Talk To Your Opposite - NPR's One Small Step

Have you given up on dialogue with people who vote differently than you? NPR is asking for volunteers who still believe they can talk over political fences.   

An Alaska Public Media webpage has this description:

"No matter their political leanings, a majority of Americans agree that divisiveness is a major problem impacting our ability to deal with the pandemic and serious challenges facing our country. There is hope: A majority of Americans also say they are optimistic that our country can overcome political divisiveness in the years ahead.  At a moment like this, aren’t we called to try to find a better way forward — together?

One Small Step is an effort to reconnect Americans, one conversation at a time.

Apply to be matched for One Small Step"

The map shows seven locations where they are trying this:  Anchorage, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, California, Nevada, and Vermont.  I can't tell from their map the cities in the other states.  I'm not sure how diverse a group you get from people who listen to NPR.  Maybe it's more diverse than I realize, but I think the audience leans left. But maybe it just leans rational.  But that no longer includes most Republicans.

Let's see if this goes anywhere.  

The Eight Pillars Of Caste And The Fight To Hide Truth

  The critics of "Critical Race Theory" are out in full force.  Today (I started this Friday) I heard Ted Cruz attacked CRT with lots of venom and no facts.  I read a piece by gay conservative Andrew Sullivan give a more nuanced description of 'liberal' defenses of CRT.  And I read about how the Southern Baptist Convention, while managing to elect a new president who promises a thorough investigation of sexual abuse complaints among Southern Baptists, also 

"approved a consensus measure regarding critical race theory that did not mention it by name but rejected any view that sees racism as rooted in 'anything other than sin.'"

[I read the AP article in the Anchorage Daily News, but getting a link now directly from AP, I see the handling of CRT by the Baptists was more complex than just this quote suggests.] 

I wrote a letter to the editor almost two weeks ago, because I think it's important for people to understand that this is a cynical ploy by conservatives to do two things:

• make people associate any talk of race with anti-white, anti-American, anti-capitalism
• supercharge an issue to rile up whites to vote in 2022 

In any case I've been wanting to add more information from a book that documents systemic racism and thus would be caught up in the very big net being cast by the anti-CRT campaign) to show how much this CRT and discussions of race are NOT what the conservatives claim.  CRT is based on well researched, factual evidence that the attacks make no effort to disprove.  Rather they have created a bogey man they call CRT without actually defining what it is.  They just list their supposed  dangers.   

I'm almost finished with  Caste by Isabel Wilkerson.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, she argues in this book that caste is a bigger factor than race in the subjugation of Blacks in the United States.  Though, of course, skin color is the critical marker of caste.  

She compares the caste system of India - the most clearly articulated caste system - to the systems in the United States and Nazi Germany.  In the US she says the two castes are White and Black with a gray zone in between.  In Nazi Germany she looks at how Jews were systematically dehumanized and treated as a subordinate caste to Aryans.  She compares the lowest class,  Untouchable class - the Dalits - to African-Americans.  

To make the comparison she identifies The eight pillars of Caste.  I'll describe the a little further here (Wilkerson takes 60 pages so my quick summary will be just that, a quick summary.  But first I'll just offer the list and let you speculate what each might entail.

• Pillar Number One:  Divine Will and the Laws of Nature
• Pillar Number Two:  Heritability
• Pillar Number Three:  Endogeny and the Control of Marriage and Mating
• Pillar Number Four:  Purity vs. Pollution
• Pillar Number Five:  Occupational Hierarchy
• Pillar Number Six:  Dehumanization and Stigma
• Pillar Number Seven:  Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a means of Control
• Pillar Number Eight:  Inherent Superiority versus Inherent Inferiority

That all makes sense, right?  I'm assuming mostly US readers here, though folks from India drop by as well regularly.  This list probably is easier for the lowest classes - Dalits and Blacks - to relate to than members of other castes, particularly the highest classes.  

1.  Divine Will and the Laws of Nature - The key point here, if I understood this right, is that opposing the caste system is to oppose the will of God, to attack the laws of Nature, because, according to caste upholders,  Caste system are not created by humans, but by God(s) or nature.  

She tells us about Manu, "the all-knowing" explaining the origins of the world 

"and then, to fill the land, he created the Brahmin, the highest caste, from his mouth, the Kshatriya from his arms, the Vaishya from his thighs, and from his feet, the Shudra, the lowest of the four varnas...

"Unmentioned among the original four varnas were those deemed so low that they were beneath even the feet of the Shudra.  They were living out the afflicted karma of the past, they were not to be touched and some not even to be seen.  Their very shadow was a pollutant.  They were outside of the caste system and thus outcastes.  [How many of you had ever considered 'outcastes' so literally before?]  These were the Untouchables who would later come to be known as Dalits, the subordinate caste of India."

Christians, Wilkerson tells us, also justified their treatment of Blacks with their holy book.  Going to the story of Noah.  Noah got drunk of the wine from his vineyard.

"The wine overtook him, and he lay uncovered inside his tent.  Ham, who would become the father of a son Canaan, happened into the tent and saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside."

Shem and Japheth went into the tent backwards and covered Noah without seeing his nakedness.

"When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what Ham had done, he cursed Ham's son, Canaan, and the generations to follow, saying, "Cursed be Canaan!  The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers."

"As the riches from the slave trade from Africa to the New World poured forth to the Spaniards, to the Portuguese, to the Dutch, and lastly to the English, the biblical passage would be summoned to condemn the children of Ham and to justify the kidnap and enslavement of millions of human beings, and the violence against them.  From the time of the Middle Ages, some interpreters of the Old Testament described Ham as bearing black skin and translated Noah's curse against him as a curse against the descendants of Ham, against all humans with dark skin, the people who the Europeans told themselves had been condemned to enslavement by God's emissary, Noah himself." 

How does she know this?  She's quoting Thomas R.R. Cobb who wrote a history of slavery in the mid-1800s.  In the endnote she writes:

"This interpretation of Genesis was debated, oddly enough by some who were even more hateful of blacks than most enslavers.  They argued that this interpretation could not be true, because Africans were not human, they were beasts and therefore could not have descended from a son of Noah, cursed or not"

Okay.  Clearly I can't go into so much detail for each of the eight pillars.  But knowing about the Indian caste origins is probably not something most US readers know.  I also wanted here, at least, to show that these points are documented.  The other seven pillars are treated the same way.

I'd note that I haven't heard any CRT critics dispute facts like these.  They merely dismiss CRT as un-American and as attacks on whites, while I see it as offering us a factual counter-narrative to the history written by the victors - the people who enslaved Blacks and forcibly removed the Indigenous people from their land.  

Each of the pillars has the same kind of examples and documentation.  I won't go into as much detail because I think they're relatively easy for people to understand.  And those who can't, can borrow a copy of the book from the library or even buy one.  

2.  Heretibility-

"You were born o a certain caste and remained in that caste, subject the high status or low stigma it conferred, for the rest of your days and into the lives of your descendants."

Which requires the next pillar.

3.  Endogamy and the Control of Marriage and Mating - Engodogamy is the restricting of marriage to people within the same caste.  Wilkerson documents the many laws in many states that prohibited marriage between Blacks and whites.  

Which is also required because of the next pillar.

4.  Purity versus Pollution - This one is particularly obnoxious.  She talks about the extremes required to keep Dalits from (in some cases, even being seen by) the higher castes.  

"A person in the lowest subcastes in the Maratha region had to 'drag a thorny branch with him to wipe out his footprints' and prostrate himself on the ground if a Brahmin passed, so that his 'foul shadow might not defile the holy Brahmin.'"

The notion here is that the lowest castes can pollute the higher ones by their mere presence.  And if the Hindu example above seems extreme, Wilkerson talks about the sanctity of water and the near universality of US Blacks not being allowed to pollute the water that whites drink or swim in.  Separate drinking fountains and bathrooms in the South.  But bans of Blacks using white swimming pools and even beaches throughout the US. 

"In the early 1950s, when Cincinnati agreed under pressure to allow black swimmers into some of its public pools, whites threw nails and broken glass into the water to keep them out.  In the 1960s, a black civil rights activist tried to integrate a public pool by swimming a lap and the emerging to towel off.  'The response was to drain the pool entirely,' wrote the legal historian Mark S. Weiner, 'and refill it with fresh water.'"

Then she talks about blood quantum. 

"Arkansas first defined Negro as 'one in whom there is a visible and distinct admixture of African blood.'  Then in 1911, the state changed it to anyone 'who has. . .any negro blood whatever,' as it made interracial sex a felony.  The state of Alabama defined a black person as anyone with 'a drop of negro blood,' in its intermarriage ban. Oregon defined as nonwhite any person with 'with 1/4 Negro, Chinese or any person having 1/4 Negro, Chinese or Kanaka blood or more than 1/2 Indian blood.'"

5.  Occupational Hierarchy: The Jatis and Mudsill - Wilkerson explains 

"When a house is being built, the single most important piece of the framework is the first wood beam hammered into place to anchor the foundation.  That piece is called the mudsill. . . In a caste system, the mudsill is the bottom caste that everything else rests upon."

That explanation is needed by most of us today to understand the point of this US Senate speech from 1858: 

"'In all social systems, there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life,' Sen. James Henry Hammond of South Carolina told his fellow senators.  'That is a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill.  Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity.  Such a class you must have. . .  It constitutes the very mud-sill of society."

In India the castes themselves define the kinds of work caste members are allowed to do, but in the US it's less explicit.  Nevertheless,

"In 1890, '85 percent of black men and 96 percent of black women were employed in just two occupational categories,' wrote the sociologist Stephen Steinberg, 'agricultural and domestic or personal service.'  Forty years later as the Deression set in and as African-Americans moved to northern cities, the percentages of black people at the bottom of the labor hierarchy remained the same, though, by then, nearly half of black men were doing manual labor that called merely for a strong back." 

I hope you are getting the idea.  She's offering us the characteristics of caste and then example after example of how each characteristic plays out.  It's not some fictional narrative as critics of CRT argue.  It's not a screed against white people.  It's simply a factual recitation of the many ways that our law, regulations, and customs separated (and in many cases still do) whites from blacks.  

I haven't seen critics of CRT dispute facts like these.  Rather they make broad accusations of CRT being an anti-white attack on US democracy.   

Michael Harriot, mocking the claims of CRT detractors, started a Twitter trend today posting:

"CRT took my guns away and gave them to the transgenders.  How did CRT ruin your life?"

We only have three more pillars of caste.

6.  Dehumanization and Stigma - I think this is obvious enough.  Wilkerson gives examples of how the Nazis treated Jews as they arrived at concentration camps and the conditions they were forced to live in.  She writes about African slaves in the US South.  After a list of dehumanizing actions, she writes:

"Beyond all of this, the point of a dehumanization campaign was the forced surrender of the target's own humanity, a karmic theft beyond accounting.  Whatever was considered a natural human reaction was disallowed for the subordinate caste.  During the era of enslavement, they were forbidden to cry as their children were carried off, forced to sing as a wife or husband was sold away, never again to look into their eyes or hear their voice for as long as the two might live. . . Whatever humanity shone through them was an affront to what the dominant cast rep telling itself.  They were punished for being the humans that the could not help but be."

You might pause and say, well this is interpretation, not facts.  Yes, in this case I left out the facts - you can find a copy of the book and read them yourself.  This is, indeed, interpretation of the intent of those facts.  One can dispute the interpretation, though I find the context and the facts make this interpretation seem quite reasonable.  Especially given the many similar interpretations by contemporaneous observers.  What are some other interpretations?

I think about meeting a nicely dressed, very gracious, middle aged white man in Vicksburg, Mississippi who told me that they hadn't needed the  'Northern, communist, hippy agitators' who came to Mississippi in the 1960s to march for civil rights.  "Our Negroes were happy with how things were down here." That was in the year 2000.  

7.   Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a means of Control - 

"The crimes of homicide, of rape, and of assault and battery were felonies in the slavery era as they are today in any civil society.  They were seen then as wrong, immoral, reprehensible, and worthy of the severest punishment.  But the country allowed most any atrocity to be inflicted on the black body.  This twelve generations of African-Americans faced the ever-present danger of assault and battery or worse, every day of their lives during the quarter millennium of enslavement."

The book gets much more graphic. 

8.   Inherent Superiority Versus Inherent Inferiority - Wilkerson writes about Hollywood's portrayal of whites in superior positions and Blacks as servants (not simply in portrayals of the South), and then about how rigidly that was actually enforced in the South.

"Years after the Nazis were defeated across the Atlantic, African-Americanswere still being brutalized for the least appearance of stepping out of their place. Planters routinely whipped their sharecroppers for 'trivial offenses,' wrote Allison Davis and Burleigh and Mary Gardner in 1941.  A planter in Mississippi said that, if his tenant 'didn't stop acting so big, the next time it would be the bullet or a rope.  That is the way to manage them when they get too big.'  In 1948, a black tenant farmer in Louise, Mississippi was severely beaten by two whites, wrote the historian James C. Cobb, 'because he asked for a receipt after paying his water bill.'"

This is not "an interesting side topic."  

This issue is already a major thrust of the Republican effort to retain the House and the Senate, as well as winning local elections.  It's part of the current effort to disenfranchise lower caste voters and to pass laws that give Republicans the power to decide whether elections are fair and who the winners are. 

Trump is teaching them that refusal to abide by the law and facts is a winning strategy.  It didn't quite work this time, but it was a good trial run.  Next time, they'll fix the parts that didn't work for them.    

This is about the ability of democracy to survive in the United States.  Republicans are hoping that fear of losing their superior place in the US caste system will mobilize enough votes for Republicans to hang on.  For those of us who can see that strategy clearly, it's time to educate ourselves and everyone we know. And then to find those folks who, for various reasons, don't vote and help them understand what their not voting can lead to.  

This Is So Cool - Radio.Garden Offers You Easy Access To Any Radio Station In The World

David Pogue (@Pogue)  tweeted a link too Radio.garden.  You get to a page. Click open and 

you then  get the world, literally.  Each green dot is a radio station.  And when you zoom in you get

told the location and many more local green dots.  Put the circle on the dot you want and start 

listening.  I'm listening to music from Kerala on the southern tip of India right now.  

Have fun.  And if there's something happening in some distant (from you - remember you are also in a distant part of the world from others) part of the world, you can quickly tune in to local or nearby stations to get the new direct.  Many capitals, at least, have an English language station.

AiFF2020: Toprak and The Woman of the Photographs

 I can't believe there are still five narrative features I haven't seen yet.  Or that I'm writing about two obscure films instead of addressing more significant issues.  But there are plenty of people commenting on US politics and not very many commenting on these two films - one  Turkish and and Japanese.  

Toprak - 

I just looked up Toprak on google.translate.  It means Soil.  You don't have to know that watching the movie (I didn't), but it makes a lot of sense.  

Often times, watching a film based in a culture other than one's own, people need to change their sense of time, their pace.  I suspect, given the success of US films around the world, that speeding things up is easier to adapt to than slowing things down.  

This film slows things down a lot.  It takes place in rural Turkey, where this slower pace is the norm.  It focuses on the remnants of one family - a grandmother, her son, and his nephew - who eke out a living growing and selling pomegranates.  It's a theme we've seen repeatedly in AIFF films - young people leaving rural areas and small towns to pursue a more interesting, if not better, life.  And we know this saga in the US and here in Alaska all too well.  

This movie takes us into how these tensions between carrying on the family traditions and breaking the ties plays out in this (and to a much lesser extent one other) Turkish family.  

Originally, a copy of this film without subtitles was up on the AIFF site.  That was corrected yesterday (Wednesday).  Slow down and take a trip to rural Turkey. Pomegranates would make an appropriate snack for this film.

The Woman of the Photographs

We watched this one after Toprak. The topics of this film are very contemporary and the pace much faster.  It's an odd film - the main character doesn't speak a single word until the last few minutes of the film; a praying mantis has a significant supporting role - that explores the boundaries between the reality of who people are - what their actual faces and bodies look like, the manipulated photographic images on social media, or how other people perceive them.  This is a perfect film festival selection.  

I found The Woman of the Photographs a more watchable film than Toprak, I think because the issues raised in Toprak are well-known.  Toprak merely adds a case study to the stories of people leaving their small town/rural lives to larger cities.  Woman of the Photographs offers interesting material for the current concerns about how social media are changing the nature of reality, how we communicate,  and personal identity.  

Education Level And Elitism

Although most people would like to have the benefits of the elite line boarding an airplane and other perks of wealth, conservatives have been labeling people as  'elitist' people due to their college educations.  Scientists and doctors especially right now are dismissed as elitists if they say that people should wear masks to avoid spreading COVID-19 or if they say that climate change is real.  

On the other hand when people say that we should be focused on economic inequality instead of race, conservatives cry "Class warfare."  This is just another example of how Conservatives are totally inconsistent in terms of content.  Their only consistency now is their focus on winning by any means necessary.  Even by overturning a democratic election.  

A couple of posts back I had the elitist label thrown at me by two regular readers because I suggested that college graduates were harder to fool than non-college graduates.  I'm responding here, in a new post, rather than in the comment section, because I can put an image here and I can't do that in a comment.  Here's what I wrote at the end of a post on Denialism:

"Also, remember, only 35% of US adults has a bachelors degree or more education.  The chart below is from Wikipedia.  That does affect how susceptible people are to the arguments of organized deniers."  

[Including this chart below]

Education	Age 25 and over	Age 25-30
High school diploma or GED	89.80%	92.95%
Some college	61.28%	66.34%
Associate and/or bachelor's degree	45.16%	46.72%
Bachelor's degree	34.98%	36.98%
Master's and/or doctorate and/or professional degree	13.04%	9.01%
Doctorate and/or professional degree	3.47%	2.02%
Doctorate	2.03%	1.12%

Jacob responded (in part):

"Steve so often writes of his concerns that we should all be scholars in life, but I am one of those folk who never could sit still for college study. I'm one of his 'stupid' people who don't have a college degree (as evidenced in his chart and its implication to thinking things through).

It shows a sort of prejudice that I, not being a Trump supporter, still feel from folk who think themselves better for having achieved. I read. I write. I think. But I don't have an institutional degree.

And I'm thought worse for it, in what work I can do; in what people think of me; of what people assume my ability to think at all. No wonder too many Trumpers think of the 'other' side as being elitist."

And Oliver wrote:

"Steve, these people I would wager do not have degrees ,Carpenter.

Carpet installer .Electrician .Heavy equipment operator (or anyone in the construction trades) .Insulation installer .Landscaper .Painter. Plumber, auto mechanic but might possess a few smarts. I would take anyone of them over a room full of Fine Arts majors or anyone who's degree ends with the word 'studies'. 

Oliver "

A writer recently reminded me that once you put something on paper, it is no longer yours.  People take it and interpret it as they want.  So let's consider this a discussion.

I DID NOT say that all people who go to college are smarter or less likely to be conned than all people who do not go to college.  I never would say that.  

But I would say this: People who go to college get exposed to ideas they would not likely have been exposed to, and they are challenged by classmates and teachers to defend their own ideas and explore the ideas of others in a more disciplined way than most people who do not go to college.  There are lots of caveats.  The abilities of one's classmates.  The abilities and dedication of one's teachers.  Other influences in one's life that might hone these skills without college.

And as I wrote the words quoted above, I was thinking about the statistics I'd seen about college educated and non-college educated voters - particularly whites, particularly white males.  Those statistics support what I was suggesting - that more (not all) non-college educated voters were likely to vote for Trump.  

From a November 12 Brookings Institute Report:

This chart looks at the changing gap between Trump and Clinton and Trump and Biden voters in different categories.  In both 2016 and 2020 the non-college women, and to a greater extent, the non-college men voted at much higher rates for Trump than for the Democrat.  

To have a 48% gap between non-college educated men who voted for Trump and Clinton in 2016, you need 74% voting for Trump and 26% voting for Clinton.*  So after I copied the Denialist strategies that are designed to con people into believing things that aren't true, I was merely pointing out, afterward, that only 35% of the US population had a bachelor's degree.  

*Third party candidates probably skew the numbers a little, but it's still a big deal.  

And the data on how college educated men and non-college men voters marked their ballots sure looks like it supports the implication I made.  You could argue that these non-college men weren't conned and that they simply prefer a sexist, racist, lying, law breaker as president.  

I'd counter by saying that a college education would have exposed them to how sexism and racism actually hurt our economy and the value of the rule of law.  That wouldn't have changed all their votes - there were still a lot of white males with college educations who voted for Trump - but it would have changed many of them.  

Do I think everyone should go to college?  Not really.  People have different aptitudes and learning styles.  Many like Jay simply can't sit still and do the kinds of assignments most colleges require.  But I do believe that in a constitutional democracy, we all need to understand that constitution because it is essentially the "user agreement"  with the ground rules that we all, tacitly, have agreed to.  It's the one thing that all United States citizens and residents have in common.  

And I've written about my thoughts on alternative ways to get this knowledge to people who have talents in areas other than academic studies.  Here's from a post I wrote during a University of Alaska president search on the clash between the business culture of many on the board of regents and the academic culture of universities.  

"It is precisely this conflict between the business model's use of instrumental rationality and traditional academic use of the substantive rationality model - in this case scholarship and learning and truth and even the meaning of life - that is raging around universities everywhere.   Faculty are told to be more productive, which translated first into "more students per class" which would mean less expenditure for each tuition dollar.  It assumes a large lecture model as the ideal, the larger the better.  In fact, why not just do internet courses with thousands of students?  For certain students learning certain topics, this can work.  But this model ignores the possibility that education (as opposed to training) is about self examination, about learning to think critically, about exploring the moral implications of one's actions, about learning to write and learning to recognize the legitimacy of others' knowledge.  It ignores that this kind of learning  requires an intense interaction between a student and a teacher, among students, and among a teacher and a group of students.  The value of that interaction is diluted as more students are added beyond an ideal size. You can get a certain amount from reading a book.  You learn even more from discussing it with others.

Universities are being asked to do too many things

There are lots of things problematic with large modern universities.  For one thing, we decided, as a nation, that everyone needed a college degree, because that is the ticket to earning more money over one's lifetime.  (See how that technical rationality gets into everything, making, in this case, the purpose of a college degree, earning more money?)   A degree rather than an education has become the goal of many students.   Some online schools offer those degrees,  quickly, while the student works full time.  Just send in your money.  There are good online programs that serve students who otherwise couldn't get an education.  And there are schools that essentially sell degrees.

I do think that everyone would be better off learning to do the things I listed above - gaining self knowledge, critical and ethical thinking abilities, etc. - but I  know that not everyone has the aptitude or interest to pursue traditional college level academic studies.  There are lots of other important skills that society needs, but most have been sacrificed in K-12 to focus everyone into a college (translation:  academic, STEM, etc.) track.  We don't have tracks for less academic but still important vocational education which could also be more than technical training.  They could also include self awareness, critical and ethical thinking, but in areas that involve building, growing, and creating in more tangible disciplines than in academic disciplines.  Skilled craftsmen used to have a reasonable status in life and learning one's craft well involves learning the various sciences related to it as well as the social and political and economic realms in which a craftsperson lives.  Why not use carpentry or culinary arts or music or electrical work, or health care as the focus rather than history or math or political science?  Then bring in the other fields as they relate to one's focus.  Carpenters, nurses, cooks all need to know chemistry and biology.  Understanding the humanities, ethics, history, and government are also valuable to a craftsperson making a living.   People with different aptitudes would learn what they need much more easily when it's tied to doing what they really want to do, rather than some isolated, abstract academic subject. 

But we've created an educational monster that forces everyone into an academic track starting in first grade.  And if you aren't ready to read or add and subtract when the curriculum guide says you should be,  you acquire a negative label like  'slow learner' and you (and others) start seeing you as less capable than everyone else.  School becomes increasingly oppressive as you're forced to perform in areas you don't like and aren't particularly good at."

So, no, Oliver, I wasn't demeaning carpet installers.  I was thinking the ideas in the quoted paragraphs above.  That the way education is structured, people without academic skills, are much less likely (not "unable") to acquire a well thought out set of problem solving skills, and an understanding of the political, economic, psychological and other contexts that are needed for negotiating the complex issues of our day.  And the system we have doesn't insure college grads have it as well as they should either.  

I was just saying those without college degrees are more susceptible to a con artist like Trump and more likely to vote for him.  And the numbers seem to support that conclusion.   

The challenge we have is to get that ideal education system that allows people to find the educational tracks that most appeal to their subject interest and learning style.  

Now if you have some facts I've missed, not just opinion, to counter what I've said, please present them.  

  

Bev Beeton, I'm Glad I Got To Know You

 The Anchorage Daily News has an obituary for Beverly Beeton this week.  

I was a faculty member at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) when Dr. Beeton became Provost.  She was a formidable presence.  My description of her at the time was something like this:

"I've never seen her wearing less than $1000, and she speaks like Katherine Hepburn.  Does anybody speak like that naturally?"

My sense was that Dr. Beeton had a one hell of a facade, one that had been carefully developed.  I made a goal of finding the human being behind that facade.  It wasn't a high priority, more like a curiousness.  

One day the opportunity came.  I was chosen to chair the committee that nominated the people who would get honorary degrees.  And Dr. Beeton, as Provost, oversaw that committee.  She invited me out to lunch to talk about how the committee would work.  

A couple of years before that (my dates are a little fuzzy, but it was close to that time) I had gotten a grant to create a class that would focus on women in public administration.  The proposal was to get five prominent women public administrators and give them the freedom to design a class to "pass on the wisdom of women administrators."  We had three women who had been state commissioners, one Native Alaskan woman leader, and a Superior Court judge (who eventually would become an Alaska Supreme Court Chief Justice.)  They were given the freedom to design the class and Arlene Kuhner, an incredible English professor, and I would figure out the mechanics of making it work.  

The structure they gave us was a panel of women administrators each week addressing a different topic with lots of time for Q&A. They invited the women administrators and set up the subject, Arlene and I took care of all the academic work, though the five women, if I recall right, got to see some of the work the students did.   It was a great class and I learned a lot.  I recall one of my students, a man from China, telling me afterwards how impressed he was that all these women were so smart and capable and how it made him realize how China was wasting so half its human resources by not giving women equal access to important positions.  

So, at the lunch,  after discussing the committee work, I mentioned the class and how it had been run as a lead in to this question:  "You're the most senior woman administrator at the university (this was before we had any women Chancellors).  You must feel somewhat isolated."  The ice was broken and from then on we had an entirely different relationship.  We talked about that isolation, about the problems of sex discrimination, and lots of other administrative issues.  

I remember one time she told me that she wanted to set up a more objective evaluation system where administrators and faculty would have to develop measurable outcomes.  That was something I had my graduate students do for their jobs in one of my classes.  But I always told my students that it was useful for them to do for their own jobs, but it was impossible to do really well. And it was easy to misuse the results of such measurements.  Especially if someone just focused on the numbers and not the context of the numbers.  There are just too many important, but hard to measure aspects of their jobs. 

My response to Bev (by then she was Bev to me) was that it was a difficult but interesting exercise and suggested that she set up an example of how to do it for her own job as Provost.  Her response was, "My job is just too variable and complex to be able to do that."  My response was, "That's what every other administrator and faculty member will say.  If you can't do it for your own job, then it doesn't seem fair to ask others to do it."  I never heard about that project again.  

But this started out being about getting past the facade and learning about the real human being inside.  After our first lunch and the committee meetings that followed, I was in her office for something and mentioned that my daughter, a Steller Alternative School student at the time, was taking a spring break hiking class in Utah.  I had resisted at first.  Why do Alaskan students need to go to Utah to go hiking?  Well, she countered, we're going to learn about Utah too.  I asked a colleague of mine who was from Utah for an assignment for her.  He suggested she read Wallace Stegner's Mormon Country.  She agreed she would. 

When I explained this to Bev, she really opened up.  She'd grown up in rural Utah in a not particularly academic setting.  She felt very much like she didn't belong there.  She really wanted to get out of Utah, as far away as possible.  She was even a fashion model in New York, I think, for a while - which began to explain her very un-Alaskan high style way of dressing.  She got herself through school.  But essentially became as different a person as she could.  And once I got past that facade, I got to meet a very warm, accomplished, and charming woman.  

We didn't become the kind of friends who see each other out of work  - though I did run into her once on a garden tour.  We didn't have a lot of opportunities to talk about non-university issues.  I only learned from the obituary, for example, that she'd been married twice and had children but we were allies of a sort who liked each other at the University.  

One other observation.  Bev was a smoker.  When the university banned smoking indoors, small knots of people could be seen huddled outdoors in the dead of winter, smoking.  It created a cohort group of people from various parts of the university hierarchy who had smoking in common.  Their basic connection was that they were smokers, but they got to develop other things they had in common as well.  

I haven't seen Bev in years, but my world is poorer knowing she is no longer with us.  

This wandered a bit.  It's memories, not an academic paper.  It is a reminder that there is a human being inside all the people around you.  A person who is hidden behind whatever facade they've intentionally or unintentionally formed.  Try to talk to the human being - especially in these days of high conflict - instead of just to the facade.  

Fashion - Social Distancing Isn't New

My head is generating lots of post ideas, but people have been saturated with COVID talk.  So if I post, I want it to be a little different from what read or hear elsewhere.  So think of this as notes that haven't been developed much.



The idea of social distance isn't new at all.

Interpersonal space, or interpersonal distance, is an essential feature of individuals’ social behav- ior in relation to their physical environment and social interactions (Hall, 1966; Hayduk, 1983). It is a distance we maintain in interpersonal interactions, or in other words, “breathing space,” an abstract area that surrounds each individual (Hall, 1966; Madanipour, 2003; Sommer, 1969), comparable with either a shell, a soap bubble, or aura (Sommer, 1969). According to Hall (1966), this space helps regulate intimacy in social situations by controlling sensory exposure. The pos- sibility of increased visual, tactile, auditory, and olfactory stimulation is enhanced at closer dis- tances, and people may feel intruded and react negatively when others adopt and maintain too close of an interpersonal distance (Felipe & Sommer, 1966; Hall, 1966; Mazur, 1977; Sawada, 2003; Smith, 1981; Sommer, 1969).
Classifying Social Distance
The classical proxemic theory (Hall, 1966) classifies interpersonal distance into four categories, each of which reflects a different relationship between individuals (Baldassare & Feller, 1975). These four types of distance are (a) public distance (above 210 cm; in this distance, voice shifts to higher volumes, and eye contact is minimized); (b) social distance, maintained during more formal interactions (122-210 cm, this distance precludes all but visual and auditory stimuli); (c) personal distance, maintained during interactions with friends (about 46-122 cm, vision is no longer blurred, vocalizations increase); and (d) intimate distance, maintained in close relation- ships (from 0 to 46 cm, this distance is characterized by poor and blurred vision, and increased perception of heat and olfactory stimuli; Hall, 1966).

And it varies from culture to culture.  In Thailand people greet each other by 'waiing" - hands together and bowing.  How far you bow depends on the status of the person you are greeting.
In Germany there is the hearty handshake, and in France, kisses on the cheek.

But with the Coronavirus the world is taking on a more homogenous standard for social distancing and I thought I'd offer some thoughts on how to achieve this through what people wear.





The most obvious:

From Zenith City

Others have pointed out that such fashions might be returning.  But I'd like to offer some other ideas.


A little more aggressive is the social distancing hula hoop.  Here's an initial sketch:

This would work if everyone wore one.  But in situations like the one above it would probably have to be 12 feet in diameter to keep people six feet away.


In places where there are aggressive anti-social distancing folks, there could be a dog fence version where people crossing into your personal space would get a shock.  But if that's not good enough, there's always razor wire.

And then I see all this stuff about the pressing need for haircuts.  As someone with more skin than hair on my scalp, I can't get too sympathetic.  My wife has been cutting my hair for decades.  But I understand that hair has great meaning for many people.  I hope that everyone can find internal resources to deal with the pandemic as well as possible.  Particularly those whose resources are scarce.  We need better mechanisms to be able to help each other through this.

Save The Post Office - Send Letters To Family, Friends, Teachers, Strangers, Legislators

The US Post Office is losing lots of money because of the COVID-19 closings.    It's reported that Trump threatened to veto the relief package if aid for the Post Office was included.  Trump has been at war with the Post Office at least since 2018 when he wanted them to charge Amazon more for their  postal deliveries.  I'd note that Amazon owner Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post, one of Trump's many perceived media enemies.  And now people are saying Trump's opposition to the funding is related to suppressing voting-by-mail.

Our first post master was Benjamin Franklin who pushed hard for a postal service.  He was also a printer and newspaper publisher and having a post office made distributing the news a lot easier.  But at this point I'm backing Ben Franklin over Donald Trump.  

So I'm pushing for everyone to start sending letters.  Letters mean more than a phone call or an email or text.  They say you cared to spend a little more time to think about what you wanted to say and to get an envelope and mail it.  And they can be easily read long in the future.  My only connections to my grandparents, for instance, are letters they wrote long before I was born.  

So, who should you write too?

• Grandkids - they love getting mail
• Grandparents
• Parents
• Kids
• Aunts and Uncles

Let them know you're thinking about them.  Who else?

• Let favorite teachers know how much they meant to you
• The same for other people who had important influences on you that they may not realize
• Write your members of Congress to tell them to make sure the Post Office survives
• Find names and addresses at random on line and write a stranger
• Pay your bills by mail

But in these lockdown days, you don't want to expose yourself to a post office crowd to buy stamps.  No problem.  You can register with the post office online  and order stamps for home delivery. Here are some of the stamps available right now.  

Feel daunted by writing a letter?  Here's a link with how to do it.  And since must people are home, there's lots more time to write.  And show your kids how to send a letter.  

The Post Office is an important way for people to be connected.  Even with email and texting, a letter is something personal.  You touched the letter, your handwriting is on it.  You can slip in something - a drawing, a photo, stickers, a four leaf clover, a cartoon you cut out of the newspaper.  

In rural areas, where it's not economical for UPS to go, the Post Office keeps people connected.  And the post office connects people all around the world.  Imagine, three or four short lines on an envelope, and the post office will get it to the right person anywhere in the world in a week or two.  

And voting by mail means that attempts to suppress the vote by limiting polling stations, making people wait in long lines, any time, but especially during a pandemic like what happened in Wisconsin last week, doesn't have to happen.  Greg Palast is someone who tracks voting problems.  Here's a link to one of Greg's recent posts.

There are potential problems with mail-in voting like with any other type of voting.  But there are recountable paper ballots when you vote by mail.  

So, support the Post Office;  surprise a friend or family member, let your Members of Congress know what you think, pay your bills, using an envelope and stamps to support the post office.  

Sen Dan Sullivan Responds Quickly To My Email Concerning Impeachment [UPDATED With Murkowski's Impeachment Response And Views Flying Out Of Anchorage)

The options one has when picking a topic at Dan Sullivan's 'contact' site does include Impeachment.  Not could I find "other.'   So I marked something like "Crime and Law Enforcement."

If you want to contact Sen. Sullivan you can at this link.
Senator Lisa Murkowski can be contacted here.

For non-Alaskans, you can get to your Senators here.

His response does not address the specific issues I raised, but it suggests that he's getting at least a few letters.  It stays neutral except for a part that takes a jab at the fairness of the House process.  Here's the response:

"Dear Mr. A,
Thank you for contacting me regarding the impeachment of President Trump. I appreciate your thoughts on this issue and welcome the opportunity to respond.
Article II, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution reads, “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United Sates, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The House and Senate have essential, but different roles in carrying out the constitutional responsibilities required for the impeachment inquiry and trial. An impeachment proceeding must originate in the House of Representatives.
Following allegations that President Trump potentially engaged Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, the House of Representatives initiated an impeachment inquiry on September 24, 2019.
Articles of impeachment are a set of charges, and act similar to an indictment in court. Following the House’s decision to impeach, the Senate conducts a trial. When the trial concludes, the Senate meets as a whole to deliberate. A conviction requires the support of two-thirds of the Senators present.
On December 18, 2019, the House approved two articles of impeachment: Article I by a vote of 230 to 197, and Article II by a vote of 229 to 198. This matter has now moved to the Senate, where a trial is being conducted. On January 22, 2020, the Senate agreed to rules for the procedures of the impeachment trial. These rules, very similar to those used during the impeachment of former President Clinton, allow the House managers and the President’s legal team 24 hours each to present their arguments. Importantly, these rules allow the Senate to call additional witnesses and request documents if determined necessary after the first phase of the trial where both sides are able to fully present their side of the case and answer questions from Senators. The fair and reasonable rules agreed to for the trial in the Senate stand in sharp contrast to the process in the House.
Now that articles of impeachment have come before the Senate for consideration, I have sworn an oath as a juror to do “impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws,” and I will reserve final judgement on this matter until all facts are known. I encourage you to read the impeachment proceedings from both the House managers and the President’s legal team, and determine for yourself the fairness of the proceedings and whether the actions of the President constitute an impeachable offense. The impeachment briefings can be found on my website at the following link:
https://www.sullivan.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/information-on-the-senates-impeachment-proceedings
Thank you again for contacting me on this issue. If you have any more questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me or my staff. My office can be reached at 202-224-3004, or online at www.sullivan.senate.gov."

Sincerely,

Dan Sullivan
United States Senator 

[UPDATE January 27, 2020m 9:57pm Seattle time:  This email from Senator Murkowski, in response to an email I sent a week ago, came shortly after I posted Sen. Sullivan's response.  But I

was on an airplane and I only just saw it after spending time with my granddaughter here and daughter here on Bainbridge.

"Dear Steven:

          Thank you for contacting me to share your views.  I appreciate hearing from you and having the opportunity to explain my position on the Articles of Impeachment against the President and the trial being held in the Senate.
          As you know, the Articles of Impeachment have been sent over from the House and are now before us.  Our responsibilities as a Senate are outlined in the U.S. Constitution—the Senate will act as the court of impeachment.  Our duty is to oversee a fair trial.
          While I encouraged the Majority Leader and Minority Leader to come ­to an agreement on setting the parameters for the Senate trial, after several weeks that did not happen.  I supported the organizing resolution offered by Majority Leader McConnell, which follows the framework set in the 1999 trial of President Clinton.  This effectively provides President Trump the same treatment every senator thought was fair for President Clinton during his impeachment trial.  This process allows the House and the President to present their case, following which Senators are allowed time to submit questions to the case managers.  After those questions, the Senate will then be allowed to vote on whether it is in order to ask for witness testimony or additional documents.
          The removal of a duly elected President by impeachment is a significant and serious matter and should not be approached lightly.  I have taken an oath to deliver impartial justice according to the Constitution and the law.  I will not rush to judgment, making all decisions based on the facts of the case presented.
          Again, thank you for contacting me.
United States Senator
Lisa Murkowski
http://murkowski.senate.gov*"

Planes Overhead

[This is my first posting on my new iPad.  There are things here in blogger that don’t work quite right.  The page is too big for the screen and Command - doesn’t make it smaller.  If I use my fingers, I get all the open windows.  Weird things are happening.  I’m hoping it isn’t just really clumsy with blogspot, just different ways to do things that I have to figure out.  But I’m having trouble placing the pictures and text where I want things. So bear with me as I figure this out.  And anyone who’s figure this out, please give me some suggestions]

One of the factors that made leaving Anchorage during the summer for this trip, was the knowledge that the Anchorage airport would continue with construction on the North-South runway, diverting all flights to take off over Anchorage.  Last summer it was three months of constant noise.  This summer is scheduled from May to October.  

Fortunately, it hasn’t been as bad as last summer so far.  Planes took off on a flight line just south of our house, so we heard most of them.  Those heading south than veered in that direction, and those heading north veered over our house, some a little further east, a few just west.  The constant rumble and sometimes roar, was a serious annoyance.  

I was surprised - I should know better than to be surprised - by the vehemence of some online comments at Next Door and letters to the editor that made light of the noise and attacked the complainers as whiners.  After all, it’s your airport, they’d mock.  

Clearly these were folks who have trouble empathizing.  If it wasn’t a problem for them, anyone who complained was a weenie.  But what I wanted to know was whether they just lived where there was less jet noise, or they endured the same decibels as I did but it didn’t bother them.  

I also was curious about what kind of disturbance would start THEM whining.  Gun control laws?  Lack of alcohol?  Drivers going the speed limit?  Losing at anything?  

But this last week it seems the planes have been moving back to last summer’s pattern.  I was at a Community Council meeting at which Jim Szczesniak spoke briefly.  He’s the guy who worked at a high level at O’Hare until about 10 years ago when he took over his grandmother’s T-shirt company.  It seemed a strange career move that made me wonder why Alaska hired him to run the airport and whether this runway project is his ticket out of here.  In any case, he’s full speed ahead, people with noise problems be damned.  He did say that pilots this summer have been requested to fly slower until they reach - if I recall correctly - 4000 feet.  That was supposed to make things quieter.  And maybe accounted for the planes who flew farther east (than my house) before turning.  But it was at the pilots’ discretion.

Some of the pictures show that some planes are much further away, but others fly pretty much right above us.

I’ve realized though, in the last few nights that planes have been waking me at all hours of the night.  So if I’m going to miss a month summer in Alaska, this is a good summer to do it.  

Heartland Forum - Chance for Serious Conversation with Elizabeth Warren, Julían Castro, John Delaney, Amy Klobuchar

When the Republicans had a dozen or more candidates for the 2016 presidential election, the debates were pretty shallow and demeaning.  Having Trump as a bomb-thrower in every debate didn't help.  And the worst of the Republicans is the candidate that party picked.

And some are predicting the 2020 Democratic race will be the same.  I'm hopeful they will actually be inspiring.  The Democratic candidates I've heard from already all have much more positive messages and programs to address the problems.  I've already posted about two lesser known candidates - Andrew Yang and Pete Buttagieg - and a little on Beto O'Rourke.

Here's a video of four more of the candidates.  They each get about 30 minutes on the stage without other candidates.  They each get to make some opening remarks and then they get questions from the audience.

I can't see a way to embed the video, so you have to go there on your own.

I'm not taking any stands on any of these people.  I'll just note that Elizabeth Warren still impresses me.  She comes from a poor family but made her way to the US Senate.  She hasn't forgotten her roots, yet she has done her homework and understands the problems of extreme capitalism and doesn't shrink from challenging the largest corporations.

I know very little about Julían Castro, a former Housing and Urban Development Cabinet Secretary, but he's smart, articulate, and has a good handle on the issues addressed.  

John Delaney, comes from a business background and is a former Congressman.  Didn't know about him.

Amy Klobochar impressed me in the Kavanaugh hearings.  Her prosecutor background was obvious in her questions.  She was polite, but firm.  In this forum we get to hear her on other issues.

Tim Ryan, Congressman from Youngstown, Ohio who apparently is not yet an announced candidate also appears on the stage.

This is two hours long, but I'd argue it's a good way to start getting to know these candidates and hearing their ideas and programs.  Watch each candidate at one sitting, or while your making dinner, cleaning up, or doing exercise.  This is a better use of your time than watching Netflix.  (I know there are other streaming sites, but I just decided I can't watch all the 'best' shows and Netflix has enough.  And Prime is a way to help Jeff Bezos create a new market place where he gets a cut of every transaction without adding value.

So, start your presidential check list where you keep track of their important experience and education and stands on the issues.

Call From 424 277 2647 - The Dead? Time Travel Message? Momo?

We've been watching The Umbrella Academy on Netflix.  It's entertaining in a bizarre way involving time travel, special powers, and a weird rich family.  It also features time traveling assassins whose job it is to keep people from messing with the space-time continuum.  We had just watched a scene where many (all?) of the people killed by these two assassins were in the room with a current torture victim (and the two assassins, who can't see or hear the ghosts) telling the torture victim - in many different languages - how they had been tortured and killed.

Not long after that scene our phone rang.  It was late and we don't answer the land line anyway if we don't know who it is.  They don't usually leave a message but this time there were two.  As I was listening to the first message, a a third call came in.

My immediate reaction while listening to the messages was - it's from one of the assassins' victims.  Or maybe someone from a different time is leaving a message for a time traveler.  Here, you can listen yourself:




I looked up the number - 424 - 277 2647 - but didn't find much about it online.

Screen Shot from Who Called Me?

It's hard to read, but the first comment is:  "this is momo number"

I looked that up.  It's probably even creepier than my theory.  You can look up momo here.

It's probably a fairly mundane message in some language I can't identify or understand.  Maybe she's just saying numbers.  If anyone knows the language, please leave a comment explaining what is being said.

Beto O'Rourke Goes On A Road Trip

Beto O'Rourke's blog offers an introspective, somewhat introverted voice as he contemplates what his next steps should be.  An LA Times piece on O'Rourke's maybe yes, maybe no candidacy for president mentioned the blog on a platform I didn't know about (Medium), so I checked it out.

He offers himself as wanting to learn about the people he meets rather than talking about himself.  Last week he was traveling. Before this trip, his last post was in December.  The next post is January 16 and he's in Tucumcari, New Mexico.

The next morning I ran. Just a couple of miles. Down 66, then through neighborhoods, past the History Museum. My leg has really been bothering me since the campaign and so I had stopped running for a while. This was my first run in more than a month. Felt good, running in new shoes. 

Have been stuck lately. In and out of a funk. My last day of work was January 2nd. It’s been more than twenty years since I was last not working. Maybe if I get moving, on the road, meet people, learn about what’s going on where they live, have some adventure, go where I don’t know and I’m not known, it’ll clear my head, reset, I’ll think new thoughts, break out of the loops I’ve been stuck in.

I'm trying to piece together the trip on maps.  From Tucumcari he stays on 54 to Liberal, Texas.   Driving alone it appeared.  It's not clear how many planned stops there were.  His great grandparents had lived in Tucumcari.  In Bucklin, Kansas, where they were married, he went to the library to find their wedding certificate.  He reads about Bucklin history and offers tidbits, like this one in his Jan 17 post:

"From 1923: 'Visit by the Klan at revival services of Methodist Church. 5 members of the Ku Klux Klan, wearing the robes of the order, visited church and contributed $50 but refused the invitation to stay for the services.'”

January 18, 2019, he's in Ulysses, Kansas where he's in a funk.  This is a long quote, but I think it all needs to be there to get the context.

"I drove back to the hotel, passing the First Baptist church where kids were throwing snow and slush at each other in the light of the headlamps of their parent’s car. Made me think of our kids, and I missed them. Added to the low altitude I was experiencing. 

Maybe I’d been hoping for some kind of connection that day and hadn’t found it. All the conversations had been pleasant, everyone was kind, but there hadn’t been anything more than that. The waiters at Alejandro’s were nice but they were finishing their shift, they wanted to eat their dinner after having served everyone else all night and close up.
I called Amy. Kids were in the car, she was a little distracted, we didn’t connect either. Maybe you could meet people at a bar she said as we hung up. 

I pulled into the bar next to the hotel and started to feel self conscious. They aren’t going to want some stranger from out of town at their place. I walked in and took a seat at the bar, said a quick, probably nervous, hello to everyone and ordered a beer. Pro forma acknowledgement from the three or four guys who were already there. 

I focused on the college basketball game, thinking I’ll finish this beer and then get out of here. I told myself at least I tried. 

And then two seats down to my right the guy says do people ever tell you that you look like Beto O’Rourke? 

I said yes, all the time. 

The guy next to him says who the hell is Beto O’Rourke? 

First guy says oh he ran against Ted Cruz in Texas, and goes on to talk about Beto O’Rourke and I’m worried that it’s going to get weird and so I say sorry I meant to say that I am Beto O’Rourke. 

No shit! Laughter."

I'm thinking, "How do you write a blog that's honest, somewhat self-revealing, yet doesn't make you look foolish or disingenuous?"  Of course, I think about those things all the time as a blogger but for me it's about giving context for why I think something.  I'm not running for office, nor do I intend to, so what I'm writing won't be scrutinized by opposition research teams looking for pictures of me in blackface or admissions that could be twisted for political gain by others.

The impression is that he's writing all this himself, like Trump tweets.  (The analogy is only about who does the writing and editing.)  But clearly he's making points about issues - like the story of Klu Klux Klan visit to the church above.

The January 20 post has him arriving at a scheduled visit at Pueblo (Colorado) Community College where he meets with students:

What followed was one of these transcendent moments in public life… something so raw and honest that you want to hold on to it, remember every word… a flow between people. But going through my notes right now, I know that my recounting of the words and themes won’t do it justice. 

Raw. People adding to what the previous speaker had said, or challenging what someone else shared, respectfully but directly. Moved to speak up, to share, to add. At first politely raising hands and asking questions. And then, just speaking, having a conversation and not asking polite questions but sharing experience, suggesting solutions.

He goes on at length about the different people who spoke and what they had to say.  Was he really alone and taking notes on all these people and what they said?  Impressive.

The next post comes four days later (January 24) where he gets to the Taos Pueblo Day School in Taos, New Mexico.  An excerpt: 

"She told me about movie nights back then. Since the village had no electricity (and still doesn’t), movies were shown in the school gym. She said it’s hard to believe this now, but they’d often show Westerns, cowboys and Indians movies. And she said all of us kids, not knowing any better, would be cheering for the cowboys! She made the point that back then, the school suppressed the culture of the Pueblo, confusing children about their identity and roots. How dangerous for their development, their sense of self and their possibilities. And yet, that didn’t stop Mildred. Not only is she now teaching Tiwa at the school, she also opens her home in the summer for language classes and as the point of departure for nature walks with the children of the community. 

It made me think of the evolution of dual language education in El Paso. In the same schools where kids were punished for speaking Spanish in the 1960s, they are now being encouraged to speak Spanish, in fact to learn throughout the day in every subject in both English and Spanish."

Again, he recounts many people and the conversations and how good it felt to be connected to people who want to make everyone's lives better.

"We’re all connected, related, part of one another’s lives through the stories we tell ourselves and each other. For good and for bad. Our long memories hold the stories of what our people accomplished, but they also hold the prejudices, the injustices, the harm that we’ve received from others. Our short term memories can forget the kindness most recently rendered, our vision can become focused on the divisions and lose sight of the way up and out. And there is always someone, usually on cable TV or Twitter, to remind you how small or stupid you’re supposed to feel. Our side is truly American. Yours, not so much."

That's the last post.  I supposed being on the road, staying at hotels by himself each night, gave him plenty of time to write these long posts.  From Taos back to El Paso is an easy day's ride, so maybe he went from their home and life is more hectic so he hasn't written more.

Other politicians I've followed, have been on Twitter and that's a much, much different medium.  I'm going to link to this blog on the side column and see how it progresses.