This year I am going to try and complete two National Board components. Last year I successfully sat for the Component One exam and that provided evidence of accomplished teaching. Component Two is designed to prove that I fairly provide differentiation for all of my students. My worry is that somehow my featured activity/lesson/artifacts will fall short of the requirements. I'm not sure if National Board envisions a large project activity or some small specific skill, whether it can be an outcropping of some paper through a writing conference, or if it must entail a specific standard and strategy. I'm skipping over Component Three and moving ahead to Component Four, which my coach encouraged me to do. But now that I've watched some YouTube videos on this subject, I am wondering if she actually misguided me. The problem is that I have only 2 more years to get these done, and they are only approved yearly in December. 

In my program, I am lacking an English coach. They did assign me one, but she failed to stay with the program. My official coach is a middle school math teacher, someone that truly doesn't seem to understand the kind of advanced English classes that I teach. My work products are possibly a bit foreign to her. She already downgraded one of my practice submissions which is a final exam paper followed up with feedback and then a student written reflection with specific prompts. Most of my classes are dual credit anyway, and this kind of lesson might have seemed extreme to someone that doesn't teach much writing.

Even worse, I am receiving no support at all from my campus or my district. Other teachers around my area receive extra planning time, financial compensation, and assigned cohorts in order to achieve this difficult certification. My district refuses to even accept the micro credentials that I complete for Board certification practice, even though the rigor is extremely high, possibly higher than anything else a teacher can do other than the actual Board Components. 

I'm not confident that I will achieve a National Board Certificate because of the time frame and my lack of support, but I'm going to try anyway even though it has been thousands of dollars out of my own pocket. I am learning to become a better teacher by engaging with this process even if my participation is only superficial because of my challenges. 

As a young twenty-something living in Oklahoma, I abandoned any dreams of ever becoming a teacher. The low pay and the location interfered with my idyllic imagining of a bright and wealthy future. I wanted to make "as much money as the men." I often felt insecure and homeless, a possible feeling of negativity left over from a difficult childhood. Later, after I partially completed my first degree, I started to imagine myself as a teacher again. But I ended up returning to my previous work because money was tight, and I had my little boy to worry about. 

Finally, I managed to navigate myself back into education. Now I am happy with my choices. Even so, I am always critical of myself, so I am possibly feeling unworthy of National Board Certification, and maybe that is why I feel so lost in the process and need additional support and encouragement.

I know I can do this; I know I can learn from this experience; I know my students will benefit; I know I have to try.

Today I went out to the Ulta store on my pre 2023 makeup run, and I am sad to report that I got pushed aside like an irrelevant old lady. It's true, I am getting kind of old, and I have been sick with some kind of stuff that might as well have been Covid for all the misery it's causing me; my hair looks kind of dry and I am palish and not so well and perky. But that is no reason to treat me like a weak shopper. 

I bought what I wanted, what I could find, and I headed out to Target. The Target looked like a platoon of looters had stormed through. Literally nothing  remained intact. An older man (yes, there are people living that are older than me) helped me manage my purchase at the automatic self-checkout. Normally I wait in line, and I don't care how long, because I want to support workers and their jobs. But this time I didn't care after the brush off at Ulta. 

I came home to the dogs after listening to the sadness in the voice of my son's ex-girlfriend during a phone call. Bummed out, I vacuumed the floor and made some guacamole. I then proceeded to write a student evaluation that is due, for some bizarre reason, on Monday. In other words, it isn't much of a party around here, not this year. 

But these are all White America problems. If I lived in Ukraine, I'd probably really have something to complain about. I'd be ducking Putin's stupidity and callous disregard for life. I'd be hungry and cold, and I would probably be struggling to keep my pets alive. I might be homeless, or hiding in a shelter. But here in the United States, I am currently under no threat of a missile hitting my neighborhood. The only missiles around here cost an arm and a leg down at the area firework stand.  The drunk drivers will be out, and Harris County is prosecuting as many of them as they can tonight. That means you can get hauled in for driving drunk and then you can get convicted all in the same night. It's like the Whataburger of courtrooms.

I don't know why I am writing. But I am glad you are reading. Happy and Prosperous 2023!

Meaning in Life

Whenever I look to find meaning in my life, I not only access my spiritual side, but I also think about the wonderful work that I do everyday. All of my life, I've been an employed person, sometimes more than one job at once. I think of my current career (teaching) as a way of helping young people meet their college goals. I not only help them to write and read critically, but I also do the hard work to help them make choices. Most of all I encourage my students to not waste time. What, if at the end of your life, you felt an empty and overwhelming sense of regret because you failed to help the people that needed you? What if you had something to offer society, but you sat at home and did nothing but complain? 

Negativity and Loss

Some people become so negative and lost that they lose any sense of everyday reality. Self entitlement and anger can bring on an aversion to the ordinary sounds of life. A running car engine, a misfire, barking dogs, and chirping birds, the sounds of children playing and screaming in joy, all of this pushes the aimless and unemployed into a senseless rage. A severe disability sometimes develops, misophonia. Misophonia usually begins in childhood, usually in girls, and can cause severe reactions and irritability that can result in abusive, fit-throwing, pathological behaviors. 

Actual Experience

My old neighbor experienced this empty and erratic behavior firsthand from a comfortable position on his living room couch. Suddenly, midafternoon, a bedraggled woman frantically burst into his apartment and screamed directly into his face, "I'm from the HOA board, and I'm doing a dog-bark- investigation"! Justin held the couch position a bit too shocked to really move or stand up, and managed to mutter a brief, "Oh." The unwelcome woman hurried past him to the back door of his apartment, and tapped angrily on the window causing her wrist decorated in junk jewelry to loudly jangle. Justin's dog jumped up and started barking. "That's it! That's the dog right there"! The frantic yelling and screaming caused the dog to bark and claw at the back door. Justin gathered his senses, shook off the shock, and scrambled to his feet. "Of course," he politely said, "if a strange person is standing in the house tapping the window, the dog is going to go crazy"!

A Qualifier

Barking dogs on beautiful South Texas days sound normal, like mall music on an outdoor ice rink. Children and Harley motorcycles, the birds in the trees, the sounds of sirens and traffic, all of these noises of life are no reason to act erratic. The negativity, the boredom, the loneliness, confuses the idle brain. Dogs barking, kids playing, adults starting their cars, people talking, all of this drives the empty and the "voluntarily unemployable" into a deep and dark rage. Nothing is too low for the negative and lonely. Sometimes they engage in conspiracy theories, misuse the authorities, and send out hateful mail. They may vandalize the property of the people that they imagine are too noisy, poison or torture animals, or even physically assault someone. 

But all they really need to do is find a purpose in life. Find some cause to contribute to. Find meaningful employment. Find a way out of the neighborhood. 

A Little Advice

I crossed paths with such a person, and my experience caused me to notice that she wrote hateful diatribes about homeless people. She would post her complaints while suggesting something about politics and her own self-entitled sense of privilege. Later, she moved on to complain about cats. She was feeding cats at her door and finding cats out at restaurants, and so on. Her posts about the cats caused me to fear for them. Even though an average person, not well acquainted with the situation, would probably read nothing into her commentary, I found an implied threat lurking between the lines. 

One piece of advice that I always give my students is to never do something that you think you might regret in five years. You never know what kind of shame you might be forced to carry around if you do something stupid in the moment. Your mind will change and grow, but the consequences of what you did may linger forever. Even if no one discovers your stupidity, you will be forced to live with it. If you've wasted the most productive years of your life doing nothing, then that will come back at sunset for you to remember. You will wonder what you could have done to help people had you tried. 

My health went down when I worked on my subject area masters. Different than an M.Ed, a subject area masters requires you to become an expert, contribute to the academic discipline, and develop a thesis and area of study. As an undergrad, my interest in composition theory, education, and recidivism, led me into a series of interesting papers that felt easy to write, and my department chair and professors supported me with anything I wanted to do, whether it was in the education department or in the English department. For example, I enjoyed the experience of working as a visiting teacher at our local alternative school, and I split my observation schedule between 12th grade English and Kindergarten; splitting that observation time enabled me to imagine vertical alignment and see the big picture as it pertains to childhood development and literacy. I worked on a series of lesson plans for English with another teacher, and I created a lesson plan portfolio on our twelve domains that I donated to the education department when I graduated. Overall, the experiences, the practicum in English, the composition theory classwork, the writing, and the childhood psychology and development classes helped me become a better teacher. When I moved to Texas, I had to basically revisit all of that in order to feel qualified and effective. I worked on weekends, nights, and at all kinds of odd times in order to prepare for my masters. I read incredibly difficult writers and thinkers, such as Kenneth Burke, in order to prepare myself for teaching rhetoric and composition at the college level. I dug into the Theory of the Novel by Lukács, and I reread all of my old college textbooks in order to prepare myself. I worked on my writing using the theories that I learned. I published with my audience in mind, fellow teachers and instructors, and I watched as my writing became more professional and academic. I finally felt prepared.

My health slipped away. On weekends, while other people were out walking and enjoying the beautiful Texas weather, I hunched over my desk. I neglected my child, and I became surly and over-stressed. Taking him to his guitar practices felt like an intrusion on my study time, and working at my school on Saturdays interfered with my writing time. I gained weight. I became unhappy, but I loved my classes with a passion I hadn't felt since I taught English at the alternative school. I inserted the concepts, the beautiful ideas that I learned, into my ninth and tenth grade English classes. I started to teach Advanced Placement English. I navigated the hoard of people that judged me without knowing my struggle. I felt misunderstood. An over zealous and abusive administrator mismanaged me, one in a series of new underprepared principals that I endured early in my teaching career. I started to think that nothing that I did would matter to the world of education because it catered to a long line of people that, in my opinion, were unworthy of their position and relied on connections, instead of expertise, for employment.

The years went by and I became a better teacher. I paid for my own professional development at expensive places like Bard College and Rice University. I earned some scholarships from Bard and Rice, and this extra work helped me become even more professional. I even earned a scholarship as recent as this year from the College Board in order to study in a cohort with a mentor. 

But, apparently, somehow, this year, I am not worth as much to my institution. My institution wants to squabble with me about my adjunct pay. The community college that hired me as an adjunct issued a raise, but none of this money trickled down to me; this raise never trickled down to my fellow coworkers that earned the difficult subject degrees that allowed them to teach dual credit classes. Not only that, my institution wanted to pay me for one less section than last year, even though my enrollment increased substantially, and my students are struggling harder with the material. I wonder where the money is going. I wonder why I am not paid more for my education, the sacrifice that I made for my students, the ongoing cost to my physical health which is now named by my doctor, Type 2 diabetes. To define how this has made me feel, this attack on my professional life, could only be described as depressing. This feeling of unfairness, this disregard and disrespect for my contribution, causes me to feel like leaving my institution, the institution that has become so familiar and family like. Meanwhile, this steady parade of people barely making a contribution seems to increase in size.

(Update) Apparently someone on my campus made a little mistake that affected my pay and this issue will be resolved. Still, adjuncts did receive a raise that the district did not issue. Teachers at all levels are trying to achieve a healthy pay schedule so that they can afford to work and live in their districts among the students, typically inner-city, that need professionals the most. Civil workers deserve a decent and dignified retirement. Anything less is an attack on democracy. Imagine if only novices without college degrees are the main source of our education workforce. What would that look like for our children?

Full time teachers that work hard to improve deserve respect. This practice of underpaying teachers and demonizing them must stop. The endless menagerie of toxic people installed into roles they are literally not educated for, these people that make it a habit to undermine the faculty, need flushed from the school system. People that underpay teachers to the point that teachers can't even afford a home, should be removed from the school system. Politicians that attack teachers and insult them by calling them childish names like "groomers" and "Marxists" must be voted out of public office. People that would restrict a students' right to read the books of their choice, should be forced to read the books themselves, write a lengthy report, and then file their dubious and silly claims. The attack on intellectual life, the attack on writers and thinkers, is a sign of authoritarianism and fascism. This is unacceptable. Installing people into roles that they are not qualified for is another sign of fascism. 

Lift up your real teachers. The teachers that are real, that want to remain in the classroom and not jump out into administration, are worth your protection. Show your respect by calling them teachers, call them faculty, stop calling them staff, provide them with moments of happiness that make them feel special. Pay them what they deserve without trying to find an excuse to take it away. Treat teachers with humanity, dignity, and respect. Remove people that micromanage and ridicule your teaching staff. Provide meaningful professional development opportunities, not busy work.

Thirty-nine years ago I took a cold shower in the middle of winter in a men's restroom in North Dakota. I dried myself with a dirty shirt while standing in grayish water that had backed up from the drain. My long mousy hair covered my skinny frame, and my bare freckled face made me look rather slight and timid. I drove a Peterbilt truck cross- country, hauling steel from the port in Houston and illegal, overweight, loads of grain back. And I treasured my life on the road. Like most young women, I owned a long list of feminine accoutrements, things I adored: a lacy ribbon of asphalt; an emerald shimmering along the northern sky, a collection of twinkling diamonds, and flowers and birds of every color and every song. The lace unfurled its amazing patterns along the fringes of my hood, and sometimes the emeralds would want to be worn with the sapphires, especially on dark, frigid nights, their colors shimmering in the northern sky. The diamonds bedazzled me by making celestial shapes: virgo, scorpio, and Orion. And a small yellow flower would always wave to me from the crack in the road on that two lane highway near Bozeman, Montana, the highway that runs along the Yellowstone River in a race to Wyoming.  

My ten-year old self stood toe to toe with my middle-aged stepfather and argued.

"But I want to go on the truck this holiday. I don't have anything to do here!"

In typical stormy fashion, my impatient and unprepared stepdad shot back, " You don't have a single A this semester!"

I remembered our deal, and I felt some small measure of guilt blush across my freckles. It's true; to go on the road, I had to make straight A's.

"But I meet smart people on the road, and I learn a lot just by riding along with you!"

"Well, what exactly do you learn out there, Ms. Astor?"

"I learn about math for one thing because our load is always overweight. I also learn about people and geography, and while we are waiting on the scale    to close and the cops to get lost, I get to read!"

Wiping his brow with a shop rag, my step-dad stammered, "I'll talk to your mom." 

These little battles about going on the truck became bigger battles in my adult life. But eventually I no longer needed the support of my male relatives.

I became independent. I could make as much money as the men did!

Grinding away at the gears, backing over the curbs, tearing up mudflaps and chrome bumpers, I eventually soloed my way into a long series of good paying trucking jobs. You could find me in a cafe for my one daily stop, not alone, but with a local paper or best selling book. Problem solving and calculating routes, calculating weight and floor space, and practicing safe driving in all kinds of weather and traffic conditions in any kind of geography, all of this became a way of life for me. 

Now I teach high school with a Masters of English, but I only recently started making more money teaching than driving, even though my new career spans eleven years of my life. This is a sad statement on the affairs of teaching, the low pay, the lack of appreciation, and the hard work all teachers must do to become successful. 

I am a product of two vastly different worlds, but I am not alone. I met many drivers that had spent years in colleges working on degrees but preferred life on the road.

I love my worlds, both of them.

    When I think of a "real" man, I imagine a figure that forgives and evolves fearlessly, that carefully chooses the battles that define his character, framing his life in a positive light, while refusing to punish or overpower someone in a weak and harmless position. Real men protect their own legacies.

    I recently ventured out, by invitation, to an event in an Austin bar and immediately felt a sense of overwhelming negativity. The first fake man refused to tell me the location of the ladies room even though he is clearly employed there as a full time sound technician. The fact that he felt comfortable treating a strange woman in a rude and hateful manner set the tone for the rest of the evening. 

    Even more awful, a bassist from another band, a band that didn't appear to have a show at this location on that night, hustled up to my rescue dog, without warning or hesitation, and received a well-deserved nip and growl. Most people, even without much understanding of animals, typically ask before they thrust their fingers into the mouth of a growling canine, but not this dude.

    He then proceeded to stomp about the place, craning his neck and eyeballs around to give me glares, so I asked one of the attendees if they thought the guy looked mad or crazy, or if it was possibly my imagination. Within less than a minute of me making the inquiry, before we even had time to walk away to the patio or escape our position from behind the merchandise table, he came over and rudely called me an asshole. 

    This is just a man having a little fit because he realized how dumb it was to suddenly bounce up and fling his arm down to a strange animal. He felt somehow insulted by the hapless dog, tender feelings of misplaced manhood welled up in his shriveled little heart; women like me that hang around with dogs, we are the enemy. 

    Things became significantly worse when I tried to leave this "establishment" with a bottle of water. Another fake man stopped me at the gate, not 10 feet from my parked convertible, and demanded the "open container." I argued back that it was just water, and he tried to physically relieve me of my completely alcohol free bottle of water, water that I really needed due to the hot and steamy weather.

    By this time I realized that I was fuming, so I let him have my water. I demanded to see the owner or manager, and lo and behold, another fake man appears. I will leave this encounter to your imagination.

    The fake man problem persisted throughout the week. One evening while out walking with dogs, I noticed a stench in the air and water running down the curb. I instantly became alarmed because our community is having some sewage problems due to a big apartment building newly constructed. On the porch near the stench, sits another fake man, sucking on a bourbon and smoking on a cigarette. This particular specimen is a product of Pakistan, but he does not follow the teachings of Mohammed in any manner or style. He is the opposite of what Mohammed would expect in a man. 

    I told him I wanted a "second opinion" on the stench and the sewage running down the curb before I alerted the property management team. He proceeded to rhetorically mansplain, a dirty habit of his that he seems reluctant to eschew. He also rudely refused to rise off his seat and carry his bourbon and smoke the 25 feet to the suspicious smelly water. He is one of our board members. 

    I am potentially the target of a fake man in my professional life. I say potential because the threat is not currently present and hopefully it will remain so; however, this particular fake man wrote a scathing email to me many years ago that I received while visiting many miles from my home. The email was so cruel and vindictive in nature that I immediately became upset and needed to leave. I could hardly drive safely. 

    These specific examples in my actual life do not include men like Donald Trump or Greg Abbott. But women every day are reminded of the evil of a fake man whether they want to think about it or not. We are inundated with poor male examples day in and day out; politics is overrun with fake men, think Ted Cruz. But on the other hand, we have excellent examples of real men, think Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And then just when you feel as if you can close the issue, Volodymyr is offset by the cowardice of Putin. 

    If this simple writing contained a call to action, I would ask men to get it together. Think of how you look when you do stupid stuff, whether you invade a country or call a strange woman an epithet, you are not exhibiting the qualities of manhood. You are part of the problem.

Months into a record breaking heatwave and drought, the drunken sots behind me run a lawn sprinkler morning and evening; I suspect because neither one of them are employed or employable, so I think they sit there in the misty rainbow hoping they don't have to cool the house. The water runs down the street 100 feet around the corner to a parking area and ponds on the hard pavement. The water puddles around day and night, the only water that is wasted in the entire community, but nothing is done about it even though we are asked by the county officials to save water, even though we have elderly people living in our community on a fixed income, even though none of us have a water meter because the community water bill is shared by all and comes out of our monthly HOA fees. The drunken sots are renters, so they don't care.

Someone threw a bunch of bricks and other trash into the storm drain 40 feet from my front door, maybe the same guy that runs a chop-shop-style-fix-it-up place out of his residential garage 60 feet from my front door, forcing all of us to endure the noise, the unsightly scene, and the assortment of junk cars that rumble in and out. I wonder if when he goes to dump the chemicals, oils, paint thinners, and compounds if the clown in the storm drain issues him a receipt. 

When I walk around the bayou, I see the beauty. I wonder how a man, a stooge really, could be so indifferent to our natural world, after all we have been through: Harvey, heatwaves, Memorial Day flood, tax day flood, Ike, and so on. We already endure smog and chemical fires, noise, and traffic beyond belief. How can a grown man trash our little get-away village?

We live around an assortment of mentally ill gossip types, but one stand out case is the broad that walks around here with a hat on her head straight out of the Handmaid's Tale. She definitely puts the P in superficial because she lives in this pretend type world were popularity means something, as if she is still in high school, and lies and innuendo are a weapon of power and prestige. She will run up to another resident and go off about how much someone else is disliked and hated, as if that is what makes her feel in touch with her humanity, the deprivation of someone else's reputation or likability. 

But on these hot summer nights, as the water seeps down the road into people's driveways and under the tires of their cars, a few positives remain. A menagerie of honestly good people still live here: the board president unafraid of taking on a difficult hands-on task; the retired teacher that fussed enough to get us a streetlight; my neat-as-a-pin neighbor with the beautiful life on the seas, constantly sailing and sailing; the man across the way battling a vicious illness but working long hard hours; the fellow dog walkers; the elders on fixed incomes watching the water evaporate into nothingness; and the handsome young men with their wonderful wives and girlfriends. 

Maybe, when the next bill comes, the water will finally be turned off.

Sunday, time to reflect on the things that make your life worth living. I don't know what floats your boat, but I am happy to see bees in my garden. There is clover growing in sunny spots in the yard and the bees are visiting there. But what makes me especially happy is to see the sweet, little visitors sipping from a bowl of water that I provided for them to hydrate.
I learned from FB friends that along with planting bee-friendly flowers and clover you should provide drinking water. The bee friends recommended using a small bowl. I filled ours up with pretty things, for us humans to enjoy, but which provided a safe place for bees to land upon. For there, the bees can safely drink the water and not drown.
I took a bowl, thrown by one of Lee's former students, that we had previously used for smudging, and I filled it with colorful marbles, rose rocks, tiger eye, and a hag's stone. What is wonderful about the hag's stone is that they are deemed to hold powers of protection, which can be invoked against all forms of negativity. This particular stone--I can't remember where it came from-- has two holes, one on each end of the rock.
To my delight, when I was watering the flowers yesterday, I saw where thirsty bees actually stood upon the hag stone and sipped the water seeping into the holes. It is almost like the stones were designed for the bee's hydrating pleasure. Seeing the little creatures about is mine.

Random musing on a HOT May afternoon.
Damn it's hot!
It is really hot!
It is really very hot!
It is way too damn hot for this time of year.

The planet and peoples' tempers are boiling.
All the time, I see verbal dueling with pro-right-wing-freestyle--gun-toting fb NRA lovers. When anyone says, let's have us some commonsense gun control, then there is a great wailing, weeping, and gnashing of teeth followed by the thunderous rhetorical cry of , "but who else will stop a bad guy with a gun but a good guy with a gun. "
Now, in Buffalo, we see yet another needless tragedy involving innocents and a gun toting lunatic. A brave police officer did his best to put the assailant down, but, instead, he lies dead--a hero. He gave his life for others, but, to our horror, couldn't stop the carnage from being inflicted upon innocent shoppers.
Looks like, a good-guy-guard with a gun didn't have a chance against a racist, hate-filled guy with a bigger, more expensive gun and Kevlar and rantings that inflamed his brain.

Too bad, Americans can't pass laws that will keep her civilians safe, because there is profit in death to be made.
Pray for me, I'm an American and I'm going to go grocery shopping on an unseasonably hot afternoon in a trigger-happy state, with everyone carrying on cranky.
What could go wrong?

Russia, a petulant, whining child, complains about the consequences of something that is entirely its own fault, the bloody invasion of Ukraine, an invasion based on obvious lies and foolishness. The rest of the world, according to the Kremlin, must capitulate and give them Ukraine. Why? Well, because it once belonged to them, back in the good old days of Soviet oppression. Don't forget, if you are leaning towards fascism, or if you are someone thinking that kowtowing to the Kremlin will protect you from harm, that Soviet citizens couldn't make choices or engage with the outside world. They lived by a rigid standard of rules that were designed to trap people into a life of subjugation and slavery. Even now the Russian government stealthily enslaves people that it considers unworthy of partaking in the common "civil" society, so what you are worth?

How would you stack up on Putin's rubric?

Frankly I'm sick of their tired and meaningless diatribes, especially that rat Minister of Foreign Affairs, their murderous and ugly intentions, and their selfish imposition on the world order. Just like any other adolescent cry baby, this regime will never be satisfied until they completely dominate the entire free world power structure. Every day they threaten a new border, a new ethnic group, or offer to pony up a nuke or chemical weapon. The world does not have to sit around and look at this.

We can take action too.

As if Putin and his cabal of greedy, rich and ugly, disgusting followers and oligarch zombies didn't already have enough wealth and land, exclusive power over vast populations, and at least prior to this cruel and murderous invasion, substantial prestige and unlimited luxury. How much do they need? Why couldn't they turn their ugly impulses into something beautiful and become kind neighbors to the countries around them? Think of how duplicitous and influential a different kind of Putin could have been. Even if he is just a hardcore Soviet, imperialistic nut-show, he could have seemed so different and thus benefit exponentially for his country, his cabal, and his personal greed. 

Putin and his oligarchs blindly threw away the greatest opportunity in the history of humanity. They took an opportunity of positivity and turned it into the ugliest mess since WW II. No doubt the hand he played in Syria defined him and allowed for future atrocity, but still a shroud of decency, even farfetched, might have been cast over his crimes considering the massive disinformation campaign that precludes such barbarism. His holding of a lighted candle during an Orthodox Easter service seems to parallel with Trump holding a Bible while protesters are gassed and beaten because in every move that Putin makes, rather it be abstract or concrete, a threatening message is sent. Every move Trump makes, even though they are completely amateur in comparison, share the same hateful and indulgent set of goals. Putin is telling us that he will use gas on Ukraine.

The fascists are here even if they are unable to define themselves due to cowardice or a lack of education. They are here and we must acknowledge their presence, just as if they too are whining petulant children. In our country, people are free to think as a fascist, but they are not free to act as a fascist. But I want to make it clear to the people that bother to read my thoughts, the toxic pond we wade in is deep because of Putin and his outdated Soviet philosophy--the modern fascist world will make the old fascist world look like a peaceful playground full of happy children. We must rise up and defend freedom or the suffering and horror will never end. Fascism, in alignment with Putin's world view, will be nothing but atrocity after atrocity. 

Ask a Ukrainian if you don't believe me.

I'm sitting here in Babin's Seafood place thinking about all I am grateful for: the wonderful little rescue Westie; the cozy, modern apartment; my wonderful friends and coworkers; the job that keeps me in society when I'd rather immerse myself in a massive writing project, alone and crazy. I'm grateful for my health, and I pray I continue in life physically and mentally strong.

Babin's reminds me of a typical California restaurant with the dark interior, plush and cushy seating, and the sense that you are invited to linger and enjoy cocktails, desserts, and good conversations. The relaxed atmosphere lends itself to thinking, and I know most of us in our quiet, thankful moments wonder about the pain of the Ukrainian people, how they sustain life in the face of evil and death. I'm not sure that if it were me, that I wouldn't sit down on the curb and beg for a bullet.

If I lost my home, my pets, my family, all of my belongings, and I faced a bleak and meaningless new landscape of destruction and dust, massive holes in the ground, and dead bodies scattered all around me, my work and culture and land, all wasted, my mind would probably turn against me. The constant shelling and gunfire, the fear of dying in horror, in a nightmare, would end it for my sanity. 

At the moment my biggest complaint is that some of my green beans are discolored. While I sit here and gaze on the green beans, I wonder how many people that Putin has destroyed or murdered. How many people has he starved?

I noticed on Twitter that some really vulnerable African nations seem to understate the threat that Putin represents to them. Putin is a Nazi white supremacist to the extreme. It is no accident that he interrupted the Ukrainian planting season. Putin's evil will win if we don't predict his moves months in advance. Putin's evil will win if we fail to meet his brutality with equal force. It's a large picture, not a small one. 

Many of our weak minded politicians are now, and have been, capitulating to Putin's evil. To capitulate seems a lesser threat. These cowards are lining up to save themselves, and at the same time they are lining all of us up as a grand sacrifice. If we succumb to "Tucker Carlson" style fascism, we too will be killed off. 

I know most of you feel skeptical. But, several times lately, Putin squeaks out a whimpering threat about nuking us. You realize, of course, that a nuke there is a nuke everywhere. He already has exhibited his artsy mosaic of human atrocities, even shooting up a nuclear disaster site. Why are we not convinced?

Ukraine, over the past 50 days, requests airplanes. But they can't have them because we are lining up for a disastrous ending of the free world, and signing on to a new, and more heinous form of authoritarianism--with certain death and suffering. While we capitulate and lolly gag around, Putin is raising the stakes. Write to whomever you need to in order to encourage the delivery of world class weapons to Ukraine, including fighter jets. Help Ukraine get everything they need now, or succumb to fascism later.