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.

Last night I watched President Biden's persuasive address to the nation, and it's clear to me that the Republican Party came out of the night looking foolish and out of touch. If people are sick of inflation, then look to corporate greed for a solution. Obviously, Biden is in a power struggle of sorts with big pharma and big corporations. If they can point to his policies as problematic, they can later line up to Trump's trough and slurp up lavish tax cuts at the expense of the working class and middle America. Big oil and other polluters like them will once again be allowed to operate without those pesky regulations that strive to protect ordinary citizens. They will once again start disregarding the rights of minority and immigrant communities. 

What Trump and the Republicans aim to do is unethical, immoral, and anti-democratic. Republican Party personalities always lie to their constituents and claim that interfering in the personal lives of citizens is not their goal, but one only need to look at the mess after the overturning of Roe v Wade to uncover the false narratives around their ridiculous claims. 

Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, and disgraced US Representative George Santos clearly represent the level of low intelligence and obnoxious personality types that populate the Republican Party. Their refusal to send aid to Ukraine, while people die and a democratic European country is destroyed by Russian aggression, is only one example of poor judgement laced with hate and bigotry. 

Hate is an indulgence, and members of the Republican Party are morally irresponsible and unable to do what is right for our country and for the world. The fixation on hate and isolationism destroyed their sense of duty and justice. 

And last night's "kitchen rebuttal" looked and sounded completely ridiculous. Katie Britt snarled out a hateful, fear-mongering, rebuke that lacked any evidence, but capitalized on her hateful nature. As a woman, I felt embarrassed by her look and her sound. Every Republican bends over for Trump, a man that steals, lies, and sexually assaults women. Trump, the con-man, will destroy American progress.

I teach my students George Orwell's classic essay Politics and the English Language because he attacks lousy, pretentious prose with comedic indirect satire that is largely dead in modern writing. The writing of today typically dips into sarcasm, an easy below the belt tactic that contributes to the death of civil discourse in professional life. No manager or supervisor should confuse poorly toned writing for professionalism or leadership. Typing out a poorly constructed directive in all caps and sending it out to team members at an inopportune time illuminates nothing in the workplace except the sender's lack of expertise. Poorly timed, poorly toned messages disappoint dedicated people and destroy emerging relationships.

One year during the pandemic on Thanksgiving day, I sat across an old friend in a dilapidated easy chair, and while watching television, the email on my phone dinged. A smart person might have ignored the dinging, but it was Thanksgiving day. I assumed an emergency happened at my work, maybe to a fellow colleague. Instead, this message asked me to verify someone's classroom attendance. This kind of thing can't be fixed during a holiday break. It is the sort of message that scheduled for a Monday morning delivery, might have been more digestible. All writers and professionals should know that the timing of your message is almost as important as the tone and content.

I love the way Orwell addresses the issue with tacked on phraseology. Right now I have a 'hen house' phrase that I am sick and tired of hearing: "That being said."

Anywhere you go, in any setting, you will hear or read some pretentious attempt at professionalism, but the aforementioned phrase above reduces whatever the writer or speaker is trying to say into a pile of meaningless rubble. Orwell, if he were here beside me today, would likely wish he was back in India working as a cop again rather than listen to the lousy prose present in 21st century mass media. He lists out "operator, or verbal false limbs" in his characteristic indirect satirical style without mercy or embellishment. Phrases such as, with respect to, the fact that, in the interests of, with respect to, and so on, exemplify what he means by "tacked on phrases" that convey nothing to an audience.

Many times my students try to write with pretentious diction. Sometimes the results are funny and charming, but overall this kind of writing will not assist the student in any academic or business venture. And people posing as professionals ought to write clearly and with empathy, timing messages with care, rather than trying to dictate to others as if they exist on a royal pedestal when, clearly, in today's society, anyone is replaceable.

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.

All of these years we have sat around as a country and let Putin unleash genocide and terror on humanity with no consequences to him or his oligarchs. We enabled him to rise to this level where he can get away with threatening us with nuclear weapons and we sit on our hands and do nothing to him in return. People will cry, "Sanctions, we have done sanctions." And I will remind those nice, well-informed, people that while we rely on nonviolent sanctions and while we ship some arms to his victims, we are doing something that does not stop the genocide or Kremlin fury. Genocide perpetuates itself as soldiers and "yes men" get in line for dictator favors. They represent the lowest of humanity, men and women that will literally extinguish life for material gain or their own personal safety.

Sadly, and I am ashamed of this, our President speaks when he should shut up, and he fails to act with force and fury when appropriate. As the clock ticks, more people, including little children, endure horrific violence, suffering and death, but Biden is resolute in his crap decisions. 

Some of you may whimper, "But nukes." Well, go ahead and live on your fears because these fears determine the future for millions of people around the world barely surviving the oppression of a nearby dictator. We fail to recognize the threat that exists for all of humanity when we allow a bloodthirsty tyrant to terrorize one ethnic/cultural group after another: Syria, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and so forth. We allowed these things to take place, these genocides. 

I noticed in the Russian news that the fascists point to our invasion of Iraq, and from me they will get no argument. I completely agree that invading Iraq ranked pretty high on the stupidity chart. But this time it is different. This time the option for survivors is not so-called Western style freedom, but the option is tyranny and subjugation, a stunning loss of freedom and an incomprehensible future. 

These other genocides, the ones that passed from our view, the oft-forgotten, indulgent and hedonistic violence that wiped out entire tribes and communities hid behind other news and dumb, superficial media stories. This genocide, thanks to the digital world, is lavishly recorded for all of us to watch. Even so, some news organizations try to look the other way in some shameful manner of mismanaged priorities; mingling corny jokes, laughter, and silly community stories, while barely glossing over the terrible predicament that our inaction has brought to us. 

This is not the first time I have felt terrible shame and feelings of disappointment and outright embarrassment concerning my country and the president I voted for; now I am not alone; the crowd of disgusted Americans continues to branch out like an angry web. When the details of this inaction comes to full light, no one will vote for Biden. He allows the extermination to go on.

First of all I would like to remind my readers that in spite of a stereotypical African American first name, I am a white person of western European descent with only a smattering of Native American thrown in. I know this for a fact because I took the 23&Me DNA test, and it turns out I'm nearly as white as a person can get. I do have skin that darkens up nicely in the sun, dark green eyes (cousin to brown on the DNA strand), and an overall 'Indian' look, but only one of my ancestors can be verified as native.

Discrimination and prejudice certainly impacted my life in an ongoing and rather problematic way because my family members stepped out in nontraditional roles and some of them worked in what could be considered as odd career choices, including myself. I'm not a stranger to white elitism and snobbery. But my challenges stack up nicely in the columns of inconvenience or mild heartbreak, even though I now realize that some of my old associates either hid their distorted and ignorant opinions from me, or have, over the decades, became disgustingly narrow minded and ridiculous, even ungrateful.

In recent years, some of my African American friends and coworkers quietly and patiently pointed out some of my own dumb blind spots and unearned privileges. Even if I earned the right to some of my privileges through hard work or suffering, I still enjoy a ton of White-Bread-American advantages that people of color righteously feel angry about. The best place to view this list of unearned advantages built into the racist American system are listed in Peggy McIntosh's essay White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, lists 50 ways that white people experience privilege over people of color. All 50 of them are relevant and important, eye-opening and true, but for now I want to talk about number 39: I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race. 

The best school leader I have ever known was a younger and wiser African American woman. She is honestly gifted, an amazing writer and communicator, a wonderful teacher and friend to every person that knows her. She goes out of her way to think open-mindedly about people that I typically write off as plain stupid and fake (this is hyperbole because I seldom write anyone off). Obviously, her heart is ten times bigger than mine because she strives to see the good in everyone, no matter their background or identity, while I'm a skeptic when it comes to adults. But she sometimes, like a million other qualified and gifted people, would be late to a faculty meeting or other function. On one notable time, she was stuck in a meeting with a parent, and I watched and listened as she entered the room; I witnessed the negative body language and eye-rolling, and I heard the comments that were made:

"There she is, late as usual. I wonder if she knew we had a meeting. She's late all the time." 

It's true that occasional lateness happened, but if the occasional lateness happened to me, or some other white person, nobody ever cares or makes any audible comments. When it's a white person, people tend to mind their own business when it comes to lateness. When it's a person of color, it's because the person is not organized, or they are lazy. This is just plain wrong.

Number 13 has to do with money: Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability. Let us be honest white people--most of us don't deserve the bank credit that we get. Some of us start businesses and fail to properly pay or compensate our employees. Some of us are not worth the paper we are printed on, and that includes me. I am just not worth much, and I may never be worth much. But I have something that most people of color don't; I have some generational wealth. It's not much, but it's still amazing. It's better than nothing. When I walk into a bank, I get a ton of respect, respect I definitely do not deserve. If my qualified and gifted person of color walks into a bank, she receives less attention and gratuity, even though she is trying much harder than I am to establish herself as a reliable and current bank customer. 

We all know these stereotypes and racist beliefs are built into everything American. The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, wants to make it illegal for teachers to point these facts out to students. He wants to forbid teachers to speak freely about critical race theory; but I'm positive that Abbott doesn't know what CRT is, or he would want to have it taught in our schools, because, after all, isn't Greg Abbott an open-minded and well-educated man? Critical race theory basically teaches us to notice the built in racist structures that exist, and then it teaches us how to reject and resist these ignorant ideas personally. For example, CRT points out that many deed restrictions disqualify residents based on their race. This is a fact of life, not a fairy tale or fake news. If it is our goal as a society to make opportunities and the American dream available to everyone, then how do these deed restrictions concerning race further equity? And, of course, this example of deed restrictions is just a tiny, petty example. If you really want to examine CRT, then look at incarceration rates, the war on drugs, immigration, and healthcare disparities, to name just a few glaring, national problems.

The real threat to American life is right wing extremism--neoliberalism. Donald Trump, Greg Abbot, and a slew of other ignorant politicians and demagogues clearly aim to normalize white supremacy, and they personally enjoy indulging in hateful and divisive acts and speech. They want wealth for a few and subservience for everyone else. Wealth for a few and subservience for everyone else is the political and economic theory known as neoliberalism. If you are following this ideology, if you are falling for this scam, then you are part of the problem. You are voting against yourself. If you are indulging in hateful thoughts and ideas, then you are doing something that is causing you to feel a temporary relief from what is buried under your psyche: the knowledge that you are wrong. You are actually causing Americans, including yourself, to lose freedoms. Neoliberalism and white supremacy are dangerous ideologies, but Critical Race Theory is an idea that will help you understand our national history; CRT will help you know yourself better, especially if you are white.

I can't do my own writing anymore, especially after the angst and misery of Valentine's Day, and the month of love: the month of crazy, wild weather; the month of a near total Texas electricity blackout; the month of a broken service pipe; the month of extreme Covid swings; and another month of grief over the death of not one, but two, little, precious pets. 

On this weird night, on the eve of Women's History Month, I am thinking about writing an article that features an important female in the world of rhetoric, like Ida B. Wells, an African American writer, or maybe Christine de Pisan from the Medieval era. Women in the rhetorical tradition typically receive some pretty outdated criticisms, so I'd like to offset that with some strong opinions of my own.

How do women balance all of these silly expectations about communication? What's wrong with writing aggressively? Should I write like a girl so that men won't be offended? Should I defer to the male voice? Is civil discourse really that important, or is that just another term for oversensitivity? I was told recently that I talked too loud, but my response was that I thought I couldn't be heard. 

Is that what men think we are doing when we write an aggressive text? Do they think we are trying to yell? Is that what the good conservative woman thinks? 

Anyway, the cat story submitted by my writer friend contains a message about gratitude. I am grateful that my voice continues to matter to my readers and friends, even though I am an outdoor cat. I am grateful for all of you. I'm thankful that you don't find me too loud for trying to get your attention. I am hoping you will continue to support me through these weird times. 🌹

To train the cat or be trained by the cat that is the question.... Whether it is better to take a shoe to the Siamese or squirt him with the water bottle, after his sixth attempt to get one up at 5:00 in the morning, when he has been howling at one's bedside since three, or just to give up and open a can of cat food and stagger off and wait for the alarm to go off in just a few minutes, or throw his hairy little bohuncas into the garage, where it is freezing cold but there are mice....? These run on sentences frame the eternal questions of cat owners, who've been struggling with their cat masters, since the Egyptians made the mistake of first letting the cat gods into their hearts and granaries, in order to kill the rodents eating the grain.....

If I am sleep deprived, do I not get cranky? If I am tortured, do I not break? Even now, that Siamese is stalking me, complaining that the canned cat food doesn't meet up with his expectations for good service.... If I am harassed, will I not fight back; or will I just give up, give in, and buy the cat some tastier brand.....?

The outside cat thinks the canned cat food is damned tasty! He just ate it up in one gulp.

I give up.....

Just who is running this household?

Jennie (the Crazy Cat Lady)

I sit here helplessly in my little living room /slash/ office area of my tiny little apartment in this huge metropolis and I listen to people that have never worked in a public school, in any capacity, talk about how safe it is to go back to the classroom. I sit here and I listen to them compare me to the grocery store clerk, or the trash collection service. I hear them making a moral judgement about my courage and fearlessness in the midst of this crisis, as compared to my counterparts in other public service arenas. Well, I just want everyone to know that I'm not a coward, and I am tired of my opinion being overshadowed by people that have no experience in the classroom. At the same time, I'm not stupid either. I know for a fact that schools are disease factories; I know that schools can never be clean enough to "stop the spread"; I know how many colds, coronaviruses, streps, stomach illnesses, and other infections I have caught and/or transmitted over the past ten years of my career in public school, so how can this disease be any different? Uninformed people think if you throw some hand sanitizer, a mask or two, and some big cash at the problem, along with some attempted social distancing, that all of the kids can just march right back into the school. The reason that schools are not significantly contributing to community spread is because they are currently rather underpopulated, so how can anyone sit there and confidently pressure teachers and support staff to just go and willingly sacrifice their own health, or their family's health, for a job that they are not even adequately paid to do?

Kids and teachers are definitely unhappy right now. One thing that is getting my goat is this business about my online class. We are to slavishly follow the five-part lesson plan as it is laid out by Doug Lemov in his book, Teach Like a Champion. I have no problem with Lemov, and I like some of his ideas, but making a student do 7 Do Nows a day, along with 7 Exit tickets a day, all online, is just the dumbest thing ever. My kids are complaining voraciously about spending 7 hours a day doing a repetitious five-part lesson for each online class. That is 7 Zoom meetings a day. Making the teacher create 5 separate folders for each day and script out each step of the class, and then make that same teacher slavishly follow this five-part, five folder, five day a week, boring repetition is a burn out machine major-deluxe. I have heard in songs and stuff that it is better to burn out than fade away, but now I'm beginning to wonder. Maybe fading away is not a bad idea, a sentiment now shared by many educators.

This week I had the unique experience of getting an administrator in my online class asking questions. All of my kids can follow my class, open my materials, and work with my digital content. I am running 4 digital platforms: Schoology, the community college I work for, Skyward, and the College Board. All of these have some different requirements and portals to put grades in and different things for students to do. I am trying my hardest to keep it simple for my students by engaging them in creative and colorful discussion boards and assignments. My attendance is amazing, and the vast majority of my students are growing as writers, thinkers, and readers. Even though we are separated by distance and this disease, we enjoy our classes. In spite of everything, I have been able to build some robust relationships with my kids, so their suffering is my suffering. But I got a weird dressing down of sorts from my administrator because I don't have little folders for each day, with little lesson plans in each day, with my content spread out into these separate days. It's the craziest, most clerical intensive, mindless, and uncreative mandate that I have ever been asked to engage in. My students go back and revisit materials constantly, so I don't see how making them hunt and peck in daily folders is of any use to them; nor is this hunting and pecking of any use to me, as it completely stifles my ability to create a meaningful lesson plan or unit designed on the unique and specific needs of this crucial moment. My lesson plans, when I do them the way they are mandated, are fragmented and not unified. When I do them the way I have been taught in college, then my students are happier. I create a new folder every week, but these lesson plans and folders as mandated are harming my students' classroom experience.

I want to know when it started becoming important for me to write lesson plans that prioritize my administration over my students so that I can be judged, not for my teaching, but for my ability to make little daily folders, and all of this during a world health crisis.

This kind of negativity, looking for fault and calling teachers cowards, should be forbidden during this crisis. It is an all-hands-on-deck kind of a mess. Administrators and the public should be looking at ways to get teachers and kids safely back into the classroom where we do our best. If that means moving teachers up the line to get a shot, then why not? When you ask a politician or some high-level administrator this question about the vaccine, you get a bunch of weird lip service, but no answers. We are talking about the safety of our kids and the people in the schools that are charged with spending long hours everyday with them in close proximity. Only a fool or a charlatan would go around making the claim that schools are safe. Clearly, they are not, and they won't ever be if people in power can't focus on what is important, rather than what is petty. 

Dear Readers, 

In this installment of my favorite cat lady tails, night animals collaborate to keep a human awake in the deep of the night. Something similar to the following story happened to me the night before last when I mistakenly left the doggie door open all night, and Bill ventured out and was unable to hoist his fat self back into the house. I stumbled out of bed and down the stairs to open the door for him because he was barking his head off, and then I tossed in bed all night thinking about my various lives: the struggling new personal life that means more to me than anything; the struggling work life that is causing me to experience different layers of burnout; the struggling financial life that whirls around the credit universe in a long series of minus signs; and, of course, the never-ending parental worries about my struggling musical artist that lives in a sort of artist camp with a bunch of other artist types. 

And of course, all of us are worried about Covid disease; I know we need to divert from this horror and weirdness as much as possible. The stories that independent writers produce are valuable in this regard because they provide moments of peace by temporarily moving us into a different realm free of disease and chaos while we safely wait out a viable solution for our return to normal life. Anyone currently suffering from Covid disease has our sympathy. I would like to introduce another such story from my favorite indie writer.

This story won a flash fiction prize, and, no, it is not mine.

Stranger in the Night