I have to get this book at Tulane. It is so tempting to just click “buy,” but no. Ideally, I will go there, read the parts I should read, and leave the book. Libraries are there to be used!
Axé.
More news from home
The UN on the Ayotzinapa case.
Francisco Goldman’s discussion of this case in English.
A Louisiana legislative candidate in blackface.
The police work for McDonald’s.
Fact and feeling have the same weight.
Lateral governance.
Dear Z:
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me about President Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of the United States Department of Education.
Let me start by saying this: I believe steadfastly in our public schools. I’m a product of Louisiana public schools. I graduated from Zachary High School, and I’m proud of it. My teachers there prepared me to compete in college and law school with just about anyone. I’ve also been a volunteer substitute teacher in Louisiana public schools for the last thirteen years. There’s not a single, solitary politician in the State of Louisiana who has been in our public schools more than I have in the past thirteen years.
I also want you to know that I do not believe that the United States Constitution grants the federal government control over our public schools. In my opinion, our Constitution leaves public education and policy about it to state and local governments. I think that is sound policy, and our founding fathers knew what they were doing. The last thing, in my opinion, our educators need is another U.S. Department of Education trying to impose top-down, one-size-fits-all federal standards on local schools and telling our local officials and teachers how to run their classrooms. Betsy DeVos agrees with me.
The United States Senate has voted to confirm President Trump’s nominee, Mrs. DeVos, to be the Secretary of the Department of Education. I voted for her. I do not believe for a second that she opposes public education. On the contrary, I believe she supports it enthusiastically and with conviction. She also supports giving parents a choice in how to educate their children, whether that choice is a public school, charter school, private school or home schooling. She is right, in my opinion. Her support for empowering parents to make the right choice for their children in no way undermines her passion and support for public education.
Public education has improved in the last few years, but we’re still behind. That’s one of the things that keeps me awake at night, because I don’t believe that any parent should be forced to send his or her child to a failing school. I know we can do better. Americans can unravel the human genome. We can take a diseased human heart, replace it with a new one and make it beat. We can send a person to the moon. But we can’t seem to teach our children how to read and write at acceptable levels when we have eighteen years to do it. We can and must do better.
You may not agree with my vote in favor of Mrs. DeVos. But never doubt my commitment to public education. If Secretary DeVos turns out not to be a supporter of public education, I will be the first to criticize her and call for her to step down. However, I do not believe I will have to do that. Thanks again for writing.
| Sincerely, YOUR EQUIVOCATING United States Senator |
Axé.
Filed under News
On the United States
My neighborhood has a Facebook group where, mostly, people ask for handyman advice and offer fresh eggs for sale. Today it had an argument about whether or not it were racist to be reporting, to this group, when Black teenagers are walking down the street. Most of those who participated thought it was a good thing to do, “to keep us safe,” and when some started arguing back the thread was deleted. I think it was deleted because the rational people were clearly a minority and the thread made the neighborhood look bad.
Axé.
Filed under News
More about the anxiety
I love co-working and dislike working in isolation, but I see now that I have a longstanding (although not evident) anxiety condition for which Boicean-style advice is a trigger. I am also so naturally organized, disciplined, and motivated that the Boicean-style admonishments feel demeaning, as I know that what I need is time to contemplate, not exhortations to rush.
Both of my parents have anxiety conditions. My father manages his rather well, and my mother allowed hers to disable her almost completely. I have always imitated my father, because it was clear where my mother’s choices led. In addition, when I was small my mother and brother would entertain themselves by imposing upon me, and imposition and needling have been anxiety triggers for me ever since.
I seem so calm, people do not realize I suffer from anxiety, but the calm is only my deeper nature, combined with my longstanding policy, because of the anxiety, of not participating in histrionics.
The first time I really felt the anxiety (the feeling I am identifying as anxiety now) was as a teenager, living with a family who liked to procrastinate and then hurry. In my family we take our time and are on time, but this family would insist upon waiting and then go into a frenzy about how we were about to miss the ferry. The frenzy would make me shake. Why are we even going to town, if we must create such suffering for ourselves around it? I would ask.
I am claustrophobic. My father talks about this openly: “I need space, light, and windows, and I will not work in a cubicle.” This is why I do not like living in small towns without easy access to a variety of hiking trails and views from different heights. A lot of my energy in fact goes to tolerating the feeling of enclosure in Maringouin. And any city will have a variety of paths and heights, and that is why I like cities better. If I am to take anxiety seriously, and treat it seriously now, I should structure in time spent in less claustrophobic environments. I should stop considering this a luxury or a guilty pleasure.
Most fundamentally I do not like to be needled or imposed upon, manipulated, pushed, or told to rush. It is a separate issue that I do not really need exhortation; the key issue is that the imposition, the needling, the poking, the attempts to distract and disorient, are all ancient. I used to have this happen to me all day and have to remain calm, because my mother was ill and my brother was younger, and I was still small and could not stop them from taunting me, and my mother would advise that the more imperturbable I could be, the sooner they would stop. So I am imperturbable, but it is also a fact that I can still look imperturbable when I am in fact at a breaking point.
I don’t actually disagree with Boice at all, it is just that I always worked that way. When I was over 30, people discovered Boice and started lecturing condescendingly at me about him, and my anger at them about that is unabated. I had a project I disagreed with, and I wanted to use Boicean time to work with that. But these new converts said, do not question what you are asked to say, just say it and reap the rewards of having said it. It was I, and not they, who knew how to write.
Axé.
Filed under News, Theories, What Is A Scholar?, Working
Sanders on Trump’s speech
This is very well informed and you should watch it. The people who fought against Sanders should be ashamed, but I don’t want to talk about that now. We should all join the struggle now.
In cultural news, a friend has a blog on blood that is worth reading.
Axé.
Filed under Movement
On freedom
A key issue may be that “freedom” for many Americans has always meant the freedom of the male settler-colonist to destroy the earth and its people, order his women and slaves around, and impose his religion upon others.
Yet more important is that Trump is trying to destroy the national self-image as progressive. It is of course delusional to believe that the US has not always been a poor idea, yet it is a worse idea to renounce the ideal of justice.
My other insight is that the US depends upon slavery, and that this is why we need the indocumentados as indocumentados. I would like to be on a dissertation committee about this, as there is a great deal to say about it.
This means, of course, that as long as there are no unions all manufacturing and construction jobs here will have to be poorly paid. Indocumentados and convicts will have to do them, probably, and the citizens will have to join the Army. What do you think?
Meanwhile, we have:
◊◊Narcofosas in Jalisco
◊◊The lack of a left in the US
◊◊A really important action item
◊◊Puerto Rican faces deportation to Mexico
…and a great deal more. But please do look at that action item.
Axé.
Filed under Movement, News, Uncategorized
On anxiety
I have it and should pay more serious attention to it. I need shiatsu massage and reasonable control of my schedule and space, regardless of the chaos other people may have in their lives. I am not talking about control over others or rigid defensiveness. I am talking about not being imposed upon, and about having as many rights as others.
I think very regular, serious treatment of the situation, and respect for it, are in order. (Back home, of course, I would never have doubted these things, and would never have allowed, or had to allow the situation to get this bad.)
I am incarcerated in a house, under the control of an irrational person who has legal power over me. I must care for them and do as they say. I must take on a very large professional project that is not the one I want. I am unable to do this under coercion, but not allowed to do anything else.
That is the ur-feeling of it. Bodily I have experienced taquicardia without heart problems, digestive issues, muscle tension and most notably, freezing of the brain. I’ve also seen spots, without having a vision problem. The two most subtle, but clearest indicators of anxiety are:
1/ becoming irritated or feeling defeated over something that can actually be managed with assertiveness;
2/ losing focus, as if one had lost interest or were too tired; inefficiency as a result of this.
People don’t realize I have anxiety because I am still a calm person and still so rational. In addition, I don’t have anxiety without a cause–it is always about being imposed upon, and the imposition is always real. Therefore, focusing on symptoms rather than cause, which the anxiety experts want one to do, only increases the feeling of imposition, incarceration, inattention to the obvious, and manipulation.
It is since November, Thanksgiving evening to be exact, that things have been this way and I have not had the time/space to reflect upon the situation. Had this period also started earlier? What about October, with study abroad? What about September, with the roof? What about the issues with the leaking door and floor? When did I last have any calm time to myself?
I would like less Internet of all types. More reading, in books and journals, not on screens and printouts. In-person work in libraries. Writing, on tables of the right height, looking outdoors in sunlight. Walking, in free air with views.
I should always sleep, and exercise, and drink water, and insist that my space be mine and be a calm space. More deeply, I should believe that my thoughts are valid thoughts. I should believe that I have a right to my life, and that my assessment of things is valid.
Axé.
Filed under Banes
