BABS: WHORE, GAY ICON, FEMINIST, DOLL

Of late the analysis of the Barbie Movie has overtaken the actual reviews of the film which were middling at best. Largely I suspect it was not the hard core hammer people expected about a Doll. It is what I agree with the one of many deep dives into the film, a placement product movie about what? A Doll from the largest advertiser in the Movie, and not even a subtle one as they were also the Production funders of the film – Mattel. And advertisement that made over 1 Billion dollars this past week, so it definitely succeeded. And with that I plan on going again. I loved every pink sweet minute. It was high comedy and yes a touch of Feminism thrown in for good measure. But in my “interpretation” it was about being a Girl and becoming a Woman and when you throw away your childish things do you throw away your dreams, your hopes and just become what everyone else is or where you always different just like everyone else? As for all the “diversity” of the world of Barbie and Ken they were not unique or different in their world view and of their beliefs. This was a world that largely day to day went unchanged and the one different was relegated to the name “Weird” Barbie and lived on a hill. The other outlier, Allan, was there with Pregnant Midge as a sort of reminder that you can be different but in turn also canceled off the production line at any time for whatever reason. And with that I can say Midge clearly was an unwed Mother and perhaps Allan the only Man in the crew of Kens who for what I saw in the film were very Gay and very Porn Star like sans the equipment needed to fill the role..in other words MY PERFECT MAN! So I guess Allan was the precursor to Jeffrey Epstein and that explains quite a bit right there.

I laughed when I read the article below as this week two more analysis arrived, Barbie as Therapy and Barbie as a Subversive film with a hidden message. I cannot wait til the next comic strip movie, Nancy and Sluggo and what that means for Domestic Violence and Sexism. Or how GI Joe contributed to the Military War Culture. And again the Kens were very very Gay so I am sure that is another analysis of how the film is recruiting children to the “lifestyle.” And can I just say that is one “lifestyle” I embrace!

With Barbie being a Doll and such the world in which she lived is conducive to two factors: Money and the one who is her Guardian/Owner/Manipulator aka Child who plays with her and either chooses the accessories sold for that same Doll or in turn creates their own world, aka “Weird” Barbie. Well I would take weird any day sans the dog shitting on the carpet which was canceled due to choking hazards. Really? The shitting balls no?

Aside from America Ferrera’s monologue that is a version of the many speeches, excuses, explanations, justifications, condemnations, rationalizations I have given over my last 64 years of living as a Woman on this planet, I did not see/hear a Feminist message. I did see a message about Conformity and Consumerism and the idea that when Barbie crossed over to the “real” world the reality of how one thinks they live and the way it truly is one message; the other that conformity makes life lived by the one who is playing with you.. as the “weird” Barbie advised Stereotypical Barbie to seek upon her journey in which to explain/understand/find why and what was happening to her. And with that she found out that her Guardian/Owner/Master was in fact not a child but an Adult with all that baggage and emotions that children do not have when they play with dolls. I also think many young girls don’t have their Barbies aspire to be Pulitzer Prize Winner or Supreme Court Justices. Disco parties and Cowgirls yes.

But with that I laughed my ass off from the movie. I did not care that the Board of Mattel is not all white men wearing the same suits or that the creator of Barbie was not a kindly Matron but in real life a ball buster, or that Barbie suddenly had a working Vagina upon her arrival but sure I am sure young girls do… or not. And just like in real life the men stole the show or at least the Ken’s and Allan’s did as who did not come out of that movie and discuss the blazing hot performance of Ryan Gosling as Ken – Beach! and Micheal Cera as the doorknob Allan. Wait until the right wing finds out that a Barbie was played by a Trans woman. QUELLE HORROEUR! says French Barbie.

Column: Is ‘Barbie’ the most overanalyzed movie in cinema history? Kenough, already, pundits!

By Robin Abcarian  Columnist  LA Times

If you thought the smash movie “Barbie” was merely a film about a plastic doll who comes to life, boy have you not been paying attention.

“Barbie” is so much more than the year’s blockbuster movie.

It is a Rorschach blot tickling the psyches of viewers, an onion whose multiple layers offer any number of conflicting interpretations, a “Rashomon”-like experience where every viewer comes away with a different idea of what they have just seen.

In addition to blowing past the billion-dollar mark in ticket sales, director Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” has spawned a mini-industry of punditry, analysis and controversy, offering grist to almost every mainstream and specialty publication for endless takes on every possible angle.

I daresay that in its very brief life, “Barbie” has not just revitalized the color pink, it has already become the most overanalyzed movie in cinema history. “Citizen Kane” has nothing on this flick.

“Barbie,” inevitably, has sparked discussions about sex, gender and gender roles, relationships, aging, feminism and patriarchy.

The Washington Post explored Barbie’s “pornographic origin story.” The New Yorker proposed “Decoding Barbie’s Radical Pose” and also explained “Why Barbie Must Be Punished.”

In the Atlantic, a child psychiatrist opined on “What ‘Barbie’ Understands About Mother-Daughter Relationships.”

Famous feminists have weighed in.

Susan Faludi, author of 1991’s “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,” saw the film with Jessica Bennett of the New York Times and declared “Barbie” to be a movie about abortion, sort of. (Don’t forget, Barbie is an unmarried career woman with no children.)**AND FOR YEARS I BLAMED MY MOTHER.. WRONG BITCH APPARENTLY

I mean, it begins with little girls playing with dolls learning the origin story of Barbie — and the rejection of the idea that women can just be mothers,” Faludi told Bennett. “It ends with her going to the gynecologist.”

Author Mary Pipher, whose 1994 classic “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls” helped inspire Gerwig, changed her mind about the negative messages little girls get from Barbie dolls after watching the movie with a Daily Beast reporter.

“When I wrote ‘Reviving Ophelia,’ the Barbie doll personified everything I didn’t like about the idea of a woman,” Pipher said. But, she added, “Barbie has changed. If children like to play with Barbie dolls, that’s just fine with me, especially now that there’s a diverse group.”

One sub-genre of “Barbie” analysis plumbs the complexities of Ryan Gosling’s very tortured Ken, who, before Gerwig got her hands on him, was always just Barbie’s handsome bland boyfriend. (Movie tagline: “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.”)

Time magazine declares that “ ‘Barbie’ is a movie about male fragility.”

The Wall Street Journal says, “It’s a Weird Time to Be Named Ken.” (If you ask me, it’s a pretty weird time to be named Barbie too.) I have seen enough puns on his name — “Kenaissance,” “Kenpathy,” “My Kendom for a horse” to want to scream “Kenough!”

Not everyone appreciates the attention lavished on Ken. “Enough About Ken,” writes Xochitl Gonzalez in the Atlantic. “Men are not, in fact, always the center of women’s thoughts.”

Given its various themes, “Barbie,” predictably, has become part of the culture wars.

Bill Maher criticized the movie for being “preachy” and “man-hating.” Elon Musk took issue with the number of times the word “patriarchy” was uttered. Ben Shapiro set Barbie dolls on fire and tossed them into a trash can. *IRONY THERE THAT MISOGYNY AND WHITE MEN GO HAND IN HAND

A spate of stories has tried to decipher the meaning of the Allan doll, a buddy of Ken’s played by Michael Cera, who is maybe gay, maybe binary or maybe the unsung or surprise hero of the movie.  *I THINK ALLAN IS CHILD MOLESTER AND TRAFFICKER..JEFFREY EPSTEIN AS A DOLL… FOLLOW THE CLUES.

And who knew the busty, long-legged blond would find herself embroiled in geopolitical drama?

Republicans — well, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz anyway — have claimed Barbie is pushing a Chinese communist agenda because a world map shown in the trailer includes what is known as the “nine-dash line,” which is used on Chinese maps to depict its territory in the South China Sea. Vietnam, which disputes China’s claims, has banned the movie entirely.

While some conservatives have complained that “Barbie” is unforgivably silent on the issues of faith and family, Christianity Today, in a piece called “Barbie and Ken Go East of Eden,” sees an opportunity to “reckon with the ‘fortunate fall.’’’ That happens when the pair leave plastic fantastic Barbie Land and end up at gritty Venice Beach, where they suddenly realize, as Eve/Barbie puts it, “I do not have a vagina and he does not have a penis. We have no genitals.”

All this, I suppose, is a way of saying that “Barbie” has something for everyone. As the movie’s logline so aptly puts it: “If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you.”

Rather than read about it, you should probably just go see it.

Or, hell, go see it again.

Motherhood Sucks

I have written extensively about Women and particularly Motherhood and the larger Mommy Blogger Scene that has risen like a flood and a tide that has become a cottage industry of its own. We have reformed Mothers, converted Mothers, Christian Mothers, Aged Mothers, Royal or “former” Royal Mothers, Hot Mothers, Grandmothers, Lesbian or once straight Mothers, and all of them versed well in what defines being a Working Mother. That is a redundancy in and of itself as all Mothers are. We revere the concept of Motherhood yet not all of us should be nor want to be. Ah yes that is the question.

And while every day when you are a Mother is Mother’s day there are many many Women who have elected to not be Mothers. We are obsessed with Mothers and we are sure that again in our faux Meritocracy that it is some type of intrinsic failure to be a mother. We have Women who go to great lengths to be Mothers and hire women when all else fails to be one for them. We are sure any Woman wants to be a Mother and if not why not? I got 99 reasons and do you really care or is this again somehow about you? I feel that is our society now, it is always about me, no you, no I mean I. As My Mother used to say, “What are you an Eye Specialist?” I’ll let that sink in.

I realized the other day why I am shitty at interpersonal relationships. I don’t care. I used to try and it was over the top, as I thought if I tried real hard to care I would. It doesn’t work that way. Not a day goes by thanking myself that I did not have a child. I do believe we see all relationships as a type of a Mirror and I have used that euphemism repeatedly when it comes to Children. They see themselves as a reflection of the Adult holding it. And that is a bag of mixed nuts right there. And we do that with our Adult ones trying to find a reasonable compliment to our own view of self. As mine changes frequently anyone in a partnership with me would have to be a shape shifter. I loathe the expression finding a Partner just like Mom or Dad, YIKES, paternal incest how charming. And with that I duplicated my Parents marriage to a perfect imitation where we were literally in a Marriage of one. I liked it, he did not. And with that I moved on and out and about and he is in what I believe his 15th year of Marriage with someone who I assume gets him in ways I had no interest. No regrets what.so.ever. I learned something, got something from it and with that I am happy to be alone. I would enjoy genuine friendship/companionship but I do not miss day to day routines and I especially do not miss Sex. I can handle that one on my own.

People do confuse Intimacy with Sexuality and I realize that again I liked them in their own lanes and now perhaps at this age it seems to make sense more and with that I tried to hard to co-join them like bad Siamese Twins. (I believe that term is of course outdated and will the language Police give me the new and approved one) It takes a lot to realize that the difference between the two and I often think that is why when Women have children all of that unconditional love, the endless obsession and desire about what that is is now directed to the child. And that in turn is as equally smothering, damaging and destructive, it just takes longer to see the results. Much is often made of those Couples that have distinct relationships outside of Parenthood and those are thought of as Outliers who are selfish, weird or eccentric. And there are many Women wish they had not; The irony that the most famous Authors of Children’s books hated or did not have kids. The Cat is not in that hat. This is what we do as adults, make adults ones and leave the child behind.

The word CHOICE is being heavily bandied about of late as it is regards to decisions that surround Pregnancy. The move to make any type of option outside of carrying a Child to term is being now decided by the States, the same States that think Drag Shows and Drag Queen Reading Hour is a some type a recruitment mission or a pedophile on patrol. They are sure that Trans Men and Women are a threat to Bathroom freedoms and sporting shenanigans. I recall the scandal of the Women of the East German Swim Team. “Gosh Grunhilda can really do the backstroke, check out those shoulders!” I still will go to my own death bed believing it is about fucking and dicks. I can see a (fill in the blank word) Man standing at the Urinal and the guy next to whips out a foot long or he sees the feet in the closed stall facing forward. And the other is that the hot chick next to him is in fact a Trans Woman with still a Penis. Fucking or Pissing are two essential dominant factors in men’s thought process and then sports. See that is the Trans obsession.

Women I assume have less interest in where that dick is. We get bored of sex early on. How many Dick pics can you see where you think, “Haven’t I seen this in a Museum and wasn’t it better?” And when you love sex as I once did, it takes one too many dicks after a time where you think “God please let’s end this now as I got shit to do.” It will be a cold day in hell when I shove a dick down my throat ever again. That gag reflex is restored thankfully.

So when not planning the career life that will be crashed by Men in some way shape or another; That the Aging Parent that you now have to care for like a child will occur or that at some point you will be required to drop one from your Uterus or hire someone else to do it for you in both cases. I do wonder is that due to biological problems? And in turn that may be a sign that you should not breed or for some other reason that has little to do with fertility that demands you become a Parent. And then it begins.

When I read this essay from the Sister of Frank Bruni, the former NY Times columnist, I thought it was actually true. Children are not your clones and with that it explains again much of the Mommy Industry. When you can’t have a career you pimp your children. It is like Mama June only not making your kid a stripper.

Success for my children meant finding their own paths, not retracing mine

By Adelle Kirk

Every year, without fail, about 20 of my best female friends from college and I reunite for a long weekend. It’s not always easy to pull off; we’re career women, wives, mothers, busily “having it all,” which means having almost no free time. But we relish traveling back across the decades together. We reminisce about the nights spent dancing to Liquid Pleasure, our favorite 1980s band. We laugh about the sleepless fog we lived through our senior spring as we tried to finish the thesis papers required to graduate.

Then, inevitably, the talk turns from our antics back in the day to our kids today. To the trials they put us through or the challenges of parenting that no one saw coming. Some of our kids have real limitations. Others are quietly defiant. Still others are outright rebellious. But a single common thread runs through our observations and complaints about them: Why can’t they be more like we were?

We’re no doubt seeing our pasts through rose-colored glasses when we ask that. We’re also measuring our kids with the yardsticks of the academic accolades that we accrued, the elite university where we got our cherished diplomas, the big jobs we snagged, the fairy-tale parents we expected to be. We want exactly — and I mean exactly — the same for them.

But is that concerned parenting or simple vanity? Are we trying to encourage and shape authentic individuals or create clones of ourselves?

The positive spin is that the path we’re best equipped to help them navigate is the one we took, so we’re simply giving them the surest set of directions we can. There’s truth in that and in our desires, heartfelt and understandable, to make certain that they and we continue to have the same bearings, enjoy the same interests, speak the same language. It’s a way of holding them close as long as possible. It’s a recipe for lifelong friendship.

Now that they are young adults, I look back at my two children’s youths, and I see, over and over, me frantically trying to determine who they’d be rather than letting them discover who they really were. I’d been on my high school swimming and basketball teams, so my son needed sports of his own, and I forced him to play football and lacrosse, though what he loved was watching, not participating in, both. As soon as I got an inkling that he was better with numbers than with words, I bought verbal SAT books for him every summer and spent endless hours playing editor on his high school papers. He had to find a route to well-rounded academic excellence.

With my daughter, it was much the same. I rotated her through one sport after another, intent that she also follow in my footsteps. Alas, she was more an artist than an athlete — but that was OK! I loved theater in high school and performed in countless plays throughout college. So I pushed and pushed in that direction, a backstage tiger mother with a mighty roar.

I now realize that I wasn’t simply and benignly motivating my children. I was probably giving them the constant feeling that they were disappointing me, that their natural interests, talents and drive were never enough. That’s by far my biggest regret as a parent — not that neither of them has my alma mater, not that neither of them was all-American in lacrosse, not that neither of them had a precocious turn on a Broadway stage. I worry that neither of them understood how little I really cared about that. And that’s because I didn’t understand it myself.

Somehow, they survived. The credit goes entirely to them. My son prospers at a top-notch public university, where his major and his side interests bear absolutely no relation to mine at his age. He’s happy. My daughter decided that college wasn’t for her — at least not now — and took a job in the restaurant industry in a city halfway across the country from our New Jersey home. I visited her there recently. I ate where she works and watched her in action. She moved with a confidence that wasn’t always there before. She moved with joy.

So what was the tug of war that I went through with them — and that so many of my friends go through with their children — all about? What was the point? The gift our children give us is their individuality, and they develop strength of character not by emulating or outdoing us but by finding their own ways once we finally let them. That destination may not be one we ever imagined. But in being a surprise, it can be a special delight.

I try to embrace different yardsticks for my children now: their contentment, their fulfillment. And I genuinely admire their decisions and their determination to live their lives on their own terms. Maybe I’m just mellowing in my advancing age, or maybe they’ve taught me something crucial about the tyranny of precise expectations and the liberty of sloughing those off. When I swap parenting stories with my college classmates during our next weekend together, I won’t lament what my children haven’t done or may never do or the degree to which they aren’t replicas of me. I’ll celebrate their originality. Or — imagine this — I won’t hold them up for inspection at all.

On a Personal Note

Over the years, Frank has used his newsletters and columns to write at length about our family, including his relationships with our two brothers — Mark and Harry — and me. So I thought I’d seize this opportunity to give you my perspective on his. It’s not so much a correction of the record as a refinement and an elaboration.

He says that we’re big eaters and loud talkers. True. I mean, we’re (half) Italian. It’s in the genes.

He says that we take pains to carve out time for trips together. Also true.

But I’m not sure he gives you a full and accurate sense of how he fits into the group. As the second-born boy, he wasn’t the natural leader of our pack; that role fell to Mark, the firstborn, who cast a long shadow for Frank to grow up in. Frank also didn’t fly somewhat under our parents’ radar, the way Harry, the youngest of my three older brothers, did. And he wasn’t the pampered baby of the family, a long-awaited daughter. I drew that lucky card.

So Frank became, well, the family’s narrator. Its chronicler. We often turned to him to describe what we were going through, to put it into words (and this was before he went ahead and did that for a living). I can still remember the puzzled expressions on Mark’s and Harry’s faces when Frank sometimes came out with a verb or an adjective they’d never heard of. He was sort of like an SAT prep guide on legs. And if I’m being honest, he could be a little lordly — that’s a Frank kind of word — about it.

While we’re on the subject of his foibles, I should give you my view of his caretaking of Regan, given how frequently he regales you with tales about her. It’s … obsessive. He agonizes if he has walked her less than five miles on a given day; he’s stupidly happy if he has gone over eight. My dogs always gyrate with excitement when Frank and Regan drop by, because he’ll take them along for one of these marathons or force me to bring them along.

Oh, and on those family trips? No one else suggests that cocktail hour begin quite as early in the afternoon as Frank does.

He’s the only sibling each of us calls regularly. I’m not sure why, but it works out that way. He and I talk almost daily, often at some early morning hour when the ring of my phone beats my alarm because Frank is already up and (you guessed it) out walking Regan.

He’s generous — to me, to my children, to his other nieces and nephews. He’s generous with his time, with his confidences, with his advice (which is pretty good), with his gossip (which is even better). Heck, he’s even generous with his newsletter space, giving it to me this week. I’m grateful. And I thank you, too, for indulging me.

The Next Pandemic

The next pandemic will be one with regards to mental health. We already do a piss poor job on that count serving the needs of those seriously mentally ill, let alone those who have struggles with other disorders from Anxiety to Depression. Now that the Mental Industrial Complex have added Grief as a mental health problem more will follow with regards to being handed medications and given little else to find the coping skills needed to manage. Grief is an emotion different for each individual and given the numerous articles and books about how many Children, now adults, are glad that their parents are dead as it shows we have a long ignored the realty of how Parents continue to fuck us over in ways that carry on long past childhood and that exemplify the failure of most parents to be, well parents. Ask Davie Sedaris about that one, or this woman whose essay is quite similar in nature to David’s own.

For the record my Parents sucked and they didn’t. I have long worked past the rage and disappointment and still focus on being grateful that whatever they did wrong or right enabled me to survive this very unconventional life I have been fortunate to lead. I know now I struggle with intimacy and tried too hard and then when I checked out as I always do it is not handled well or I am dumped early on because of it and rather than give a shit I packed my shit and left leaving the mess tidely packed in designer bags and placed in storage until I finally could no longer do so. And with that I know am a one and done and will be super company for a moment, an hour, a minute but I will call it a day and live with that. We all do what we have to to survive, be a day, a week, a month, a year or a pandemic. But the toll is there and there is always that which must be unpacked, tossed or given away in which to fully function.

There is no one size fits all when it comes to how to diagnose and treat mental health. It is why we have so many confusing issues when it comes to understanding the mind, treating the patient and in turn actually “fixing” it in a way that enables an Individual to adjust, adapt and function in a productive manner with regards to society’s expectations on what is “normal.” I have to avoid going off on a tangent about this as frankly it is another definitive that means a specific “type” of behavior, attitude and manner that allows for little deviation by the one providing the definition. Again, who provides the definition controls the narrative and with that the ability to conform or manage falls to those who agree what is “normal” or not. Think about how Gay people were defined? Women defined? People of Color defined? Yeah.

There was an article in the Washington Post about the crisis in public education that has finally realized there is an extensive mental health problem not on the horizon but in fact now. I do feel that more is coming as Children born during the pandemic and are about now two years old should be included as these were born in a panic mode, have witnessed nothing but panic and given the evidence I have seen from 946 below me we have major problems with their parents mental health so their daughter will equally reflect some of that. And with that they are not alone, as many primary caregivers are primary breadwinners, despite the presences of two parents but more critical only one, few other family members active in care, and the pressure to work from home full time, yet maintain education or basic training all while trying to offer organized play. all under this whole mantra of “STAY SAFE” will produce a generation of children, I believe, to be truly mentally unstable. I see the evidence in the Schools, the Streets, in Public, at the Parks how undisciplined and confused they are with regards to order and managing their own behavior and expectations. Those parents who are succeeding are doing so I believe as they simply have worked double time to get their children back on track and usually those are people who have worked in Education or in some type of Medical Care as they are aware of developmental benchmarks and what those mean as Children age.

The privileged set have always had Nanny’s and Private Schools that did not close and with that their children will be as always, privileged. That said the diversity and inclusion issues will not happen as the ways they do so, via sports, music and other extracurricular activities declined and with that the social isolation only furthered that with more and more families relocating, going to home school or again relying on the biggest segregation method – Religion. Churches have understood this dynamic and weathered many a plague and this is no different. The rise in more dogmatic and conservative faith has been noted – particularly among Families of Color. Gimme that old time religion! And why? Because again the lack of AFFORDABLE mental health counselors is a massive issue. And with that the Post article states that both funding and available trained staff are an issue.

****

In many areas, even when money is in hand, hiring is not easy. As this school year opened, nearly 20 percent of schools reported vacancies in mental health positions, according to federal data. Schools often said they employed too few staff to manage the caseload but also complained about difficulties finding licensed providers, the data showed.

“We simply don’t have enough people in our profession to meet the need,” said Kelsey Theis, president of the Texas Association of School Psychologists. When families seek private therapists, “sometimes there’s a wait list of months and months before they get help,” she said.

In Maine, waiting lists grew so long last year that school counselor Tara Kierstead began looking out of state for therapists who had openings — a solution that was not practical for many families.

Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy called out the “devastating” effects of the pandemic on youth mental health in a public advisory last December. Earlier that year, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association together declared “a national state of emergency” in children’s mental health. They pointed out that young people of color were especially affected and linked the struggle for racial justice to the worsening crisis.

A year later, this October, they sounded the alarm again. Things are not getting better.

***

And with this let’s discuss the mental health crisis that is being played out on our public streets. From coast to coast we are hearing about an immense housing crisis and with that many who are working but living paycheck to paycheck are finding themselves not out pacing inflation and the rising rents thanks to the housing market which rising interest rates have led to more renters, and with that more renters as the multi family market has never struggled to build, one look at Jersey City should confirm that, where as single family housing has. And with that when you struggle to pay bills and support your family the strain shows on all members regardless of age. I do believe that some of the better survivors are those with extended family members and multi age generations sharing a home. From an economic standpoint it enables a stronger base to afford housing and associated costs but also responsibility between the members regarding care and emotional support. It is not always ideal but there has to be ways to look at this and see what we can do to improve it (aka size of home) and in turn how there are ways to encourage access and availability to those without extensive community/family ties. The New York Times has been very active in writing articles about living alone and aging and the risks associated with that, that they had their former writer, Frank Bruni, do an essay on that issue to counterpoint the idea that being alone and aged is detrimental to one’s physical and mental health.

To truly see what is like to age in place there is nowhere better than New York City.  This is a city awash with varying levels of wealth and industry and yet I have never witnessed so many individuals within my peer group age so badly.  It is distressing to note that while all these supposed sophisticates living in the greatest City in the world they do so in simply poor physical and mental health.  I have met few that are mobile and independent without some type of assistance and those that are seemingly independent not functioning at high order.  They have access and availability to attend events, go to varying places in the City and yet getting therapy of some kind is either ignored or manipulated.   The body and the mind are connected folks and there are real problems here with the aging population.

This weekend I attended two Operas, The Hours, based on the book/movie and was created for the Soprano Renee Fleming to return to the MET and Rigoletto, the story of a sad clown which is by far more of a story of being alone and afraid despite the tone of the subject The Hours is about. I cannot say that The House is a complex story as it is and if you have no seen the movie or read the book, the Opera would be a loss. And fo the two this weekend, I adored Rigoletto, hada better seat and was besotted with the cast, they were PERFECTION; Despite the Hours stellar cast, the same could not be said. the story was missing, a theme which through a song would have shown the connection between the women, a use of lyrical hook perhaps may have worked. Again if you had not sen the movie or read the book the story was odd, you have Virginia writing the book, The Hours about Mrs, Dalloway; another woman jokingly called that by her friend and writer as she plans a party for him, and another reading said book while struggling with being a Wife/Mother in search of a “room of one’s own” all in different times in history and place. As they say it is complicated. And while I loved all the women, , they were beautiful and immensely talented there was no emotional connection to any of it. Rigoletto on the other hand… Reviews were mixed and not one person I spoke to liked it. The women in my row left at intermission, there were two men who hated it and raged all the way out, another who did not like a single piece and felt it lacking, and the woman crying on the subway informed me that it was garbage and should never have been made! At least the two women just left without incident, the need to stay throughout not one but two intermissions, and to rage all the way out, on the subway seems to have a a problem with emotional restraint and management. In other words – mental health. And this is visible everywhere, which explains the burst of violence (not just guns but in both verbal and physical assaults.

Texas and Florida have been front and center in the culture wars when it comes to education and with that, I read about Brevard County in Florida and the mass exodus by Teachers and other Staff in the district due to Students uncontrolled behavior.   From masturbating in class to utter disregard and abuse to Teachers during class does not shock me in the least.  I saw similar acts of excess in Nashville when I lived there and I can only imagine the state of the schools now.  I am exhausted trying to explain to Teachers here the way the District alone disrespects Substitutes it is only a part of the reason the Students do.  They model the expectations and behaviors which sends a message to Students to do the same.  I welcome the day when proper introductions are made and I am greeted by name, but that is beyond reach in most schools but it is possible.  Try to imagine coming into someone’s home or they into yours and not being formally introduced or acknowledged.  I guess that is what these people do, just ignore strangers, and hope they take care of the formality.  The reality is that we are invisible and with that it greatly affects my mental health in ways that harken back to the days when I had Traumatic Brain Injury, it is that serious and traumatic.  I have spent days contemplating my mental health and long-term wellness and with that it affects how I see myself and my relationships to others.

During the pandemic being a loner paid off, and I thrived.  Today when out and about I am exhausted being in the company of others.  The endless sense of entitlement you once saw in New Yorker’s has now doubled down.  The extreme rudeness and paranoia are on overdrive.  I have experienced it one time too many in the Theater and until Saturday managed to avoid it at the Opera.  The reality is that many went to see the acclaimed star, they arrived in walkers, wheelchairs, with canes, hearing aids and other disabilities that are so prevalent I cannot imagine why they did not go to a theater to view it on HD simulcast or listen to it on the radio simply for that reason alone.  The man behind me at Rigoletto was stoned eating edibles the entire performance, his friends had never been and were clueless, about the protocol, and they were not young.  They expressed amazement at the seat shuffle that took place, not realizing as the Opera began many were moving seats as now is customary and that many open seats were being sold at a flat $50 dollars to anyone willing to come as the MET day of, as its online site had been cyber attacked so empty seats were for the taking.  It is why I moved immediately once the lights went down and my row did as well to much better views.  I informed them that this is the new Met, sit anywhere and come late they hold the doors for at least 15 minutes for that reason.  Nothing starts on time.   The boxes are equally empty and if you know how to handle that area no one would notice you slipping into one.  Frankly the sight range is poor but the sound is better so it is a tradeoff.  And these two demanded to go to a box immediately.  Dear God. This is common to any coffee shop or bar of late, the endless demands and orders as if they are at home and this is simply an extension of it.    But sadly, this behavior is not confined to New York by any stretch.

Mental health is a problem, the depth and breadth are not fully realized as in reality many have employed coping skills and strategies to make it work, as do I, but this long-range problem is not anywhere near resolution.  Look at Twitter the cesspool of idiocy and hate.  Look at Washington Post comments and see a miasma of cranks, bots and morons writing their brain farts as if they have just composed a modern version of Great Expectations. Do you honestly believe the progeny of these individuals will be mentally sound and capable of handling a crisis let alone daily living?  I do not. And I point to the precious snowflake in  Apt 946 and her psychotic parents as an example of unhinged idiots.  The Mother a massive Karen and her spouse an abusive asshole who threatened me.  These are not model parents in any way. Nor are the ones storming the gates of schools, threatening Board Members, Teachers and Administrators.  I am not alone in the abuse but I am alone and I am having none of it.  And with that I pick and choose my battles but I soldier on. But I am afraid, very afraid. And I agree with this essay from this EMS Tech we are nowhere near fixing what is now, let alone what is coming.

I’m an N.Y.C. Paramedic. I’ve Never Witnessed a Mental Health Crisis Like This One.

Dec. 7, 2022 The New York Times Guest Essay

By Anthony Almojera

Mr. Almojera is a lieutenant paramedic with the New York City Fire Department Bureau of Emergency Medical Services and the author of “Riding the Lightning: A Year in the Life of a New York City Paramedic.”

There are New Yorkers who rant on street corners and slump on sidewalks beside overloaded pushcarts. They can be friendly or angry or distrustful. To me and my colleagues, they’re patients.

I’m a lieutenant paramedic with the Fire Department’s Bureau of Emergency Medical Services, and it’s rare to go a day without a call to help a mentally ill New Yorker. Medical responders are often their first, or only, point of contact with the chain of health professionals who should be treating them. We know their names and their routines, their delusions, even their birthdays.

It is a sad, scattered community. And it has mushroomed. In nearly 20 years as a medical responder, I’ve never witnessed a mental health crisis like the one New York is currently experiencing. During the last week of November, 911 dispatchers received on average 425 calls a day for “emotionally disturbed persons,” or E.D.P.s. Even in the decade before the pandemic, those calls had almost doubled. E.D.P.s are people who have fallen through the cracks of a chronically underfunded mental health system, a house of cards built on sand that the Covid pandemic crushed.

Now Mayor Eric Adams wants medical responders and police officers to force more mentally ill people in distress into care. I get it: They desperately need professional help and somewhere safe to sleep and to get a meal. Forceful action makes for splashy headlines.

People with mental health challenges can be victims of violence. I’m also painfully aware of the danger people with serious mental illness and without access to treatment can pose to the public. Assaults on E.M.S. workers in the New York City Fire Department have steadily increased year over year. Our medical responders have been bitten, beaten and chased by unstable patients. A man who reportedly suffers from schizophrenia has been charged with fatally stabbing a colleague of mine, Capt. Alison Russo-Elling, in Queens on Sept. 29.

But dispatching medical responders to wrangle mentally disturbed people living on the street and ferry them to overcrowded psychiatric facilities is not the answer.

For one thing, the mayor is shifting more responsibility for a systemic crisis to an overworked medical corps burned out from years of low pay and the strain of the pandemic. Many E.M.S. workers are suffering from depression and lack adequate professional mental health support, much like the patients we treat. Several members of the Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Services have died by suicide since the pandemic began, and hundreds have quit or retired. Many of us who are still working are stretched to the breaking point.

I’ve gone down the road of despair myself. The spring and fall of 2020 left me so empty, exhausted and sleepless that I thought about suicide, too. Our ambulances are simply the entrance to a broken pipeline. We have burned down the house of mental health in this city, and the people you see on the street are the survivors who staggered from the ashes.

Those who are supposed to respond and help them are not doing well, either. Since March 2020, the unions that represent the Fire Department’s medical responders have been so inundated with calls from members seeking help that we set up partnerships with three mental health organizations, all paid for by the E.M.S. F.D.N.Y. Help Fund, an independent charity group founded and funded by medical responders and the public through donations to help us out in times of crisis.

We need to sift through the embers and see what we can salvage. Then we need to lay a new foundation, put in some beams to support the structure and start building.

What New York, like so many cities around the United States, needs is sustained investment to fund mental health facilities and professionals offering long-term care. This effort would no doubt cost tens of millions of dollars.

I’m not opposed to taking mentally ill people in distress to the hospital; our ambulances do this all the time. But I know it’s unlikely to solve their problems. Hospitals are overwhelmed, so they sometimes try to shuffle patients to other facilities. Gov. Kathy Hochul has promised 50 extra beds for New York City’s psychiatric patients. We need far more to manage those patients who would qualify for involuntary hospitalization under Mr. Adams’s vague criteria.

Often, a patient is examined by hospital staff, given a sandwich and a place to rest for a few hours and then discharged. If the person is intoxicated, a nurse might offer a “banana bag” — an intravenous solution of vitamins and electrolytes — and time to sober up. Chances are the already overworked staff members can’t do much, if anything, about the depression that led the patient to drink or take drugs in the first place.

Let’s say a patient does receive treatment in the hospital. Mr. Adams says that under the new directive, this patient won’t be discharged until a plan is in place to connect the person with ongoing care. But the systems responsible for this care — sheltered housing, access to outpatient psychiatric care, social workers, a path to reintegration into society — are horribly inadequate. There aren’t enough shelters, there aren’t enough social workers, there aren’t enough outpatient facilities. So people who no longer know how to care for themselves, who need their hands held through a complex process, are alone on the street once again.

A few days ago, I treated a manic-depressive person in his late 30s who was shouting at people on a subway platform in Downtown Brooklyn. The man said he’d gone two years without medication because he didn’t know where to get it. He said he didn’t want to go to a shelter, and I told him I knew where he was coming from: I was homeless for two years in my early 20s, and I slept in my car to avoid shelters; one night at the Bedford-Atlantic Armory was enough for me.

I persuaded the man to come with me to Brooklyn Hospital Center and made sure he got a prescription. Whether or not he’ll remember to take it, I don’t know.

While I don’t know how forcing people into care will help, I do see how it will hurt. Trust between a medical responder and the patient is crucial. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to get patients to talk to us, to let us touch them or stick needles filled with medications into their arms. But if we bundle people into our ambulances against their will, that trust will break.

Also, medical responders aren’t equipped to handle standoffs with psychiatric patients. In my experience, police officers are not keen to intervene with the mentally ill. They don’t have the medical knowledge to evaluate patients. So who is going to decide whether to transport them? What if we disagree? Protocol has been that the E.M.S. workers make the decision. Will the police now order us to take them? I can only imagine the hours that medical responders and cops will spend debating what to do with patients.

Rather than look for a superficial fix, Mr. Adams should turn his attention to our neglected health care apparatus. We must heavily invest in social services, housing and mental health care if we want to avoid this ongoing tragedy. We need this kind of investment across the United States, where there has been a serious mental health crisis since the pandemic began. My contact with New York City’s mentally ill population over the years and my own brushes with depression and homelessness have taught me we are all much closer to the abyss than we think.

Child as Activist

If you watched John Oliver on Sunday October 16th his main story was about Transgendered Children and their rights which are increasingly being removed and even the very word or subject is being banned in many schools across the country as this issue has become the new social media ## of late in the endless sparring between the right and left. It is of course nuts as social media is a cesspool of misinformation and histrionics that are fueled by the culture wars as established by the two political parties serving in Congress. The New York Times did an excellent breakdown of how they use social media to encourage and enrage their followers to incite discord and as we know now, violence. Words apparently can lead to hurt.

I found this article in the Washington Post and with that I am sorry that this little girl is involved at all. She is a survivor and will go through immense struggles coping with this and in turn adding pressure to somehow be the spokesperson to bring change does little to help her process and try to live her life as a CHILD should in the best of circumstances and these certainly are not the best in any stretch of the imagination.

Uvalde was a failure by the Adults not in the room. The Adults in the room died trying to save lives, only one survived and he will have many years of rehab from the injuries both physical and mental as he works toward recovery. Children have no need to be involved but they are now largely thanks to David Hogg who along with other Survivors of Parkland decided to take on the role of Activists and push forward with Gun Safety and Legislation to regulate guns. They are still pushing forward but now many have taken a back seat. David still is on social media but I can see cracks in the rage and anger and with that he is at Harvard and should be focused on the now and the end game and at that point move into a larger role, but to spend his entire College Years on this issue is to me a point that has been made.

The Court Case in Florida is over and the Parents are still processing their grief and anger and as we also know as more and more shootings have occurred in schools, at parks, at grocery stores, at parades and in homes little has changed with regards to Gun regulations and safety, in fact gun restrictions have loosened. And we are now putting all of this on children. I watched the families in the Court over Alex Jones and his bullshit regarding Sandy Hook, a shooting that was well over a decade ago. I watched the families during the Florida trial and now we have another coming in Michigan and more to follow. This will never end well. Yes the shooter will be found guilty and regardless of the penalty it doesn’t change a thing; Children and adults died by a GUN, held by a hand who managed to have legal access to one. That is the real problem and the only solution, getting guns off our streets. Start by not playing with them as children. That might help. Stop filming movies and video games that don’t actually depict the real violence found at the end of a bullet and start showing the actual crime scene photos. Some of the children were so badly mangled their parents were sent DNA kits in which to assist in identifying remains and now Texas wants that for all children in all schools in the State. The message there? You decide.

And with that I close with a Biblical verse, yes irony but that is the point that many of these shootings happen in quote/unquote Bible belt, Free Rights and Love God and Guns country. So they should be more than familiar with this citation:

Matthew 18:2-6

2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them.

3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

6 “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

S/He’s Crazy

I am as guilty as many for using that expression be it both passive and aggressive. But in reality I have used it professionally. The term is often a bland name to dismiss someone’s behavior or ignore them when we don’t agree or understand their view. I could say that about Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, but I think I actually mean it. There is something wrong there when you read her texts and missives to others regarding the election of 2020 and her hysterics over Trump’s loss. Her reaction is as nuts as Trump’s and the irony is that Trump and aides referred to Ginni as nuts during his time in the White House dealing with her. And with that I have called Trump mentally unstable and still do to this day. At some level in the diagnostic tool of mental health, The DSM, has I am sure one if not many potential mental health disorders for which he qualifies. That also said it used to claim being Homosexual was a mental illness, so there you go. Today they have added Grief as a mental illness in which to diagnose and in turn receive insurance payments for that treatment which I am sure will include a wild series of costly drugs to add to the pharmacy cabinet; no matter what the ailment it seems most disorders do seem to rely on meds to treat them. Go figure.

Today I read an interesting article in the Washington Post, challenging the notion that the pandemic has contributed to a rising tide of mental illness in children, the idea that was prior to the pandemic it is in fact the same but it was not good before so there you go. To that I concur. In my experience working with kids in schools the reality is that it is the same as it ever was, bad, real bad. But the spectrum of which that falls is rather large. There are serious learning disabilities that I don’t consider mental illness and in turn are often again treated with meds and the child is the sole source of the problem. This includes ADHD and Autism. They are very very different illnesses and with a diagnosis of Autism that too crosses a broad spectrum that simply means an entire adjustment of expectations by the family and those with whom they work for or with. Teachers who know a child is on the spectrum can simply not use the same measures of discipline and expectations and in turn avoid the endless circle of what comprises cause and effect of discipline in a classroom. Well that is if one exists I have not been in many classrooms that have said expectations and in turn repercussions for children who fail to meet them. This has been largely due to the racial component and with that a child is often simply classified as a “behavioral problem” versus one who has perhaps a serious learning disorder or mental health issue. And families of color are already resistant to the labels of SPED so they are not willing or if are able to find those who can diagnose and treat appropriately. This is an issue the article discusses in length and when you look at the comment section you see affirmations of how race and racism contributes to the stress.

My last sub gig which I have written about where I truly thought about suicide as I wondered if this was all there is had a redo. Yes the school sent me back in there as the rotating cast of subs have equally hated the gig and this was the straw for me telling the office to NEVER put me in this woman’s class again. The problems are all on the Teacher, she is retiring, a coddler and again teaches health where there is no accountability for her curriculum in the testing measurements; that she is also a Coach, that enables her to have a faux concern for students masked as acceptance but is in fact ignorance. I will never forget her coming into the class and ignoring my presence which again says a strong message to anyone in her orbit. Did I take it personally? No and yes because I was there and the reality is that I was angry as a person and professional. Do I know this woman? No and let’s keep it that way or it will get personal. And with that the behavior in this class did not disappoint. By the end of class a boy had touched girl, how or where or why I did not see or care until it became so loud that I could hear her anger and retorts through my airpods. Yes folks, I wear them as I cannot listen to the endless vulgar discussions that transpire. The kids cannot manage handling a broom to clean up the food they spilled, they have no sense of behavior or manners and respect to bother caring. I had more signs in that room than a hospital has, from DO NOT SIT HERE, DO NOT CLOSE WINDOWS, THE ANSWER IS “NO”, Ms… M.. is not here do not ask me where she is when she is coming back. DO THIS AND DON’T DO THAT. Dozens of repetitive signs throughout the room and yet they still asked. Reading is a problem on some level and following directions another. With 5 minutes left I called Security over this one as it was not an issue I could ignore, the girl ran from the room and the kids followed as class was over. Another student had just arrived, demanded I change attendance to tardy and this began the day. If you think there are mental health issues here, yes. But it is much more complex from lack of nutrition, sleep, parental/family engagement, poverty, poor housing and yes all the other factors that contribute to children’s decline which can be Racism, Abuse, Neglect and yes Physical and Mental health problems undiagnosed.

We have had such long term problems in the schools that to blame the pandemic is absurd, it simply pulled back the curtain on a stage that was full of problems. I have finally given up caring. I had to for my mental health, as when I actually contemplated ending my life as a result of endless observations over 30 years of the failures of our communities to deal with these tragedies it takes a toll. So the real issue is what are YOU going to do about it? Oh yeah, get on social media and rage and rant with the rest of the squad. Cancel them, call them out, fail to actually deal with or communicate to another is too fucking hard so shout, scream and rage and remember – the kids are watching, listening and learning.

Covid Orphans

One of the Great Un-vaxxed in my building is a Black woman with two children. She adamantly refuses to even consider the vaccine. I have not even bothered to try to reconcile, attempt or even acknowledge this. I actually don’t like her for more than this but it adds to the list. One of the others I know of is a young woman who has a small child and lives with her Mother. She I tried to explain the import of this but the irony is that both her Mother and Sister are vaccinated, she simply refuses for reasons unclear but I assume it is fear. If she read the story below, she might understand why it is critical to get vaccinated if you are a Parent or a Child of a Parent who is at risk.

In the story below it is a tale of two teenagers thrust into adulthood without a tether to secure them. They will make mistakes and we all do, spare the judgement on the what if and if only as in reality you don’t know until you walk in another shoes. And they can be either cheap or expensive but they all don’t fit until you wear them and break them in. And these kids are breaking them in fast. Some things the article doesn’t mention are medical bills and costs associated with Covid, so I am presuming the family was on Medicaid and that there are no outstanding debts related to their Mother’s death. But again, this is a city that never sleeps and these kids are just lost inside it. I don’t believe in prayer but then again exceptions can be made.

Again this story is likely one of many more and the reality is that their story is not one I am unfamiliar, it is in fact too familiar.

What Do I Do Next?’: Orphaned by Covid, Two Teens Find Their Way

The virus took their mother. Now, as the city reopens, a brother and a sister are rebuilding their lives.

By Corina Knoll The New York Times

• May 29, 2021

Their mother went into cardiac arrest just before midnight.

She was resuscitated, but the doctor had a question: What did the family want to do if Magalie Salomon’s heart stopped beating again?

The decision was left to Ms. Salomon’s son, Xavier. He was 18 years old.

It was an alarming position to be in, particularly for Xavier, who had never felt much responsibility for the household. His father had died nine years earlier, and his mother worked overnight shifts as a home attendant, which meant he was often home alone with his 16-year-old sister, Adriana.

Still, Xavier felt no obligation to take on a big brother role, preferring to dodge chores and duties. He gave little thought to blowing his Burger King paychecks on Yeezy sneakers or gifts for his girlfriend and tended to hole up in his room on his phone.

But when the hospital called, it was Xavier who was asked for answers.

He panicked. Do whatever it takes, he pleaded.

A heaviness descended on the apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Xavier lay on his bed in the dark, waiting for another call.

When it came a couple hours later, there was the same news, the same question. Xavier repeated his plea. Yes, resuscitate. Save her.

Finally, just before dawn, Xavier received word: Ms. Salomon, 44, died of Covid-19 about 6 a.m. on April 3, 2020, at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. It had been less than three days since she left their home.

This time, before Xavier hung up, he had his own question to ask:

“What do I do next?”

A kid with no ambition

The nation has begun to emerge from the pandemic, but any real return to normalcy must include an acknowledgment of what has been lost. More than half a million have died of Covid-19 across the United States. Nearly 34,000 of those deaths were in New York City, an early epicenter where the virus tore through the crowded landscape.

The collective numbers speak to the scope of the devastation, but each death was an event of its own, a fissure in some intimate world where only the bereft know just how much was broken. The stories are detailed and personal, a different ache to fill in every home.

But woven within that grief are tales of hope and hardiness — of small but brilliant transformations as the city reopens.

In the 14 months since their mother’s death, Xavier and Adriana Salomon have managed to reshape their lives, unearthing courage where there was sorrow. Two teenagers on their own, they have made unsteady but brave steps into the shadows of their parents.

Xavier had been the kind of kid who relied on his charm. Even his mother, who babied him, had told him that he lacked ambition. It was she who befriended the Burger King manager and pushed her son to apply for a job.

“I didn’t have goals,” Xavier recalled. “I think it’s just everything being handed down. I never really had to work at anything.”

He had little use for his sister, Adriana, who swiped his clothes, snooped through his phone and tattled about what she had discovered.

In turn, Adriana resented that her brother was coddled. While she was expected to help clean and cook, Xavier sat and waited for his dinner to be plated.

But they were connected by a mother whose vibrancy anchored the family.

Born in the Bahamas, Ms. Salomon had a scathing sense of humor and a deft hand at the stove. She warmed their apartment with laughter and the smell of chicken with yellow rice and beans or macaroni and cheese.

Generous and gregarious, she lavished her children and their friends with brand-name clothes and restaurant dinners. For Adriana’s 16th birthday, she brought home a Yorkie named Bella. Never mind that they already had a Shih Tzu, Juicy.

Xavier had his mother’s wit, and the two were constantly one-upping each other to the glee of whoever happened to be in their midst.

Adriana was like her mother — blunt, confident — but quieter. The two shared a room and a queen bed, although Ms. Salomon worked nights, so was usually gone by the time Adriana got home from school. Sometimes Adriana was allowed to skip classes so she and her mother could get their nails done or go to the mall.

Their father, Adrian Dookie, had been stricken with lymphoma when they were in elementary school. Mr. Dookie, whose daughter was his namesake, was just 30 when he slipped away.

It was the bond that Xavier and Adriana each shared with their mother that helped soften the void.

When their mother began to feel ill in March 2020, they were worried but not overly concerned. They often teased her about being melodramatic.

New York City had recently shut down, but the endgame of the coronavirus was still unclear. The number of deaths was surging, yet there were many more stories of those who had recovered. Adriana herself had symptoms of Covid-19 and was not in distress, just fatigued. Besides, their mother had battled breast cancer a decade earlier. She was a survivor.

Ms. Salomon finally called the ambulance to their apartment on March 31. She embraced her children before walking outside.

She continuously texted and called from the hospital. During one FaceTime chat with Xavier, she brought up his relationship with Adriana. Ms. Salomon worried about her children’s inability to connect. “She said, ‘I don’t like the way you treat Adriana,’” Xavier recalled. She felt that the siblings should be closer, that he should look out for his sister.

Xavier waved it off. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But after his mother had been buried next to his father at a cemetery in Queens, Xavier found her words rattling around in his head.

The rent is due

After his mother died, Xavier wanted to stay in the family’s two-bedroom railroad apartment, the only place that held memories of both his parents.

But he was doubtful he would be able to keep up with the bills. If he failed, he did not want to drag Adriana down with him. It would feel safer if she was in the care of adults.

“I didn’t have confidence in myself to be on my own,” he said. “I wasn’t really built in that way.”

So Adriana moved in with family friends in Queens, then took a two-week vacation to North Carolina to visit an older half brother who urged her to stay for good. Afterward, she went to live with an aunt in Canarsie, Brooklyn.

The first months were troubled for Xavier. Because his mother had died of Covid-19, he had to quarantine, missing two weeks of work. Afterward, his $15-an-hour shifts were reduced because customers were sparse.

The landlord said not to stress about the $600 rent — a gesture Xavier mistook as meaning that rent was canceled. He was shocked to later learn that back rent had accrued, and he owed more than $3,000.

Xavier was balancing his first year at City College of New York and looking to major in civil engineering. But the math requirements were steep. With classes remote, his attention easily drifted. His financial aid depended on his grades, which began to drop.

He wondered if he should quit school and get a second job. But when asked how he was doing, he made light of his financial worries. He did not like the idea of being on anyone’s conscience.

“He’s private, he doesn’t show emotions at all,” said Randy Mahabir, 37, a close friend of the family who housed both Xavier and Adriana for a while. “Sometimes that bothers me, because you don’t really know what’s going on inside.”

His girlfriend, Sherlyn Guzman, kept telling him that he was in survival mode, that he should see a therapist. He shrugged it off.

Then, in July, Xavier joined Sherlyn’s family on a trip to the Dominican Republic.

He felt guilty about taking a break and had trouble relaxing.

But he and Sherlyn’s father started building a makeshift pool on the roof of the building. They worked through grueling afternoons, eventually coming back down to sit and welcome the breeze on the balcony with the rest of the family. They ate boiled plantains and drank passion fruit juice while overlooking the fields.

Something in Xavier started to settle. His laugh came more easily. If someone mentioned his mother, he would smile and offer a memory, not just a joke.

“He was starting to actually let himself feel things,” Sherlyn said.

When Xavier returned from the trip, it was with a sense of honesty about his situation. He had never been under so much pressure. But he had also managed to stay afloat on his own.

He felt open, like there was possibility. Maybe he could become a guardian.

When Adriana moved back in with Xavier, there was no grand conversation to be had about tensions in the past. Their mother’s death had somehow righted things between them.

Two teens on their own

They do not like to belabor their parentless life.

The last year has been stark and strange, but Xavier and Adriana have done what they can to push the emptiness away.

They updated their rooms, moving out the broken dresser, patching up holes and painting over the drab blue walls with shades of green. Adriana got a twin bed to replace the queen that felt spacious and lonely.

Their mother’s belongings were bagged up and donated. Adriana kept the wedding band, the oversized sleep shirt, the bottle of J’adore perfume.

The siblings fell into a routine. When Xavier was at work, his sister often hung out with her godmother who lived upstairs. Sometimes Adriana cleaned his room while he was away. He kept his phone near him and checked in when he could.

Both procrastinators, they scrambled to do homework after hours as they sat on their beds and talked through their shared doorway.

Xavier started calling Adriana “mini me” and her family nickname “Chouchou,” a term of endearment in Haitian Creole, the language their mother grew up speaking.

When they talked about their parents, it was usually with insider humor.

“Her and Xavier, they don’t really like to express their hurt,” said Nicole Alvarez, 18, Adriana’s best friend. “Even the day after the funeral, no one was crying or upset, we were just reminiscing about the good times with her.”

There have been headaches, the kind their mother seemed to handle with ease.

A standout student at MESA Charter High School, Adriana started missing classes in the fall. She was oversleeping, Xavier explained at the parent-teacher conference. Their mother had been the one to wake Adriana for school, something Xavier was too tired to do because of long work shifts.

“They’re still trying to figure out how to bounce back from this without the main stabilizing force in their family,” said Pagee Cheung, the school’s principal, who encouraged Xavier to start a GoFundMe campaign. “At the conference, with Xavier as the parent, it was just very eye-opening, their dynamic was lots of laughing and joking around, but also clearly lots of love as you heard them work out the day-to-day things.”

When the refrigerator broke down a couple months ago, Xavier was not sure whom to call. They had not used the kitchen much before, but when rodents became a problem and the exterminator was delayed, they shut the door for good.

Xavier often felt like he should give Adriana the life their mother would have provided. For Christmas, he took his sister on a shopping spree at Queens Center mall, where she picked out jeans, Nike sneakers, a curling iron and a stuffed Pikachu from Build-A-Bear.

That set his savings back, and he fretted about his budget. But on Adriana’s 17th birthday in February, he pulled out his credit card and took her right back to the mall to let her select a blue satchel and a tote bag from Michael Kors. On Xavier’s own birthday, when he turned 19, he worked an eight-hour shift.

“Him and my mom are really alike,” Adriana said. “He’d rather have nothing and then make sure I have everything.”

Adriana tried to make gestures in return. For Christmas she saved up money sent from an aunt and went to a nearby jeweler. She picked out a gold rope bracelet for Xavier, like the one their father used to wear.

Trying to be the pillar

Xavier proposed to Sherlyn last fall at Hunter’s Point South Park in Queens, the skyline of Manhattan rising behind them. His mother would have never allowed him to get engaged so young, but she was also the inspiration: Loved ones can be stolen.

“We’re talking about crazy things,” Xavier said recently. Sherlyn, 20, who works at the same Burger King, might move in with him and Adriana next year if they can find a three-bedroom that works. Not so long ago, he could not have imagined leaving his apartment, nor feeling such purpose about the future.

“I’m really the head of what’s going on right now, trying to be the pillar,” he said.

Adriana wouldn’t mind the change. Sherlyn reminds her of her mom.

They are trying to be healthier, drinking more water, avoiding candy and chips, opting for fresh meals from local restaurants. It is pricier than fast food, but they feel better afterward.

They talk about saving up for headstones on their parents’ graves. Nothing fancy, just respectful, so that their mother and father are commemorated by more than temporary markers on the ground.

Xavier is eager for progress, to get to the life he envisions. He is committed to pulling his grades up, because he’s thinking about the job opportunities he wants after college, the debt he will pay off, the house he will buy, the children he will raise.

He is sometimes shocked at how he reshaped himself, why he chose to listen to the drive that now propels him. “I have no idea how I got to be this person,” he said.

Maybe, he thinks, his resolve had always been there, ready to be ignited by necessity and circumstance and love.

His mother had been so strong, so sure — traits he wonders if she handed down to him, leaving them like final gifts waiting to be found.

Bombs Away

Yesterday when I heard a bomb had exploded in downtown Nashville my first thought was, shocking, no, not really. Again I have no love loss for the area; however, I do not wish anyone to blow up the town the Tornados can take care of that, the Cumberland flooded a decade ago and it can do an equally great jo, in that Mother Nature, the Lord, in a way that the residents of the region accept as truths, versus those of science. And that Tennessee is number one in daily pos Covid cases fits that as they have never seen a number one list that they can refuse to mention. The Religious crackpot Plumber/Governor who has eschewed mask regulations continues to do so despite his own wife contracting Covid. The idiot former Beauty Queen Senator Blackburn continues to issue droplets of idiocy as we wind down the year and the end of Trump, so a bomb in the middle of its city where the driver of the largest portion of their economy is just another anal wart in a city reeling from the pandemic. Again, I have nothing good to say about anyone there, well maybe a few, but this is not something I understand in the least.

My first thought was Timothy McVeigh and then I realized it was in a commercial area off the main strip but still an essential street as all streets in Nashville that run along the city are one way, and 2nd is a street I know well. I patronized many of the businesses along that area, and few actual residents do, but Mike’s Ice Cream and Rocket Fizz Candy are mainstays. The Hooters seen in pictures is where I often disembarked my bus and walked up Commerce street to get a coffee on the way to the Y. I liked 2nd as it was in fact “less touristy” but that entire areas is well known as a high crime area and the problems faced my many workers and businesses was an issue that dominated discussions I had with them after witnessing a robbery in a liquor store one day, being the victim of endless petty crimes (as I lived on 4th Ave S) and being aware of the many sexual assaults that were the result of one too many cheap beers provided at the honky tonks just below the bombing area. The symphony hall, the more elegant hotels, and restaurants that align the area are untouched. So this particular location I find is less McVeigh and more Ceasar Sayoc, another misguided Trump idiot who decided to load a van with explosives that he was busy distributing to perceived enemies of Trump,, but was thankfully caught before he managed to do serious harm. And this bomber wanted to eliminate casualties, while still doing damage, with an announcement to vacate the area. So there was a point or message and then in my Nancy Drew way I found this: The Nashville Fire Department Fire Marshal was fired Tuesday for reasons including performance and insubordination, the department’s top officer said.

And while this is a coincidence I have found that many firefighters are often arsonists and while again this is not an accusation I do find it well “odd.” And again Nashville is hardly a liberal bastion despite belief otherwise, this is still MAGA country with most of the visitors very proud members of that cult and have no issue with a place that accepts if not values their beliefs – in God, Trump and Guns. Nowhere did I live embrace such hypocrisy and idiocy like Nashville and use religion as their mask to cover their true faces. And while I have little good to say I question what the purpose of catastrophic damage to things and people (including their homes, businesses and livelihoods) do to validate your hate. It is sort of like how we are in hysterics over children and distant learning, with numerous articles declaring that this was the Lost Generation. Sure a year ago we were in arms over childhood bullying, trying to adapt to teaching social emotional learning in curricula and worried about kids wandering in schools with guns to commit violence. Teen Violence was actually studied by WHO in between Covid studies. Remember those days, as in about 365 days ago?

Anger and rejection prompted many of the mass shootings and we have had some shooting reports of late, in two cities at malls, and one was what? A Teenager. These stories immediately hit the new, but as it is not the topic du jour, as it is not Covid, not a vaccine nor a weather problem, crickets. Again teen violence folks. Or how about Police Violence, we had a shooting by Police of a black man in Ohio just this week. Or this man also in Ohio just a week prior. That George Floyd thing is still a thing right?

The issue is about violence and the inability of lawmakers to ever fully resolve the issues over guns. So we take the streets to somehow resolve conflicts with a vigilante justice. Then when a family member is on drugs or has a mental health breakdown we seem to think that the same folks who shoot first ask no questions ever will be the one to resolve the issue. Areyoufuckingkiddingme?

So why Nashville and why announce the bomb if you wanted to do real damage. You clearly don’t but you want attention and man we are attention seeking nation. While I lived in Nashville I used to say to the people I knew, “Misery loves company and boy are you people miserable.” That type of grievance seeking and endless wallowing in self pity was a common trait and it is more infectious than Covid. The endless parade of having versus have not is very evident in Nashville, the city is literally ringed by public housing forcing those residents to look through the glass of how a city is being built without their inclusion. It is a city divided by money first then race and they use religion as some type of bridge to accommodate or allow the misconception that they are not racist. No they are however, classist and they care about one color, the one of money, green.

Again I go back to my many conversations with workers that are in the shops that align 2nd or nearby and how then in February of this year how they hated living there, they had moved with the belief they would find a good job, only to be paid barely a minimum wage, the cost of living out of reach and that the tourist trade, the bridezillas were horrible. They, as I felt, we were hostages, only I just paid my ransom to get out. The violence by the kids in Nashville was rage, the endless petty crime and vandalism also rage but this crime is not from them. This is from someone with access and availability to acquire the tools needed to build the mobile bomb and in turn construct it. This is not someone who is a poor fragmented isolated member of the poor community, but it is someone with rage. I saw a lot of that there and I too had a lot. I just left and not a day goes by I am grateful I was able to.

So now the kids and owners of already struggling businesses will have to add to the list recovering from tornado, covid and bomb to an already bursting at the seam one. And the carpetbaggers will arrive to I am sure take that burden and that list from their hands. That is what they do, they sweep it all under their carpets and later cut them up to make bags to carry the money away with. That is Nashville, a pipe bombers dream.

**ETA***Since I wrote and posted this it appears that in under 24 hours the case has been “sort of kind of solved”. Maybe in a Richard Jewell way or not but the suspect is a white. man 63 who is assumed the bomber which was a suicide mission or again not with issues over 5G. Gosh again, I knew it was not a social or political thing given the odd choice/location in front of an AT&T data center. The headquarter building a block away, designated the Batman building would have been the target for a bigger statement but this was not that. A few blocks north are all the federal and state buildings so again not political and the busy strip of Broadway just a few blocks behind and that is the money maker so no, not economics. It was, however, another example of how fucked up Nashville is. What I find interesting is how quick they found a suspect in the southern “burb” of Antioch, which is surrounded by poor families largely those of color. Again where a Church was located and shot up by a nutfuck and the home of the Waffle House where a lunatic shot and killed several patrons in a some attempt to prove his manhood over Taylor Swift. Two cases I forgot about despite the high profiles and the 23 hour manhunt that dominated the news over the Waffle House killer and the hero who stopped the shooting. Another individual whom has largely disappeared from the limelight after being center stage for the months that followed that incident. Nashville has so many “incidents” it is exhausting to keep up. Sadly the Governor Plumber will not get his wish to declare it a national emergency and have to forgo federal dollars to fix the small business decimated along 2nd Avenue. This is another hypocrisy by the red states, the eschewing of Government intervention and legislation but when it comes to money its hands out. A perpetual state of agita that I saw again and again there. Even the headlines in the paper discuss the PPP money given to the state, the disaster relief money and of course the next anticipated stimulus package and who and how much they will get. They get it alright. But if they don’t it doesn’t really matter as the checks and cash will flow as that may be prime real estate and Carpetbaggers never saw a disaster that they did not like. So wait for new shiny things to replace them and make Nashville “it” again. Well until the next incident.

No Neck Monsters

This is an issue that I have long said was a matter of import. The mantra that the flu harms the very young and the elderly is a given but with regards to Covid it seems to have managed to avoid the former and do away with the latter.  Why? Unclear but they may be the antibody source or that we should avoid like the plague as they really are the Typhoid Mary’s that I have long suspected.

Boy with Covid-19 did not transmit disease to more than 170 contacts

Case of symptomatic nine-year-old suggests children may be less likely to pass on virus

Ian Sample Science editor
Guardian
Tue 21 Apr 2020 04.00 EDT

A nine-year-old boy who contracted Covid-19 in Eastern France did not pass the virus on despite coming into contact with more than 170 people, according to research that suggests children may not be major spreaders of the virus.

The boy was among a cluster of cases linked to Steve Walsh, the Hove-based businessman who became the first Briton to test positive for coronavirus after attending a sales conference in Singapore in January.

Walsh unwittingly passed the infection on when he joined 10 British adults and a family of five at a chalet in the ski resort of Contamines-Montjoie in the Haute-Savoie region after flying in from London.

Most of the chalet guests contracted the virus, but an investigation by Public Health France found that the nine-year-old did not pass it on to either of his siblings nor anyone else, despite coming into contact with 172 people, all of whom were quarantined as a precaution, and having lessons at three separate ski schools.

A report on the investigation published in Clinical Infectious Diseases describes how tests revealed the boy to be infected with Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and also influenza and a common cold virus. While both of his siblings caught the latter infections, neither picked up the coronavirus.

“One child, co-infected with other respiratory viruses, attended three schools while symptomatic, but did not transmit the virus, suggesting potential different transmission dynamics in children,” Kostas Danis, an epidemiologist at Public Health France told the French news agency AFP.

The boy had only mild symptoms and when tested was found to have levels of virus that were barely detectable. The low level of infection is thought to explain why he did not infect other people.

The researchers believe that since children typically have only mild symptoms, they may transmit the virus far less than infected adults. “Children might not be an important source of transmissions of this novel virus,” they write.

Why children generally escape the worst of the virus is not well understood, but many scientists suspect that their immune response is somehow able to clear the infections more rapidly than older adults, who tend to be hit much harder by the illness.

The report comes after researchers at UCL concluded this month that school closures would likely have only a small effect on the spread of the virus, and that this should be weighed up against the profound social and economic costs. Dozens of countries have closed their schools to slow the transmission of coronavirus, though the restrictions have been brought in to avoid the social gatherings that happen around schools as well as limiting spread of the virus within them.

The role of children in spreading the virus remains one of the key mysteries of the coronavirus pandemic and the question of whether those who develop few if any symptoms are carriers is still being debated. While the proportion of children who experience severe illness is tiny compared with that of older people, some have fallen seriously ill and died from the infection.

“Better understanding of who is responsible for transmission and when during the disease progression is a really important piece of the jigsaw and we still don’t have any real insight,” said Professor Jonathan Ball, a virologist at Nottingham University. “I keep hearing about significant asymptomatic infection, for example the US Navy personnel, but still have no real idea as to how important they might be with respect to spread.

So Much for That

The endless push, both as a metaphor and literally, regarding anti-bullying has done little to stave off actually bullying. There have been numerous suicides and of course mass shootings that pretty much tell you that whatever message is being sent out is clearly not working

• Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about 4,400 deaths per year, according to the CDC. For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 suicide attempts. Over 14 percent of high school students have considered suicide, and almost 7 percent have attempted it.
• Bully victims are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims, according to studies by Yale University
• A study in Britain found that at least half of suicides among young people are related to bullying
• 10 to 14 year old girls may be at even higher risk for suicide, according to the study above
• According to statistics reported by ABC News, nearly 30 percent of students are either bullies or victims of bullying, and 160,000 kids stay home from school every day because of fear of bullying

And last week in Charlottesville the schools were closed for two days due to threats of violence.  And they are not the only ones that have had said threats as it is a growing issue across the country. Just last year several schools in Detroit were closed    Last week one in Fairfield California, another in Pennsylvania, one in Connecticut.  They may all be fake but in today’s climate it is difficult to tell.

Then we have endless violence or threats of violence against Teachers and others within the schools which  has escalated to proportions where Teachers are afraid and it is an issue significant enough to be a part of the dialogue with regards to funding for education.  Here in Nashville it was part of a town hall that Channel 5 News held to discuss the problems in the district with regards to the soon to be ex Director of Schools here.

And this issue parallels directly with the growing youth violence that dominates the cycle of news here as most crime is committed by Juveniles often well under the age of 18. 

Now race is the dominant issue in Nashville, most of the Educators and Staff of late voicing their concerns are Black, the Students they serve and are often both the victims and perpetrators are Black or of color so while the race card is tossed there is something to be examined as to what factors in that – systemic historic racism, poor employment or low employment, inadequate child and health care and of course religion all play a significant part in the marginalizing and disproportionate issues facing families of color. Why I put religion in this is because here in Nashville the largest and loudest voices of the choir of concern literally are choir members.  Few here are not actively engaged in Churches who hold great sway over the city and its political mien.  Many are like pop up shops when a controversy unfolds and immediately demand restitution or attention only to fold up the tent and reconfigure when another comes along. I have quit counting the groups and looking up their origins and tax status as I know for certain none have them as they are astro turf groups funded by whoever has the real agenda on file.  This to me became apparent during the transit debate and many of the “beards” as I refer to them go back to their day jobs or briefly consider a run for public office only to lose and move on.  It is a cycle you have to actually see to believe.

Then we have the real problems that are violence against their own.  I often feel that is the real reason little is done as it sort of solves the problem of where to house, put and deal with those from the Black Community.  Case in point was the recent shooting at an East Nashville Bar where two attractive white kids were killed and yet another man who was of color was killed the day before and only of late have they decided to connect the murder.  The other a near fatal injury has yet been solved but again it took the Police 23 hours to find the Waffle House shooter and he was less than a 1.5 miles away from the point of origin. But then the victims were all faces of color, the shooter however was not.  But that whole crime could have been prevented had the Police followed up on the vehicle theft found in the killers apartment complex parking lot. Imagine had they questioned the neighbors and with the description of the young man in place as he took the vehicle from a BMW sales lot with the keys and yet simply retrieved the vehicle after failing also to arrest him during a high speed chase the day before.  Things that make you go hmmm.

So when I read the story about the young Fifth Grader who died from an by a classmate during the school day there were things in the story missing that again make me go hmm.  I am appalled that an altercation grew to that level but then again I have actually seen one first hand here in school that hair, scalp and blood were all a part of the process as a young girl pulled a young man from a desk by the hair and dragged him across the floor. That school had been the scene of escalating issues over the two days I was there and since that time has had a series of problems with a Teacher taking a gun to school and a Coach assaulting a student.  It had already been in the news for all the fights and yet this is what defines Nashville Public Schools – horrific.  Although today I am a school where they are celebrating diversity and it is one of the few schools I love from its history to its present day it truly represents that in every way.  We have had, however, Teachers be assaulted and in turn hospitalized when children in that age cohort have assaulted them, we have School Resource Officers leave schools due to the verbal abuse and we have had many situations of physical assault student on student that includes sexual abuse as well.  It is non stop here and it exhausts me and it is why I call the schools dumpsters and the student are just trash bags thrown in with no regard.  It embarrasses me to be a part of something so vile that no one knows how to fix it and to say that it is all about race and racism that led to the downfall of the Director clearly thinks that what he did and more importantly failed to do for the faces of color would be considered racist if he did not share the same face of color.  How it gives him a pass is beyond my understanding.  

And when I watched CBS News cover a story about a Principal in Newark trying to save his students from shame and offer an option you realize that yes one man can make a difference.  And there are many Administrators and Teachers who don’t share the same color of skin, the same religion, the same gender or culture that go the extra mile to devise programs and methods to bring dignity in the classroom.  To say one cannot learn from one who is not different than they is losing the point of diversity which I am seeing all over this school today.  I wish all days were like this here but who am I kidding.

Since I wrote this another story hit the news about a rape and assault with a broomstick in a high school locker room. Not the first nor last as I recall this from Bellevue, Washington schools a few years ago, from an elite private academy outside Nashville, and perhaps the most infamous, Steubenville Ohio.   This is a story not new in the least. That is what defines rape culture, hyper toxic masculinity.  So much for that and what MeToo was about before it was hijacked by celebrity. 

  

Hey Hey Friday

The infamous package bomber, who clearly did not remember the Unibomber or the nutfuck in Austin earlier this year, has now been captured one wonders what next is up for the clusterfuck of idiots who support Trump.

I live in the  South and I do know ironically how to spell Tennessee without spellcheck and even before moving here.  The Male Bomber (note that is a pun by intent) and reality as once again it is man who lives in shrine to Trump van no less who apparently at one point lived in his Mothers basement  after filing bankruptcy (no wonder he loves Trump).  He seems to be the archetype of a man of a certain age, aka tail end  baby boomer,  unemployed, a loner, who likely had his fill on Rush, Beck and Hannity.  No not beers but the radio/tv personalities that fueled this paranoid shit and in turn led to Trump.   As I watched the odd caravan of Police and the shrouded van I did not laugh as I knew that he would be found right where the return address sent them -Florida.   That has to be the State with the highest nutfucks ever in residence.  Isn’t Mar-a-Laog there? Point proven. What I do find interesting that he seems to be not a classical white male given his name which surprised me more, his history less so.   How Trump will spin this tale I have no doubt will be highly entertaining and no less disturbing. He won’t be a deplorable but he will be some type of “immigrant” or “minority” in which to mock and blame in traditionally Trump fashion regardless of his surname this will be FASCINATING.

And as always in relation to fascination – Today in Nashville I had a great morning until I walked into a School but  this was after four perfect sub days so far so hey one out five  not bad odds given this district. The school did not have enough subs so when I got here at 10:30  I was sent to a coffin or in this case a brick room, painted black with no windows, no phone and a group of kids with nothing for them to do.  The Theater teacher called in sick suddenly so they needed coverage.  Something told me to not get there too early and it worked out because otherwise I would have had been shoved in there longer, my dream day same days as the rest, one period and then out was just not to be.  I prefer it as the less time, the less said, the less bothered.  I have said repeatedly and again yesterday another Teacher confirmed that the children here are damaged beyond repair and today once again reminded me that yes they are horrible tragic and broken.

I said to the Sub Coordinator for the schools that you are putting me in a high risk situation, a windowless room at the end of a hall no phones or any lessons to even keep these kids busy which means they will go to the restroom, other classes or so they claim, to the library and wander the halls and I have no way to communicate or even have rolls with their names to know who they are.  She went into full denial mode about their kids (apparently she is unaware I read news)  and then gave me her phone number of which I asked, “How would I call you?” She told me to use my cell phone.  I informed her that I have none and if did would not bring it to a school as the one I did have was stolen and I could not afford to replace it so I have a landline now.  She looked at me incredulous and said to the Aid there with her SPED kids to stay if she would. That led to a conversation that I call very Nashville, where she seemed to know everything including that the Male Bomber had been arrested despite that I was just watching it transpire on my TV.  Then she informed me that I make more as Substitute Teacher as she gets Health Insurance and Child Care deducted from her paycheck.  I offered to show her my last payroll stubs to verify how that is possible as I have no health care, no pension, no coverage on L&I which is workman’s comp so if one of these kids attacked me I am pretty much on my own there and I am nearly 60 with a Masters Degree and Teaching License where Subs with no degrees or credentials make 1.42/hr LESS than me.  So how is that possible?    She took her kids and left.  Bye now and Bless You’re Heart!

And once she left the games began.  The kids asked me what I was watching and I informed them the news feed about the Bomber’s arrest. They had no idea of what I was speaking of but then yesterday I watched the Teacher I was subbing for explain how sugar and salt dissolve in water.  It was a high school Chemistry class.  Okay then.  This is STEM for the future. Good luck with that.

Today the kids openly again discussed me and planned a kid to come up to me then suddenly act as if he had a seizure and to see my reaction. Again the presumption that I am apparently deaf was one thing the other was assuming I would care.  I watched the caravan progress and when finally nothing was going to happen they went back to plotting. The next two girls came up and asked how I was and how my day is going. This one you get a lot here and it is some invite or some baiting question in which I have never responded more than affirmative as I assume it is going down again a darker road and why they care is beyond me.  So the next question was: “What is your favorite color?”  Okay this one is new so I responded, “What my favorite color is my personal business and you are not going to get even that much out of me so thanks for asking, anything else?” For the record I never give my name, write it on the board and rarely am I asked.  They were utterly mystified that I did not want to play so they went back to plot and mock and then they requested the scissors of which I refused. (This is one of these ARE YOU KIDDING ME moments again given the room, etc the last thing I would do is arm a fucking kid.) The end of class could not come soon enough. Finally the last question was: “Have you ever subbed at Croft?” I responded it was one of many many schools I do sub at so beyond the name of the school I can’t tell the difference as you all blend into the same.  So they finally gave up.    It was a long hour.  Really long.

And the sub coordinator checked with me  again now in the room I was intended to belong and I informed her it was game on the minute you and the aid left and I chose to ignore it, the restroom runs, the library runs, the go to another class runs as they are frankly your problem as I had nothing to stop it nor would I.  I pick and choose my battles and that is not one of them.  Note to self: I rarely come to this school and every time I do it is always out there for oddness.  But all of them are and today in the Tennessean ran an editorial demanded the resignation of the School Board for their failures to do their job.  Get in line dude and get real the system was set up that way historically and there is little to no reason to change it now.

In my day I have never met people so dumb, so ignorant and so unwilling to admit they don’t know something and if they do it comes out in the expression, “I have never heard that” as if you are somehow making it up.  This is what defines Southern Hospitality or the Nashville Way apparently. But education across the country is struggling when it comes to the poor, those faces of color and those with special needs as more and more States and Cities struggle with funding and managing their districts, even New York City is no exception as this article discusses their failures in this as well.

So while I do write often about the schools and the horrific children I encounter I do know that that is the anomaly and that when I meet Teachers from other parts of the country or even the area they express the same dismay as to the nature and demeanor of Nashville school children.  It used to bother me and now much like how I laugh at the insanity of my former Lawyer now Junkie ramble on and write suicidal missives on Facebook, I do the same.  It doesn’t make me feel better it just at least reminds me I do have some feelings.   Whatever inspires people to become bombers, to bring harm have to come to public schools and see how this germinates and grows into the Adults that do.

The shooting in Kentucky in Louisville at Kroegers has been overshadowed by the days events and he too wanted to kill members of a black Church like the one in Charleston I had just only paid respects a few days ago.  Yes another nutfuck with a history of violence and clearly now free to act upon his racist fantasies was once a boy who had dreams of what?  One wonders. 

So it begins at home and it extends through the schools. There is no parity, no equality and more importantly availability of quality education throughout the country. The South for some reason (that reason being Civil Rights) have made it an exceptional educational system and by exceptional I mean, not in a good way.  The loathing of mandatory integration, the consistent belief that Government is overreaching and the emphasis on religion has made the South a caricature that enables and festers the mockery of those who are from here.   As the Teacher who spoke to me yesterday about those who do become educated formally and more importantly, non-secular, they leave.   The ones who remain are few and far between and hence as I wrote in my last blog post more willing to be these non-entities who profess to be these neutral non entities content with compromise and reason when in reality they are the sole occupants in the room.  This is not a place for wallflowers for if you are you will be torn from the wall or graffiti-ed over.

So tonight another asshole who loves Trump is in custody.  It was just a year ago Charlotte and I have no doubt more to follow but to Trump the caravan of Honduran’s and their strength and power that led them to take that risk are terrorists.  Again we have one right there in the White House a face of terror everytime I look at it.  Funny they brought back Halloween as he seems benign as to the fuckwad in chief.  Again its Friday and the weekend awaits.  I used to look forward now I just look aghast as to what awaits and Monday is just a break from it all.  Its why I now take Tuesday’s off.  TGIT.