Today I woke up to a plane crash that Donald Trump quickly politicized by suggesting that DEI hires had some part to play in the catastrophe, but I'm just trying to hold it together. I am so tired of DJT, and all of his hateful rhetoric, his lies, and his school yard swagger. I don't care who knows it; I am a proud "never Trumper." My students are holding the lines too by trying to appear unafraid, like their lives won't be changed forever by fascism, this disease that slowly crept up on us, this disease that used the Republican party as a vessel, much like any other virus or bacteria will invade a cell.

Today I woke up to a smile on my dog's face and the warmth of his tail that he wags like a stick everywhere he goes. Sometimes I wish I could be a dog too, just playing around and sniffing the earth, looking for tasty treats and receiving affection. But I'm part of the problem; I'm one of those species that invade the earth and spoil its waters, hoard resources, and create bags and bags of trash that will never mold away. I drive an hour to work each way with other people like me that should work from home, or closer to home. Of course, DJT with all his hateful ideology believes that work from home is "woke" and that no one should do it, but he works from one of his many homes every day.

My son is dark and exotic looking with long, straight black hair. He plays the guitar professionally and works during the day as a carpenter. He is beautiful and kind. I am worried he will be casually harassed by ICE because of DJT and his hateful ethnic cleansing of our working class people. I worry that my son will be questioned about his identity and heritage and that he will fail the test and be confiscated and stored like some subhuman until we can present his birth certificate and his social security card; how else can my son prove he is an American? Must all dark complected people carry all of their paperwork now, whether they are American citizens or not?

I am afraid for all of us, even the stupid people that voted Trump. I am afraid for our children and our vulnerable adults, and I am afraid for our visitors, the people that come here for a better life. I don't care how they arrived, legally or not. All I care is that they appreciate their stay and obey the laws of decency and fair play--most of them do.

I want my old society back, the one before the Tea Party, before Trump, before Project 2025, before abortion bans and book bans and people bans and Muslim bans. I want my beautiful pluralistic society where I could go out and meet people from around the world and learn from them, and they learn from me. I want to return to a time when teaching was a safe job, before school shootings and random violence. I want to return to a time when road rage was incredibly rare, like never. I want a ban on automatic rifles because no one that I know needs one.

I want peace and safety, not turmoil and chaos, not DJT. Fascism always ends the same ugly way, with massive amounts of dead people.

The Rhetoric of Violence

��� In his Lecture XXXIV, Hugh Blair begins by teaching listeners to sharpen their eloquent speaking style to amuse and entertain the audience. Trump manages eloquence to only one degree: candor. He endeavored to persuade his audience to attack the Capital by using the slogan created by Steve Bannon: Stop the Steal. This slogan served as an imperative, and in its delivery to the audience, in the context of Trump's location and his baseless argument that the election "was rigged," provided the MAGA mob with permission to raid our nation's Capital and commit violence against its occupants. This perverted rhetoric continues to threaten our democracy, a symbol of American freedom. Democracy is abstract, while citizens that debate our country's laws and values are concrete. The threat of injury and death still exists both in an abstract manner against the civility of our country, but also in the concrete form. This is why citizens not in agreement with Trump and his handlers live with a lingering sense of dread.

The Rhetoric of Violence

    In his Lecture XXXIV, Hugh Blair begins by teaching listeners to sharpen their eloquent speaking style to amuse and entertain the audience. Trump manages eloquence to only one degree: candor. He endeavored to persuade his audience to attack the Capital by using the slogan created by Steve Bannon: Stop the Steal. This slogan served as an imperative, and in its delivery to the audience, in the context of Trump's location and his baseless argument that the election "was rigged," provided the MAGA mob with permission to raid our nation's Capital and commit violence against its occupants. This perverted rhetoric continues to threaten our democracy, a symbol of American freedom. Democracy is abstract, while citizens that debate our country's laws and values are concrete. The threat of injury and death still exists both in an abstract manner against the civility of our country, but also in the concrete form. This is why citizens not in agreement with Trump and his handlers live with a lingering sense of dread.

The Rhetoric of Practicality

    Clinging to this fabricated election denier nonsense seems ridiculous on the surface, especially to the people that actually do the work to organize and execute our democratic voting system. Many of these hardworking people now live in fear. But this is Trump and his handlers breaking down the barricades to control the larger and more practical motive: more calls to violence. It may seem practical on the surface if you do no analysis. Let's round up all of the illegal immigrants, the undocumented folks, and let's kick them out. Let's make sure they never come back. This can be made to sound more practical by appearing to focus on the violent offenders, at least initially. I predict they really will make an effort to deport people that really need to go. I am sure the public will be made privy to the methods of law enforcement as they routinely expel these violent and lawless immigrants. This juicy information will serve to prepare regular, hard-working citizens for the next step: a violent and chaotic removal of people en masse. The MAGA crowd will really go for this, at least in the beginning. Trump and his handlers will point to practical reasons of why this must be done. These reasons will become a matter of opinion, further dividing our country. Only if we become severely divided can we be defeated and oppressed, and ultimately turned into widgets and go-getters that serve the autocracy.

The Rhetoric of Celebration

    Finally, Trump and his handlers will indulge in a form of rhetoric known as epideictic. In this case it will serve as a form of "celebration." This roll out of celebratory rhetoric will detail the cruelties committed against immigrants to prepare Americans for the next step, to desensitize all of us to our new controlled reality. Most of us already know the threat is more than a simple abstraction, and as we watch the violence and chaos play out against our friends and neighbors, as we listen to the victory speeches and propaganda in the meanest of terms, our country, this beacon of light and hope, will slide off the rails into a tunnel of long darkness and violent chaos. Trump will roll out his speeches and propaganda in the meanest of terms; with candor he will justify this ugly, racist foundation our country labors to diminish.

    I am truly concerned about this near future. I am a white woman with a blush of native blood. If people of color support this administration, then why? How can anyone be so deceived? Trump's proclivity towards candor exists in only his brief, honest moments. The rest of the time, he is busy lying to the public--about everything. He told us with great candor about what he would do. He told his followers to "stop the steal," and they attempted to take away our democratic choice. Soon we will have a White House with more unelected power, more unelected power than ever. This isn't just about a few billionaires, but also the fact that Trump is compromised. I will leave it to you to fill in the blanks. But you know of whom I speak. It is even possible that Trump is compromised by more than one state actor. He told us what he would do. Now, please, listen to how he will describe his victory. Do not turn away from Trump. If you turn away from Trump, you turn away from what is controlling him. Think about that.

    The roll out of new semester instruction looks rushed and shallow. When we only share the surface of a meaningful text and overlook the author's importance to our history and landscape of letters, we do our students an injustice.

    When we privilege test-prep style analytical writing over expressivism, we fail our students. To learn to write well, students must practice traditional essay forms on subjects that are cared for, that spark enthusiasm and-self discovery. Analyzing, and then trying to crank out a five-paragraph essay about nothing, is the fastest way to teach a student to hate writing.

    This type of instruction builds anger and frustration over an art form (the essay) that generally lends itself to joy and learning. Writing to learn develops the mind, bringing clarity to new concepts and highlighting patterns and plausible outcomes. Reading a boring text (all texts are boring if you are only dipping into the surface), and then trying to write about the text without adequate information, is a complete waste of time.

    No wonder so many of our marginalized students in public school reject literacy as a tortuous, outdated, concept without relevance. No wonder our students resort to plagiarism and artificial intelligence to complete assignments.

    I am perplexed by school hierarchies. People with obvious qualifications and experience are set aside in favor of people with really nothing. These people with really nothing simply recycle mistakes. If they are in charge of an entire subject at their school, why do they not take extreme measures, like investing in a real education in that subject, so their teachers and students can benefit from knowing them? Teaching a subject in a high school must mean that the teacher loves the material and knows it well. I rarely meet anyone working in my literary and cultural field that truly knows what they are doing or how important it is.

    Some of the incompetence that I have witnessed over these years of public education horrify me. I love books and letters, and to see people trash our treasures in this way confuses and depresses me. My students deserve a better education, an education that will support them in the pursuit of their personal goals and dreams; and selfish adults only care about their paycheck, job security, and that tiny bit of power. Why do they not make a personal investment to find out what they don't know? It's as if the subject of English urges anyone with a dose of Dunning-Kruger to apply.

    And finally, I am far from teacher of the year, but I am also a subject area expert. My philosophies of composition and education collide with the mismanagement and incompetence that I regularly resist and write about. If my magic wand could make changes, it would start at the top. Treating teachers and students like scores is at the root of this problem because this is why we have a shortage of real professionals.

    Highly qualified experts go elsewhere for employment. If I didn't care so much about my students and my subject, the mismanagement and disrespect of both, I would too. I consistently dedicate myself to bringing awareness to this problem and advocating for change. Change means asking that instructors and curriculum writers at the high school level achieve a subject area masters.

    I know that many of you are checking back to read my thoughts on Trump et. al., and here I go with a brief summary of my biggest fears. I am horrified that this many people struggle to understand basic humanity and basic math. If the rich enjoy more tax cuts, if we implement tariffs, if we reduce our work force, the work force employed by slaughter houses and such, we pay more. In addition to that, if we vote to destroy people, like the Ukrainians and the Palestinians, then we no longer sleep at night. These terrible decisions will haunt us. This isn't just about the cost of gas, this is also about suffering, rape, and torture. A vote for Trump is a vote for ugliness and cruelty.

 Soon our country passes into the hands of this crazy rich person, and most of us that view him as such suffer from a ton of anxiety, especially when we think of how our friends and neighbors may have voted. Each time the crazy rich person fumbled with hateful and violent language, or acted out in ways that demean our highest office, I prayed that decent Americans would turn away and vote for the more positive and professional candidate. Like most people that vote blue, I am horrified that people that I know and trust would vote against their own interests, and the interests of women and children, to support tax cuts for filthy rich Americans, to pass off power to someone not qualified, and to threaten our democracy with people that lack respect for our country's value system.

    I agree that the Harris Walz ticket presented us with some overly liberal policy changes, such as this thing with affordable housing. If you want to alienate suburban women, just suggest that you intend to install affordable housing in their cushy neighborhoods. I already know, and so does everyone, the failures of public housing. When politicians start talking about this, we all imagine the ruins of Detroit and Chicago, the run-down high rises, and drug and gang infested neighborhoods. I think of how a couple of affordable housing apartment buildings impacted me personally, and I know that this type of remedy sometimes presents with positive changes that fail to attract attention, and often signals these negative changes that become glaringly obvious. To run a campaign on this idea of building millions of affordable housing structures rightfully alarmed suburban women. These kinds of drastic interventions make us think of wasted tax money and lower real estate values. She should never have brought this up if she wanted to win.

    If the thought of mass deportations fail to horrify you, imagine our government building transfer camps to house humans. These camps will start out not unlike Nazi Germany, minus the deadly showers and outdoor ovens. As an American, I do not want this for any nonviolent offender, even if they landed in our country illegally. I can't imagine the fear and dread in these communities, the feelings of imminent disaster, and how this threat will affect the minds and behaviors of our immigrant people. To live in fear is to live in stress. To know that everything can be lost, including your new home life, lends itself to thoughts of self destruction. Those of us that work in the public will begin to see, firsthand, the consequences of this threat. We will see children suffer and women suffer. The suffering of women and children doesn't seem to phase this administration. They seem to like it. And what will happen to these "transfer stations" when the government tires of using them on immigrant peoples? Will they then use them on us?

    Elon Musk, a full blown symbol of corporate fascism, seems oblivious to his own unethical and scary habits and words. He controls an entire portfolio of government contracts, so I fail to see how his involvement in our decision making isn't a conflict of interest. I find it horrifying that he sat in on a call with President Zelensky, and I hate that any crazy rich person would try to overpower or control a man fighting for his country's freedom and for the survival of his population. By talking to Zelensky, Musk literally pointed out that he oversees the country's military satellites, access to WIFI, and other advanced technologies, even if only implied, the threat is substantial. Putin bombs Ukrainian infrastructure each and every day, and now this courageous defender must also contemplate the loss of funding, hardware, and technology. I don't want Musk lurking in the background of my military or my government as some sort of shadow force. He is just a crazy rich man, nothing more.

    Finally, everyone wants to point to Matt Gaetz as the supreme bad choice for attorney general. But I encourage the media to not focus on him and focus on Putin's little girl, Tulsi Gabbard. This person will condemn all Ukrainians to a certain and horrific death so that she can do the bidding of Putin. She is a woman with nothing inside, an empty and ugly shell. She will become a blood covered symbol of violent atrocity. All of Trump's appointees lack moral and intellectual stamina, and none of them make decisions based on logic or truth, but only on hysteria and conspiracy. Like many Americans, I am horrified at what is happening to our country. I am confused that my own friends and neighbors would throw us to the hyenas for cheaper eggs and cheaper gas. I wonder if they contemplated their own blood covered hands.

    We can still fight, but I don't think our media is up to the task. Since the beginning of this mess, the media has "sane-washed" the idiotic statements and actions of Donald Trump, as if he should be considered nothing more than a mild annoyance. Trump himself is a Russian asset, a troll, and an idiot. To think that we allowed this to grace the halls of our capital even one time is beyond belief. With nothing new to offer except more hate and chaos, our voting public reeled him back in even when decent Republicans begged them not to. It is as if they all cling to him like he is the great mother Koala. They cling to him because they want to raid our country's coffers and shaft its peoples. This is about nothing but power and hatred and greed.

    My old lawyer and I, Chris Tritico, went to a meeting together with the dumbest principal in the history of Houston Public Education. She came to her employment after a stint at a downtown charter school that was shuttered because of falsified records, including entire classes that students had no knowledge of ever taking. She worked as a "pretend" English teacher, as many people do now, in this environment of fake classes and forged records.

    Months before her arrival to the district, the school support officer hired me after I modeled a lesson on Lucille Clifton's poem, Sorrows, to a group of tough, urban, high school kids. Soon after, this amazing leader left the district with the promise that I, and other staff members, would be granted an experienced and competent principal. Instead, we ended up with this fake English teacher that was only 28-years old and had zero knowledge of anything. We all recognized this immediately, and I thought back on my choice of poems and what an ironic warning it was. I think of how these Sorrows continue and what they mean for our society and our children.

    She wanted to fire me because I implemented ten minutes of silent reading time at the beginning of class, and this activity contradicted what she was reading in Doug Lemov's book, Teach Like a Champion. I've met Lemov, and I believe his book has some great ideas in it, but his important book is not that one, but Reading Reconsidered instead. In the latter book, he studies and researches 300 experienced English teachers of merit. But she wanted me doing test prep as a daily warmup. At our meeting, Tritico slides the stack of research across the conference table to her, the research that shows that sustained silent reading improves fluency, vocabulary, stamina, and a host of other good things. She angrily shoves it back to him. He asked her, "Don't you even want to look at this?" She responded with a firm no.

    At that time, most decent school systems already implemented some sustained silent reading at the beginning of class. This idea was not a new innovation, and it was not my sole idea. In fact, my mentor taught me the importance of this and why I should do it. The standards didn't change to include this requirement until much later in 2017. I like to think that me and my powerful lawyer contributed to these needed changes in state standards. I had students in my classes that had never owned a book, had never read a book, thought reading was an uncool waste of time, and, in some cases, wanted to read but didn't know how. In my classes they started to argue over the books. I heard them talk excitably and passionately about plots and writers for the first time. Because of the excitement, my donor and I packed my classroom full of books and Scholastic Magazines, and I tried to continue with the silent reading. The principal would strut into the classroom with her squad and denigrate me in front of my students. I received frivolous write-ups and hateful emails. The students would ask me why the principal didn't like me. Thirty-percent of the campus population received special education services, and the evils of poverty crept into everything. My students came to school with trauma, hunger, and homelessness. Many of my kids suffered from illnesses that are now connected to a nearby toxic dump in their neighborhood.

    My program worked, and my scores climbed, but the problems with poverty and trauma manifested in all classrooms. The squad tried to tweak my benchmark exam results, but the explanation failed during the meeting. My kids told me "we tried for you." I wanted them to try for their community, for themselves. The students asked me again and again why she didn't like me. The fact that my students worried about this is a testament to her incompetence. No responsibility like that belongs on a student's mind. She owes me an apology, especially after the standards were rewritten in 2017 to include silent reading. She owes those children a debt. But, of course, she was later discontinued for her continued incompetence. My lawyer and I lost our small battle in the beginning, but we can enjoy this victory for students and teachers. It is, at least, a massive, "I told you so."

    The issue in public education is a lack of real expertise. Now that the English major has been hollowed out and watered down, now that the emphasis is on skills that are rapidly replaced by AI and other technologies, we face a new crisis: friends of friends, and friends of those friends, and friends of relative's friends, climb eagerly into administrative positions with the speed of lightning. They might have a few English credits, so they might teach a few years, enroll into a master of education in curriculum or leadership, and then fly away like little bugs. They know so little about the subject of English, they aren't even cognizant of their own learning gaps. Because they have no knowledge of what they don't know, they teach for years and years and still learn nothing new. They sit comfortably spewing dummied down nonsense while making a big check off the taxpayer. The whole thing is absurd.

    For example, if a high schooler knows nothing of irony, satire, and ambiguity in texts, then how in the world do they comprehend anything complex? But I was told the other day that they need not know because they can tell it's there. It's like they have a sixth sense of these technical text attributes. That is one of the dumbest things I ever heard. And the source of this comment is making more money than I am and sits around in a powerful campus position. This is like the time I sat in a meeting and was told by my department chair that "we aren't cramming this crap down our kids' throats" in regards to whole class novels. If you aren't consistently and repetitively taught the parts of a text, then how are you to write with style and voice yourself? When people sit around unaccountable, all this means is that the ignorance rolls around like jeans in a dryer, making noise while slowly drying up.

    When someone like me comes around that truly loves their subject, the posers instantly recognize their own inadequacies and begin to take offense to any suggestions no matter how mildly put. This is a form of imposter syndrome, this willingness to attack someone for their accomplishments. I don't know if anyone understands the problem, but the whittling away of the English major presents with some truly horrifying social problems. Even mainstream publications are beginning to write about incoming college students and how they cannot read nor write. These publications, such as The Atlantic, point out that professors actively dumb down the curriculum to accommodate these new learners that are in some cases nearly illiterate. Meanwhile, real English teachers get pushed aside because of their intensity and love for the subject. This crisis isn't just an inconvenience, nor a disservice to our students, but it also magnifies a truly dangerous outcome: a country full of people that cannot distinguish between reality and conspiracy. After decades of neoliberal austerity, our society is under attack because people cannot differentiate between fact and fiction.

    I climbed down from a nice paying position into one that I believed would accommodate my new health concerns only to discover that the problems with expertise exist in unexpected spaces and would continue to cause me Sorrows. I am now an older teacher, but unable to retire. And if I retire this year or next, does this mean I failed or gave up? Maybe not if I keep sharing these stories. Parents understand that something is wrong with public education but placing inexperienced, under-qualified people in high schools is not a solution. If the public took the English major seriously, like they do the math major, then maybe some issues with literacy would resolve.

Let English Teachers Teach: the audacity of non-experts

Sadly, sometimes, micro-managers will try to control, even minimize, what figurative devices and literary tropes students learn. This urge to undermine faculty and micro-manage instruction leads to comprehension gaps. Imagine that I’m deep into a discussion about a text, and my students have no knowledge of the writer’s tone. No matter how hard I work the text, no matter the many times students test and write to learn, the subtle meanings, the inferences that lead to an understanding of what lurks between the lines, or even an understanding of author’s message, will become unattainable for my class. Tone is essential to understanding, yet I have been ordered to withhold instruction for this skill and others. I don’t see how an understanding of tone, a thorough and chronic teaching of this, could lead to anything negative.

This type of disturbing micro-management reveals a lack of trust in the classroom educator. Why would any senior educator ask teachers to delay badly needed concepts or insist on a lock step pedagogical approach when each teacher and each class will present with widely different gaps and interests?

It seems like sabotage.

I wonder why school districts move regular teachers without subject area degrees into executive positions when they really need expertise and experience in combination. No matter how many years you’ve been teaching a subject, if you think that withholding skills that aid comprehension supports any retainment of information, or an understanding beyond the surface, then you are completely wrong. Tone, irony, diction, metaphor, parallelism, and so forth, are all skills that require more than one or two mini-lessons to conquer. These literary devices, tropes, and motifs, require constant and chronic re-visits.

Secondary schools face two extreme challenges: the talent drain and a lack of content area specialists. Content area specialists typically earn a terminal degree in their subjects, not in education or some other off market degree that isn’t specific. A master of education is nice to have, but it isn’t the same as a subject area degree. You can teach a subject at the secondary level for decades and still not know much about what you convey to students if you refuse to invest in your own advanced education in a thorough and dedicated way.

What if you tried to teach Swift without first teaching irony and satire? Your students would think that people in 1725 were actually dining on fresh babies to avert the famine. This example, while it may seem a bit odd, is not that original and encapsulates this problem. Without a full and rigorous understanding of an author’s technique, students are left in the dark and become bored with challenging materials. You might wonder why I care, but this is my last act; I am older and becoming impatient with public school antics. Reforming education isn’t about the classroom as much as it is about the leadership.

When leaders resort to toxic and non-productive mandates, no matter the subject, students suffer and fall behind.

Dear Gentle Reader,

What? Oh wait! Yes, I did watch the ending of Bridgerton, and I am overjoyed that the script focused on the blurry space and often fraught relationship between audience and writer, a communal, quiet and thoughtful void that stresses importance on the humanities and our fundamental rights as thinkers and readers. But I work in the real world of education, and it is here that pedagogical change must happen. I am so tired of the lurid and chronic sing-song voices of incompetence meddling around in my students' writings. Academic work is creative work. If I'm writing a poem, I am sending a rhetorical message. Yes, it qualifies as something creative. If I am writing a paper that questions how nonfiction texts are truly high literary art, I am doing creative work again. In all writings, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, I am making an argument. If I am making an argument, then I must use the tools of the trade. If I use the tools of the trade, I am using creativity. In fact, the whole process of writing is creative work.

Today I overheard someone new to the art of teaching talk about how one must never use personal pronouns when writing to the state standardized test. This nonsense must stop. The state exemplars are full of plural personal pronouns and singular personal pronouns (I and we). The idea that someone in authority would demand that students write from some abstract and distant voice is completely ridiculous. You can't read an effective argument that positions itself above and beyond its readers to convey its message, no matter how convoluted or abstract the base material or evidence. These types of papers are usually written by scientists for scientific audiences, and we in the world of English composition sometimes pull those out and dust them off just to get a good laugh at the sheer pretentious style in that kind of composing. Pretense fails to adequately communicate anything except attitude and maybe some boring facts.

I am equally sick of fake grammar rules. And I really mean this. People new to the art of teaching and writing will argue all day that you can't start a sentence with the word "because." I hate to bust their bubbles, but "because" is perhaps the most important word in all of rhetoric. If you use the word "because" at the beginning of your well constructed and arguable thesis statement, then you automatically set up a cause and effect pattern of arrangement. In times of stress, especially during an exam, a "because" statement can help you arrange an argument that will win the reader over to your train of thought while demonstrating your ability to write and think. Because so many new English teachers lack basic composition theory classwork, students experience extreme bouts of writer's block, struggle with grammatical construction, and almost never write beyond standard sentence constructions.

Peter Elbow, and other prominent scholars, argue that these fake grammar rules, that spread like fire and gossip, pose a severe problem for beginner writers. Students read stories and essays that are written by professionals. Professionals know these grammar rules are fake. When you read something one way, and then you are forbidden to do it yourself, a confusion lurks under the surface of your consciousness. This confusion becomes a barricade to good writing. Students dawdle around and worry more about breaking silly rules than cranking out good content. They start to write, and then suddenly, they start to think: "Oh Wow, I don't think I can start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction. A coordinating conjunction is only for sentence combining." Dear Gentle Reader, that is bogus rule numero uno. And I know this for a fact...so do you, under the surface of your consciousness.

Splitting an infinitive? Please do. Kicking adjectives for action verbs? Do it every time!

The problem with teaching is that too many spoons are in the soup, and many of these spoons are bent or full of holes. You want a spoon that incorporates all of the good things into one big blob. What you don't want is an essay full of cheesy and superficial, thin transitions. I read papers that are emblazoned with firstly's, and secondly's, and thirdly's. First of all, don't. I see a ton of in-conclusions, to conclude, to sum up, and sometimes, and this really upsets me, I will see a student completely rewrite the thesis statement because they've been told year after year to restate it at the beginning of their conclusion. Restating your thesis in your conclusion is so silly, especially in a short paper. In the kinds of papers that kids are writing, you can usually look up and reread the thesis without even turning the page. Why in the world would you need to restate for your reader? If you're writing a dissertation, well maybe you should restate your thesis, especially if your dissertation is full of fake grammar rules and bores your reader to death. They might have forgotten what they're reading by the end of the 256th page.

The year is just getting started. I know I have a ton of work to do. I hope my writers will believe me when I tell them to use the word "because." Last year I had to make a whole presentation to convince my kids that the word "because" was a widely accepted word that had not done significant jail time. Those coordinating conjunctions suffer the same fate, a misinterpretation of their portability and usage. To boldly go where no man has gone before. Or to go boldly? You decide. I'm going to split.

Happy new academic year! Go Yard Birds!!!!

Everyone loves a good cat story and my friendly writer from Norman, Oklahoma, likes to publish her feline companion tales wherever they are needed. Her stories are little bright spots in my world of climate change, disruptive people problems, and political faux pas, and her kind and gentle nature is a contrast to my often misinterpreted academic style, an issue I am too adrift to work on.

She is no slob behind the pen, so I am including her thoughts on what it means to become a fully invested and devoted writer. First, lighten up with her little cat musings. It's a hot Sunday afternoon on a summer day. It's a day for the porch, iced tea, and cool chicken salad sandwiches on white bread.

Why not read something?

...

Who ever sent me the book about the naughty cats that are trying to bump off their owners, this story is for you. Since the book's arrival, You-You, the cat, has arisen from his deathbed inspired with new ideas. As you know, he delights in tormenting me, but has slacked off due to infirmity. Now, he simply contents himself with lying on the kitchen floor wherever I need to be. For example, if I am cooking, he sleeps in front of the stove. If I'm washing dishes, he camps underneath the sink. So far, I haven't stepped on him.

Yesterday, I set down piddle pads on the floor for him to use. (He is in the pee-off-the porch-level of old-cat-man decrepitude.) Suspicious that he would be complying with any idea about using piddle pads, I followed him and watched in horror as he lunged toward a cell phone that had somehow fallen on top of the pads. I only managed to whisk the phone away before the great cat deluge began.

To my horror, I discovered that it was my phone that he had nearly deactivated by drowning. I was so angry that I cursed, especially, when You-You stood on the pads but aimed his stream at the carpet. Over my shouting, I could hear Lee, my husband, calling from the other room, telling me to calm down before I had a heart attack.

Yes, the book worked. It gave You-You a new reason to live. He is outside now, happily lounging on the porch, revived by my near brush with death of his own creating. Bless his evil cat heart. I love him so. ~Jennie

 

Writing, In a State of Flux

A few days ago, acclaimed Native American mystery novelist, Sara Sue Hoklotubbe, shared a great meme with fellow writers. It said, to wit: “To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself. At the end of the day, every single thing that you, the rhetorical you, put down on paper is a risk. You risk making a fool of yourself, you risk rejection, and you risk failure.” The former is valuable wisdom, as stated by the late, great Ann Rice, noted Vampire lady, and her warning resonates--with me at least. My family is distantly related to Edgar Allan Poe, and I was warned by my own mother to never put anything down on paper. Looking back on Poe’s private life, I’ve often wondered what in particular prompted her to say that—but then, as an artist, Poe had a lot of baggage to work with. However, as Poe is relevant to this day. It seems that all the very best artists have had issues! We see that working through one’s issues through the written word may lighten the burden for others who are overwhelmed by their journey.

As for myself, I plan to just keep on writing. I figure that, since I make a fool of my own self at least nine or ten times a day anyway, all without really trying, I might as well make a career of it. Indeed, Anne Rice’s insights into both human and vampire nature warns that I will probably indeed make an ass of myself. Therefore, I will giddily take my MILWAUKEE INKZALL, ultrafine, black, red pen to hand, and throw caution to the winds. (One wonders, is that popular term a repeatable idiom or verboten cliché?) I will defy my parent’s attempt to shield me from ridicule and prove Rice’s theory correct. In retrospect, I’ve made a fool of myself many times before. But I have always survived the humiliation, and, so, will you.

We bravely say that writers write to encourage others on, however, why would any relatively sane individual offer up their private thoughts on paper and open themself up to public derision? In short, just why do writers write? We write because we love to write, and, because, I fear, that we have a compulsion—a creative compulsion—that’s almost bipolar in nature. The sheer act of creating is a joy—giving character’s being and words and a destiny is heady stuff. Sadly, this high is followed by the “drop”, where you release these creations upon the world. It is probably called the drop, because your insides fall to the floor and turn flipflops like a fish out of water, while you are waiting for validation or lack of it. (Again, I love me some good cliches, can I use fish out of water as a metaphor?)    (Oh, wait, I already did.)

Believe me, I’ve asked some trusted sources and the drop provides the same traumatic experience for successful authors and unpublished writers alike. So, here we are angsting, after releasing our child of the mind into the void. We experience the dark night of the soul as our characters did, while we breathlessly wait to find out, as in the words of songwriter Celldweller, “Am I in Sync?” Here, the artist anxiously questions if anyone else out there will “get” him? In Celldweller’s case, many do. Celldweller’s personal voyage through pain and despair gives others courage to pull the stake out of their own heart and place it firmly through their tormentor’s. Celldweller’s words take away his abuser’s power to harm him. If you read the comment lines on his releases, there are many people who appreciate the singer-songwriter giving their personal trauma validation—yes, they’ve been unfairly victimized and they’ve been through something. No, it wasn’t easy surviving. However, these victims are slathering lotion on scars, they haven’t been silenced, they are still here, their feelings’ matter, it is not a pity party to embrace personal pain, and damn all the condescension from those compassionless judgers, who have never suffered, straight to hell.

But, now you say, “So, catharsis is well and good, but, why should I bother to write at all, when the world is literally and figuratively melting around me?” Just like in Run The Jewels’s musical offerings, Indie-musician Blue Stahli’s anthem, “ULTRAnumb,” or Miyazaki’s movie, “Nausica,” the atmosphere quivers with fury. Everything is polarized and vice versa: right is angry with left, left is angry with progressives, this religion is angry at that other religion, vegetarians despise omnivores, mask objectors hate mask wearers, yin is yang, and, etc.

However, humanity is self-aware. We anticipate that the end is coming. We are threatened by the existential doom of our way of life that so many politicians and business people happily destroying along with the resulting wild ride to destruction. Writing can help you make sense of your OWN life and not be at the mercy of every nutjob that comes along touting a baseless conspiracy designed to hold you sway. Behold, the great and powerful Oz! But, pay no mind to that man lurking in the shadows behind the curtain!”

Now, back to that end of the world thingee that I mentioned before. Let it bring out the best in you; we are a mortal species that have always lived under the specter of death. It’s a given that nothing lives forever, and even our sun will go nova one day. Nothing is different, except for the rate of change, which has sped up to an astronomical mind-bending rate, on our self-inflicted pathway to extinction. Perhaps, this is what the song of the whales’ mean—death is coming for you and me, lets pause and enjoy our cool blue sea, let us celebrate our mutual beautiful company. Existential threats serves to make everything, somehow, more poignant, more meaningful, more bittersweet than ever before, and writing provides a sea anchor to slow us down on our way over the abyss’ edge and into the unknown, much as the blue whale stands on tail and pours his heart out to his lovers in the sea—“Whales Weep Not”.

So, by now you are pouring yourself a good stiff drink or something of that nature. Fine, the relaxation might provide you some unique insight to put into your project. Strange times call for even stranger measures, so, I will call upon the notorious legacy of actor, author, and screen writer Ed Wood Jr. for inspiration. Ed Wood, tortured creator of “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, admonishes new writers to “Just keep writing.” He says that your story may not get any better but you will. It is reported that Ed Wood’s death mask expression looked as if he had seen into the pits of hell.

Sadly, Wood led a tortured existence and I guess that he wasn’t quite through wrestling with his private demons before he jumped onto the next phase of his karmic wheel. However, we are still on this mortal plane, where writing is the preferred method of demonic wrestling. I would recommend it to the real thing--having done that in a dream, I must warn you that those little devils can inflict a lot of physical pain on your way to the truth. Sadly, you most likely will need to wrestle your demon, in order to get at the truth of what you are trying to say and a writer should always tell the truth--no matter what.

At this point, you are saying, “but, I’ve got nothing important to say; I personally don’t care to wrestle with demons, and, everything is going to hell anyway, so what’s the point?” Before you give up writing to take up drinking on a full-time basis—remember, that the “truth will set you free.” Consider this nugget of advice offered up by poet Sarah Webb.  Out of an outpouring of compassion, Webb has declared that a writer should keep on going, because there may be someone out there who needs to hear just exactly what you have to say.

Dr. Webb is an author who walks her talk (Oh, oh is that slang, an idiom, or a cliché?). She reaches out to fellow victims, by publishing a poetry book, that describes how she finally found the strength to walk away from the man, whom should have cherished and protected she and her child and did anything but. Sarah’s confessions are some of the bravest things that I’ve ever read, and I admire her sacrifice completely. She put the complete truth out there for the entire world to benefit from her experience.

You might ask yourself, why would anyone deliberately put themselves through all that emotional pain again just to tell their truth? Certainly, purging oneself of haunting memories is healing. However, the poet could have just as easily journaled her experiences and then burned the papers that they were written upon and experienced catharsis just the same. I believe, the poet shared her pain, because, of her unique gift—the ability to weave a story that lifted others above their own trauma and allowed readers to also heal. We writers can explain that there are many who have suffered, and when their readers learn that they are not the only one to be degraded, then, perhaps, they can rise above the shame that their abuser has used to control them, and spring others out of their eternal hell, too.

Writing is a paradox; by showing ourselves at our most vulnerable, we can achieve Maat. The willingness to go on in the face of adversity, the nobility of sacrificing ourselves for others is strengthening. The bravery to spit non-existence in the face and say that though we are winding down the path of entropy, though, the moon is full of grief, and the birds no longer sing, though, the sun who gave us life will mean our death, the human condition is sacred. We are meta. We acknowledge and value our beautiful place in the universe. Our souls are full of love for our fellow man. When we overcome our differences and hatred, we will mirror and pour our beauty out until the end of our time. My friends, take hold of that universe and wrestle it into being.

~ Jennie

Trump Trial Cliffhanger and the Consequences

Everyone makes a mistake now and then, but usually these mistakes don’t include six-figure payouts to porn stars while campaigning for president. Americans that care and understand the consequences sit in anticipation of the hush money trial verdict, a decision that could impact American democracy and cast a cloud of immorality and unethical compromise on our standards for leadership and politics. In other words this decision can dramatically hurt or dramatically improve the future of our country. Americans will begin to view leaders through this lens of compromise because the barriers and norms, the moral and ethical expectations for political leadership collapsed with Trump’s cruel, under-educated rhetoric and illegal, authoritarian mandates.

If the jury decides not to convict, autocrats like Trump will rejoice. The standards for leadership, fractured and in steady decline, will ultimately collapse. Our future governance will offer opportunities for profit and power to the exact wrong personality type: more Marjorie Taylor Greenes, more Lauren Bobarts, more strong men icons; a future of chaos and cruelty will become the new norm during a now unavoidable climate crisis. Some argue that this condition of cruelty and chaos, this collapse into civil unrest is a consequence of 9/11 and the political mistakes that followed the misguided war in Iraq. Others argue that this turn in society is non existent because the United States never provided a beacon of hope, that it has always, since slavery, been nothing but a cruel sham.

When I first started to analyze Trump’s speaking style, I considered him a buffoon, a simple minded, blathering idiot, that spewed nonsense and superficial vulgarities. But now I see him differently; I see him as a tool, most likely a Russian tool. The autocratic oppressive mind believes in Trump, whether it be a MAGA follower, an insurrectionist fool, or a power seeking greedy governor. Trump is a destructive, yet perfect, fun way to indulge in your lowest hateful tendencies. Fictionalizing threats, pretending pizza places are porn hubs, denying the death and murder of dozens of school children, and demonizing public sector workers, makes the meaningless mindless every day cycle of work and taxes more palatable for the ordinary, low income adult. Low income adults, people making less than a hundred k in our inflationary, capitalistic society, under a Trump tax plan will carry the debt burden.

Just as it was in the floundering decades of the Roman empire when dictatorships suppressed forensic and deliberative rhetoric, when discourse slipped into frivolities, and democratic ideals became misty memories, the era of Trump performs the same autocratic function, to stifle civil harmony and promote chaos and unrest. Violence is escalating and our civic values of honesty and fairness, compassion and empathy, flounder amidst the negativity. Each citizen must take a new oath, the oath of truth and freedom for all. No matter the outcome of the hush money porn trial, whether Trump steps forward as a presidential candidate, we all must maintain our humanity and continue to fight for equality. Only truth and equality will support civil stability in the new apocalyptic future.