F You SNL. If you ever had any relevance at all, it was lost 25 years ago. How about you keep your snarky snottiness in the NY metro area and stop riding the train or Thruway up here. #elitistaholes

A very sad week. It almost goes without saying that September 11 is a solemn day, but this year something else happened: Gary died on Sunday. Typing it is surreal. He had myelofibrosis for nearly  20 years, and it started getting worse about two years ago. In the spring it was decided that it was time for stem cell transplant, which he received on June 28. It engrafted, but he did not have enough healthy bone marrow for his numbers to go up. He received a booster on August 30, but developed pneumonia. Here is his obituary.

Classes start tomorrow! I am ready...I guess.

This is maddening. Heslep (1996) assets in The Moral Presuppositions of Multicultural Education that because of multicultural education’s limits on tolerance, some of its advocates have tried to restrict hate speech, politically incorrect speech, and other “linguistic modes of cultural disrespect.”

According to Heslep, cultural respect is a virtue in multicultural society. Cultural disrespect is a vice because it is the opposite of cultural respect. Disrespect is also bad because it is offensive to individual members of targeted cultures; being offensive, it also is antagonizing, thereby encouraging cultural discord, another vice for multicultural education.

He argues that the use of a linguistic sign of cultural disrespect might offend members of the involved cultural group regardless of the innocent intention of the user of the sign. Such is the case with youth - sometimes they absorb elements from popular culture and don't understand the context of the words they casually use.

Then, some cultural groups have language of cultural disrespect as one of their features. Teaching intolerance of the language of cultural disrespect might be self-defeating in that it might promote cultural disrespect. Outsiders may judge users of those linguistic signs as being offensive, when the insiders do not mean each other harm. Heslep writes that multiculturalists answer that such intolerance is simply a necessary socially therapeutic act. A multicultural society cannot exist in harmony if any of its cultural groups are inclined to speak ill of each other.

How to remedy? It is not enough for multicultural educators to instruct their students to be intolerant of linguistic signs of cultural disrespect, explains Heslep. We must learn discernment - how to determine what the user of a linguistic sign actually intends in using it. Both speaker and listener are important. It is one thing to be intolerant of ethnic jokes whose users intend to be culturally disrespectful in telling them; it is another to be intolerant of such jokes when their users do not mean to be culturally disrespectful. They may be innocent, or ignorant, or mean-spirited.

Heslep is being generous - two decades later we tend to believe that what the speaker said hardly matters. What the listener heard is what is important, and if someone feels uncomfortable, those sentiments are valid and should be respected.

Yes, Chris Cuomo overreacted and his language is not what I'd use, but there is no question that the guy who said Fredo to him intended it as an ethnic slur. And who cares whether wop means guappo or without papers? You're really going to cite Google? It is also intended as an ethnic insult, no matter its origin. Maybe Casey Seiller & Rex Smith have never been called an ethnic slur or been close to anyone who has been insulted. But they shouldn't have to be to understand they are defending a wrong and being insensitive.

BTW, I have never seen or read any of the Godfather, nor have I watched the Sopranos.Not sure why that would invalidate a point of view.

And for something completely unrelated that I haven't bothered writing about here this year (although I do address on Facebook, to the (I suspect) chagrin of a (small) group of so-called "friends:"): It is animal abuse season, that disgusting time of year when the Capital District media, including the TU, gushes about how glamorous horse racing is and ignorant, plastic people can't wait to go to Saratoga. >:-(

The best thing about summer!

Still lots of things I can't write about. Finished the show I wrote about in the last post. It got better as the season went on and had a strong finish. The actors were strong and that helped.

It is hard to write here, because I have so many things I cannot share! Then there are several I could share - but it's probably better if I don't. This is one of the advantages to the old, pre-tech, private journal model. Summer is rolling along. Lots of basil growing. Tomatoes aren't ripe yet. I don't want to go back to campus next month.

We've been watching a new Netflix series called "Tales of the City." It's actually the fourth season of a show from 1993. Every few years, they made another season with some of the same actors. They re-released Season 1, but did not release season 2 or 3. That is extremely annoying. My takeaway, Season 1 was WAY better than the latest season.

I have really, really, really big exciting news that has to be kept secret...extremely hard!

There is so much I could say about this article (besides that it is too long and repetitive, like most NYT pieces). I don't have time to address every point, but it strikes me as sour grapes. He's not satisfied with the millions he made and is jealous that the company is now worth even more. It also has a personal vendetta flavor. OK, I get it. You don't like the CEO. You're smarter, better, more attractive, nicer, more moral, more self-actualized, more deserving than he is, why is he so much more influential than you are? It's not fair. 

There are many outrageous assertions in this manifesto, but this one is scary: [there should be a new government agency to] "create guidelines for acceptable speech on social media." I cannot believe this dude is calling for censorship! He must be a conflict theorist - or at least on this issue. He wants "his" elites to control the "other" elites - those big, bad ones. His elites are more benevolent, and would take care of the little people (as long as they agree). He makes a lame effort to justify his attack on the First Amendment with the tired "you can't yell fire in a theatre" argument. What is he, in junior high school? 

I have a personal page with a news feed I carefully craft through hide, mute, un-follow. Us peons are perfectly capable of managing this ourselves, even if Chris Hughes is smarter, wittier, more clever, richer. I also administer three pages, one private and one public group. I am a member of several public and private groups too. I resent Chris Hughes having a loud, elite megaphone like the NYT. He drowns out other voices. I want him to shut up and stop advocating for government to tinker with my social media.

Yesterday I filled out the tax forms and mailed them at 5. I had done background work weeks ago, but did not bother finishing. Why, when we had to pay? The process is filling out the forms is awful, although at the Federal level, it is much simpler than it used to be. But to be clear: That does not make it better when you have to write a large check at the end, especially having paid thousands in payroll deductions. So I am more angry than ever before, and I've never liked tax time. I don't get into political debates with people, and don't plan to start now, but since this is a low traffic spot, will openly admit how much I cannot stand DJT and all his rude, idiotic comments. Not that I admire the dems, because I don't. DJT and all the rest of our so-called leaders make me want to puke. They are scum.

I have a little Timex clock on my desk on campus that I've had for over 20 years. Twice a year when I have to change it, the display cuts out for a few days. I used to think it needed a new battery, but now I know that it hates springing ahead as well. It will start working again after a while.

I absolutely hate springing ahead. It will take several weeks for me to feel normal again. I want my hour back - and I don't want to wait until November!!!!!! What idiots thought tinkering with time was a good idea?

March 1 passed with no post, but it was my 17th blogversay. I'm not inclined to do a review of this blog, as I did in some past years, but I wanted to note the milestone.

I have been seriously contemplating becoming vegan. I finally made the change to vegetarianism 40 months ago, and it has been easier and more rewarding than I imagined. I didn't want to be a "carb vegetarian" (surviving on pasta, sweets, bread) and I haven't. The challenge is eating out (which I love, but choices on most menus are limited). So I know veganism would be even more difficult in that regard.

It occurs to me that a reason I haven't been writing here much is because for the past four years, I've been keeping an off-line journal, as I did pre-Internet.

The first post of 2019. Will I post more than last year (30)? No idea, but since 2018 was my least active year since I started in 2002...how much lower could it go?

Something I've been thinking about: changing the novelette into first person. Would that make it better?

This year's tree

I think because we recently watched the entire nine seasons Waltons series, all three sequel movies, all three reunion movies, the pilot movie, and Spencer’s Mountain, I have been thinking about writing. And just now I started thinking about the novelette I wrote. I didn't read it again; maybe I will soon. But I was turning over in my mind what the redeeming quality or lesson would be. It's such a tragedy. I’d already identified her sense of humor, love for cats, and artistic talent as her best qualities. I asked myself the question, “was she a good friend?” I think she wasn't, and eventually I wasn't a good friend to her either. 

I tried to remember times when I would have called her a good friend. When we were kids, don't remember whether it was in high school when she lived with us, or if it was later, when I was in college and she was living there without me most of the time, she organized the secretary. I remember she left  notes to me in there after she straightened it up. I thought it was nice of her. I had one of my usual messes going on in the desk, and I wasn't annoyed, but I did think while nice, it maybe was an overstep. She tended to use cleaning as a way of showing affection, or as an apology, or perhaps she felt fearful and believed it would prevent something negative, like an argument or direct questions, the kind of stuff that was routine in her family. 

Much later, when I got my Master's Degree and invited everyone over for a party, she agreed to be here to meet the caterer. She went to my small graduation ceremony the day before at the downtown campus rather than the big one at the Knickerbocker Arena. Being here to meet the caterer was a very nice thing she did. But then it was ruined afterwards by her behavior once everyone was here. She pulled me outside in the yard and confided through tears that she felt trapped, like she was in a box. I was distracted, preoccupied by having all of my and Bob's families inside. I am reminded with this story of Anne's wedding eve nightmare. A similarity. She wanted to be the center of attention whenever I had something else important going on, I guess to validate my affection for her?

She shoplifted gifts for me when she worked in Woodstock. I'm not sure whether that was nice. I guess it was, in a screwed-up way. She gave me a favorite mug of mine. It says something about preferring to be sleeping. 

That's about all I can come up with under the heading “good friend.” Still a tragedy…

In the words of Burke, the founder of trustee representation - that I owe the village my enlightened conscience, and ought not to sacrifice it to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

The most astonishing thing has happened. Out of no where a nurse who cared for Donna contacted me. For three years, she'd been searching for the sisters or anyone who knew and had a relationship with Donna. She came across the high school yearbook photo in my Facebook album that was labeled with Donna's name. She was careful not to violate HIPAA, but she told me about the last months of Donna's life.

At one point she wrote:

"She finally became well enough for discharge and almost immediately went missing."

That sums up the last 25 years of her life. I feel as if I have received one of those phone calls I'd get every couple years & Donna is filling me in on what she has been doing. She never changed. To the end she was having adventures. And she managed to suck the nurse in and haunt her to this day.