Stay Tuned

I've quit my job at the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish girls' school. (Bless their hearts.)

I will be writing about my experiences there, and I will be wearing that exact ensemble you see above, freed at last from the "modest" clothing covering every inch of my offensive female skin.

Stay tuned.

Warning: Profanity Ahead, Plus Poetry

Pity the Nation (After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as a hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture
Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms be washed away
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
2007


P.S. I listened to a group of teachers in the teachers' lounge at my school today make excuses for that POSPOTUS. I didn't know what to do so I left the room. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to live in love with these people?

P.P.S

kubeiko

n. a state of exhaustion inspired by an act of senseless violence, which forces you to revise your image of what can happen in this world—mending the fences of your expectations, weeding out invasive truths, cultivating the perennial good that’s buried under the surface—before propping yourself up in the middle of it like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams but powerless to do anything but stand there and watch.

via The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

(Dumb)

Yesterday, I took Sophie to The Nice Dentist and then to The Nice Neurologist. On the way across the city from The Nice Dentist's office to The Nice Neurologist's office,  I listened to The Public Radio and learned about The Trumplican vote to not call witnesses and while I sort of expected it, given Dear Leader and The Sycophants Who Follow Him, I felt sort of hopeless and depressed for a few minutes. This isn't accurate chronologically, but despair isn't either. I was looking out the window at the backs of cars and then into the rearview mirror at Sophie's pretty face and the radio kept talking and then there was a Muslim American who was talking about the vote and getting out the vote and how we can't stop hoping because, he reminded us, Frederick Douglass thought it was a country worth fighting for. Martin Luther King, too. And Malcolm X. So, the list goes on.

To despair is a luxury, in particular for a white person. For me, it's sort of dumb. Dumb. 

Speechless.

When I walked down the coffin hall from The Nice Neurologist's office to the elevator and then out into the Pasadena Sunshine, I felt not a little despair. I felt like a dragon my tail The Past and my goddamn inability to Just Let It Go. No matter how many times I read about PTSD it doesn't stick. Back on the road I heard that Michael Bloomberg who is running to overthrow Dear Leader is spending several million dollars on an ad that will run during the Super Bowl on Sunday. Actually, I think The Newscaster said that a one minute ad during the Super Bowl costs $10,000,000 (Ten Million). I think The Ad features a fat, grotesque Dear Leader chasing after a golf ball or something and will be played in front of the several billion people who will also be entertained by Buffalo Wings, Mostly Black Men bashing their brains to oblivion and The Singer Known Fondly As JLo dancing her insured million dollar ass around during The Halftime Show.

What's there to despair about? What's dumb? (speechless)