Pretty Girl

I have no idea.

I have no ideas.

Pretty girl.

Pretty smart girl.

I'm thinking about a lifetime of relax, calm down, I'll pay you $1,000 to be quiet, You're such an exaggerator, Your head's always been in the clouds, Get your head out of your poetry/ass, Book sense isn't everything, relax, calm down, you're crazy, you're basically a pretty girl with some smarts.

Elizabeth Warren in the hallway outside the hallowed chamber, still reading.

The Republikkkans have prioritized voter suppression, and they've specifically targeted black people and other disadvantaged groups. The Supreme Court, with a majority of conservative justices, gutted the Voting Rights Act and literally opened the gates to restrictions and obstacles that some could argue were the main contributors to how we got here. Here.

How we got here. 

The most intelligent members of even my high school class are arguing with, literally, the least intelligent. The least intelligent are gloating, smug, rich, KKKristians. Gun-lovers. Brain, they hissed back in the eighth grade when I walked down the hallway with my stack of honors. Brain as derision.

Make Amerikkka great again. 

The appointment of the racist Sessions and the billionaire Kkkristian DeVos took the breath out of me. Not only because he's an old-school racist but because of his stance on medical marijuana. He's not into it. Not only because she's intent on increasing God's Kingdom but also because she is purposefully ignorant and disdainful of the laws protecting the rights of the learning and otherwise disabled.  She's not into it. Will I have to stockpile Sophie's medicine? At least Sophie ages out of the public school system this May. It gives me little comfort to be living in the greatest state in Amerikkka, because I know just how long many of my comrades in the disability/seizure/epilepsy world have been waiting and hoping for an easement of marijuana laws. They're not getting it now. Their children will suffer, perhaps die. It gives me little comfort to be living in the greatest state in Amerikkka because I know just how dependent many of my comrades in the disability/learning disabled world are, how young their children are, how they are thriving in schools responsible to the law that will, perhaps, not be enforced.

Even as I type, I'm getting my breath back.

I'm going to the pool now, will dive in and begin the steady strokes. I'll hold my breath, blow out through my nose and twist my head to the side. I won't gulp in air but rather train myself to keep breathing, steady, propulsive. Forward. Breathing for myself and breathing for others.



















#resist

Guns and Grizzly Bears and Jesus, Oh My!

Bear, looking into a Connecticut school classroom

GUNS and GRIZZLY BEARS!

Have ya'll been watching the shitshow on C-Span? Who knew we'd be living in these times, a kind of Monty Python meets Dante with an overlay of Caligula? For you readers outside of the Disunited States of America, congressional hearings of Drumpf's cabinet appointees are underway. So far we've heard all kinds of interesting stuff from the Band of Billionaires that Drumpf has elected to run his government. Yesterday, I heard Betsy Ross DeVos (not her real name, but I can't help it), Education Secretary-Elect, talk about the issue of guns in schools as best left to the states, her example being the great state of Wyoming where its population of three hundred children in public school warrants guns to defend from grizzly bears. The question about guns was asked by Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, a state where an entire class of first graders was gunned down by a white disaffected young man whose mother was a legal gun enthusiast.

JESUS!

Speaking of, while it wasn't brought up at the hearing, Betsy Ross DeVos (not her real name but I can't help it) is also on the record as saying that schools need more Jesus. She and her ilk are on a mission, apparently, with their "school choice" and "voucher" programs. Evidently, these programs are part of a larger plan to bring greater Kingdom gain. I know that the buzzwords of school choice and vouchers simplify a complex problem that good minds have been working on for as long as our planet has been spinning round the sun (or perhaps only for the last 6,000 to 10,000 years that the earth has been around, according to creationists whom Betsy Ross DeVos has embraced), but forgive me if I don't trust in Jesus guiding billionaires to fix public education, especially Betsy Ross DeVos who appears to know very little about public education or even about what it means to need a public education.

Reader, do you know what IDEA is? No worries if you don't, because your proposed Education Secretary, Betsy Ross DeVos (not her real name but I can't help it) doesn't either. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ensures that all children with disabilities are entitled to a free appropriate public education to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living. When questioned by Senator Tim Kaine about IDEA, she was either woefully uninformed or screwing around with us. Given the rictus on her face, I'm thinking both.

Between her ignorance or dismissal of education and disability law and Attorney General Elect Jim Sessions' statements about children with disabilities being the bane of the public school system -- well -- JESUS CHRIST! -- maybe those are words that she does know and understand?

Anyhoo.



I'd like Betsy Ross DeVos (not her real name but I can't help it) to know that the public school system, however flawed, afforded my daughter Sophie nearly two decades of inclusion in our community, stimulation, both academic and social, and an alternative to sitting at home or in a nursing institution, wasting away, like many people with disabilities did, even in my lifetime.

I'd like the woman to know that the only reason Sophie's education was ensured was federal law, and that, even so, individuals and school districts will break the law or work around the law which makes me believe that without the law, we cannot be assured that our children will be guaranteed a public education despite their disabilities. I do not believe that Jesus ensured my daughter's public education.

I'd like Betsy Ross DeVos (not her real name but I can't help it) to see this picture of Sophie that I took yesterday. It was her first day back at her public high school in over five weeks. She was so happy to be back. Honestly. She had a GREAT DAY.

So what can we do about this, outside of downing shots of frozen vodka and watching reruns of Monty Python skits or praying to Jesus to step in?

We can resist.

Here's a way:

Many Senators have already expressed doubts about DeVos’ fitness to run the education department. Let’s drive those doubts home. EVEN IF YOU'VE ALREADY CALLED ABOUT DEVOS, CALL AGAIN 

DC callers will be directed to Lamar Alexander, chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Here are the numbers of all the HELP committee members -- a fairly star-studded group as senators go -- that you can also call. If you see one of your senator's names on this list, weigh in!

HELP Committee
Chair Lamar Alexander (R, TN)
202 224 4944

Ranking Member Patty Murray (D,WA)
202 224 2621

Mike Enzi (R, WY)
202 224 3424

Bernie Sanders (I, VT)
202 224-5141

Richard Burr (R, NC)
202 224-3154

Bob Casey (D, PA)
202 224-6324

Johnny Isakson (R, GA)
202 224-3643

Al Franken (D, MN)
202 224-5641

Rand Paul (R, KY)
202-224-4343.

Michael Bennet D, CO
202-224-5852

Susan Collins (R, ME)
(202) 224-2523

Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI)
(202) 224-2921

Bill Cassidy (R, LA)
(202) 224-5824

Tammy Baldwin (D, WI)
(715) 832-8424

Todd Young (R, IN)
(202) 224-5623

Chris Murphy (D, CT)
(202) 224-4041

Orrin Hatch (R, UT)
(202) 224-5251

Elizabeth Warren (D, MA)
202-224-4543

Pat Roberts (R, KS)
(202) 224-4774

Tim Kaine (D, VA)
(202) 224-4024

Lisa Murkowski (R, AK)
(202) 224-6665

Maggie Hassan (D, NH)
(202) 224-3324

Tim Scott (R, SC)
(202) 224-6121

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