated Mush could not contain himself. He let fly with not one but two sieg-heils from the podium at a rally celebrating the victory. He told rally goers, "It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured." 

With that kind of endorsement, and a great big checkbook, who wouldn't invite a guy like that home? 

But it all went south once things got real in the wake of popular opinion. As it turned out, no one really wanted to see what these two had in store for the future of our civilization. Not even those nifty electric cars that the Mar-A-Lago's golf champ wanted to sell from the lawn of the White House, or the tariffs that fluxuated in size and importance with each passing day. 

Things got more and more tempestuous even as Elongated Mush was handed the made-up tribute of a golden key upon his retreat from Washington. It was only a few days after that tender moment that Mushie went full public with his feelings about the "Big Beautiful Bill," which he felt would add to the deficit that his DOGE-y crew had worked so hard and comically to deflate. 

Which didn't seem to slow the White House insistence that nothing could be farther from the truth. So Mister Mush decided to go low by tweeting the not-so-veiled accusation of Dear Leader's connection to the Epstein files: “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a good day, DJT!”

In a battle between egos that can only be housed in Olympic-sized stadiums, this will most likely take a monstrous effort to control the casualties. But, since they're both monsters in their own right, I can only expect the appearance of Godzilla himself will calm the devastation that lies at the end of each news cycle. 

Then again, when the revelations turn out to be simply that which confirms the aberrant behavior of either one of these nimrods, I declare Situation Normal...

End Of List

 I find myself turning once again to that quote from comedian Denis Leary: “Racism isn’t born, folks. It’s taught. I have a 2-year-old son. Know what he hates? Naps. End of list.” That little truth bomb comes to us through the haze from 1992. 

It was true in 1962.

And 1892.

And 1692. 

I could go on.

But you would hate that. And don't we have enough of that just now. 

Jonathan Joss, voice actor and periodic guest star on Parks and Recreation, was shot and killed over the weekend. As I have stated here before, no one deserves to be shot and killed. If Mister Joss was murdered because of his Native American ancestry, that would have been unacceptable. If he had been killed because he was an openly gay man as his husband and witness to the shooting insists, that would have been just as intolerable. 

If Jonathan Joss had been shot over a parking space, that would simply fall into the same category of people who were victims of hate crimes. Killing someone requires a lot of hate, and we are currently wading through not just a wave but high tide of hostility toward one another. 

I teach the kids at my school that hate is a nadir, the bottom rung of the ladder. It means that there is nothing lower than the school lunch for which they have just turned up their collective nose. By contrast, they help me realize that the same kid they could not stand to sit next to in class will most likely be the one they insist on lining up next to when it is time to go to lunch. The lunch they can agree on. That awful barbecue chicken leg. 

No one is being shot over the limited choices in our cafeteria. 

Not yet anyway. 

I hope this tide starts to recede soon. I hate it. 

Drawn Out

 I had not drawn in the sketchbook my wife gave me for several months. That changed on the afternoon of June 1. 

This past Saturday, a man threw Molotov Cocktails, flaming bottles of gasoline, at a group of demonstrators. Not in Ukraine. Or Gaza. Or any one of a thousand different places where such an act would be news. This act of terrorism took place here in these United States, a term that becomes increasingly ironic with each passing day. 

 Mohamed Sabry Soliman, yelled “Free Palestine” as he set six elderly participants in a group called "Run For Your Lives" on fire. In Boulder, Colorado. In front of the old courthouse on the Pearl Street Mall. The victims were rushed to area hospitals with moderate to severe injuries. I was left in front of my computer with little else to do but doom scroll for updates on the tragedy. 

In my mind I was hurled back to March of 2021 when ten people were shot and killed inside a grocery store. In Boulder, Colorado. The fourth anniversary of that bloodbath had only recently been observed when my hometown became headline news once again. I understand how completely narrow-minded this worldview is, but I find it difficult not to flinch harder at events that ring tragic in the place that I call home. This is not the light I want shone on the place where I grew up. 

I sat at my desk, having refreshed the images and descriptions far too many times, and I started drawing. Not the round, amusing cartoons that so often fill the pages of my imagination, but jagged sketches of monsters. Demons that were pressing against my mind's eye that I felt needed to be released. Would I have felt moved to scribble these images if the news had pointed me in a different direction? In New York City? In London? In the Gaza Strip? 

Thirty-one people were killed as they lined up for aid distribution just south of Rafah this past Sunday. This mass casualty event did not inspire the same reaction in my brain that the burns of half a dozen Americans, Coloradans, Boulderites did. Somehow things that happen, no matter how awful, a world away do not inspire me to generate monsters inside my head. 

My wife had returned just a week ago from visiting our hometown. On her trip, she stopped by the Pearl Street Mall, taking in the nostalgic view of the Art Deco inspired courthouse. My wife was not in Rafah over the past few weeks. We did not grow up knowing the horrors of war. 

I suppose we had better get used to it. I'll save a few more pages for the next terror attack. 

Stink

 That smell you may be experiencing could be smoke from wildfires up north in the new frontier we used to call "Canada." 

It might also be the refuse left over from Elongated Mush's five month stay in Washington, DC. 

I leave it to you to decide how those two are related, but I will be focusing on the latter, since we all know that "Canada" has always been famous for its wildfires and it certainly has nothing to do with climate change.

Or Elongated Mush. The man whose portable methane powered turbine generators have been powering his supercomputer in Memphis for months now. The massive machine he lovingly calls "Colossus." without a hint of irony. Not everyone gets irony. Or sarcasm. 

So I will attempt to make this as clear as possible: Transhpobic racists who abuse drugs should stick to blowing up rockets rather than muck about in our government. The Mushmaster said, upon his departure from DC that he was surprised to find, "The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” his whine continued. “DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything.” Not only that, “People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That’s really uncool.”

So is the appropriation of citizen's private data. So is cutting off food aid to the most vulnerable populations in the world. So is firing national park rangers. 

Of course, when did Elongated Mush become the arbiter of "cool?" 

History will show that really rich fascists tend not to succeed in government. Mush bought himself just enough time and influence to go back to his crumbling empire where his drones will prop him back up and restore his sense of invulnerability. 

And maybe bring some air freshener to mask the stink? 

What?

 I was this many years old when it finally came clear to me that the lyrics to "The Ballad Of Gilligan's Isle" includes the line "it started from this tropic port," and not (as I had been singing and recalling for all those years prior "it started from this traffic port." The confusion stemmed from my far-too-clever mind at an impressionable age and choice I made to hear "traffic" instead of "tropic" because I assumed that there was a nautical distinction for busy ports where three hour cruises could be chartered. I made the sense I was going to make of it some sixty years ago and it was only this past week that stumbling across the phrase "traffic stop" in a completely non-Gilligan-related podcast that a light wen on in my head: "Tropic port" makes so much more sense. My prior belief that Sherwood Schwartz and George Wyle were trying to goose the seafaring knowledge of the viewing public by including some naval jargon was crushed beneath the reality of a misheard lyric. 

I have had my struggles with this sort of thing at other points in my life. A very good friend of mine insists that the Vapors are singing "cyclone ranger" and not (as the lyrics sheet included with the album suggest) "psyched lone ranger." Friendly as these discussions begin, there seems to a point at which surrendering to the "truth" takes a back seat to the synapses that had been knocked into place in some formative time and place. 

If you have spent years, nay decades, singing along tunefully to the words you believed were those stated by the artist and it turns out that they are not the words stated by the artist, you have a choice: go with what you know in your heart or surrender to the reality of what is on that piece of paper that comes along with the album. 

Which brings us to the question: What is an album? 

Or a lyric sheet? 

And who is still aware of Gilligan's Island anymore? 

I started to wonder about the topographical features of the island itself and if someone had bothered to create a map from the periodic ancillary references to its geography. I became concerned that those seven stranded castaways might not be getting enough protein amid their seemingly banana and coconut-based diet. Why did the Howells seem to have brought enough cash in addition to wardrobe changes for months at sea, not three hours? Was there ever a moment that things got particularly desperate and the rest of them didn't have the urge to take out their frustrations on Gilligan fouling up yet another rescue attempt by requiring the ultimate sacrifice? 

It all started from that traffic port...

Taco Tuesday Will Now Be Every Day

 I think of Marty McFly, and the way he used to light up when somebody called him "chicken." Not the healthiest response from our boy Marty, but he was (according to the movie timeline) seventeen years old. Or forty-four. Or seventy-seven. It depends on the reality in which his DeLorean lands. The actor who portrayed Marty, Michael J Fox, is the same age as I am. I want to believe that he has learned through his experiences on the screen and in his real-life struggle with Parkinson's Disease how to cope face the world with a brave face regardless of the challenge. 

There might be some comfort in knowing that our current situation with Pennywise the President was brought about by someone mucking with the timeline. The former gameshow host seems like the kind of guy who would fall for a stainless steel lemon that could be modified into a time machine. It might explain how we got into the mess in which we currently exist. Only this time it was Biff Tannen who kept the Sports Almanac and made a bunch of deals that generated the warped space that we are navigating. 

One telling difference here: The Biff currently taking up space at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the one with the "chicken issue." In case you missed it, the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist slumlord does not like being called "chicken." The phrase used first by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, "Trump Always Chickens Out" refers to the twice-impeached White House resident and his stop, step back, jump, turn, hop and skip away from threats he has made about tariffs. One hundred fifty percent to ninety to pause to fifty to only things we don't buy anyway. He calls it "negotiation." Those of us watching call it "chicken."

Of course it's not just Marty McFly who historically had trouble with this epithet. Once a very long time ago a young man named Jim Stark struggled with this epithet. In the movie, Jim avoids going over the cliff, but the James who played him wasn't so lucky. A tragedy to be sure, but at the time James Dean crashed his car he was not in charge of the United States economy. And the third biggest army in the world. And the nuclear codes. 

With those factors in mind, I guess we can only hope that TACO is an acronym that sticks. 

Commuted

Last Thursday I rode my bike to school.

No big deal. I've done it a lot of times.

Most of the time that I have been teaching, this year and all the years before. 

But it was the Last Day of School for kids at Horace Mann that I stumbled on the phrase: Rush Hour. What does that mean to me? 

I know it takes me about twelve minutes to get to work from my house. It takes about fifteen minutes to get home. I take advantage of the slope on my way there, and it works against me on the way home. The elements sometimes play a part in that as well, but my commute has been blessedly straightforward for more than a quarter century. 

On those rare occasions that I get to ride in a car there is the tiniest bit of traffic with which we must contend. Parking isn't usually a hassle of any significance because there is plenty of bare curb to be found when I roll up. And more often than not, if I am in a car, I will be exiting the vehicle so my wife can be on her way to whatever adventures await her. 

While I go to work. 

I got my perfect attendance award last week. I was on time and in my place each and every day this school year. I got there early so that I could have a few quiet moments before the gates open and the stream of children signal the start of my work day. 

I'm the guy who opens that gate. Which does give me pause. I wonder if I didn't show up on time one day if there might be a mad scramble to figure out how to get all those little people into the building if I weren't there. 

But now it's June, and these questions can go unanswered for the time being. This all too brief pause in the story of Mister Caven and his commute. Starting with day one.