“Let’s surround the President with as many Blacks as possible. ”
Probably should’ve switched out the painting.
White House Staff Memo
Reply
Category Archives: Education
Dear International Friends
About 25% of the people who visit the Humble Blog are foreigners. Among others, this morning, a few Nigerians have stopped by. These words are for them. I imagine they would acknowledge Nigeria, like every country in the world, has serious challenges to overcome, but they would never characterize their country the way the President of the United States characterized some developing countries yesterday.
When caught saying hateful, racist, abhorrent things, the President acts in an extremely predictable way, and today is no different. Like a second grader at recess, he denies saying what others heard and in many cases recorded. As if by denying his words, he has the power to erase them.
The President does not speak for the vast majority of Americans who know Haitians, Salvadorans, Nigerians, and other Africans strengthen the U.S. Also, most Americans are far more aware than the President that Haitians, Salvadorans, Nigerians, and other Africans come from beautiful places with rich cultures that have proven amazingly resilient in the face of U.S. imperialism. They also know that we are an immigrant nation, that the vast majority of us came from other places, and that our economic success is, in large part, the result of hardworking, law-abiding immigrants from every corner of the globe.
The President has never read Chinua Achebe, Toussaint Louverture, or Manlio Argueta, because he doesn’t read.
We will turn him out in three years or less. And then we will go to work repairing the damage he’s done to the environment, the rich/poor divide, and the prestige of the office. And we will work to repair all of our international alliances, working doubly hard to reconcile with the proud people of the Caribbean, Central America, and Africa.
Wednesday Assorted Links
1. How Much Snow It Typically Takes to Cancel School in the U.S. Or how soft are you and yours? Specific Northwest, middle of the road (pun intended).
2. Speaking of maps. A Road Map for Reviving the Midwest.
“So the states of the Great Lakes region appear to be faced with a stark choice. It can . . . harness the modernizing forces of universities and immigration, setting itself up for revival. Or it can give in to the seductive impulses of nativism and hostility to higher education, and settle in for more decades of bitter, grinding decline.”
3. MoviePass Adds a Million Subscribers. Including a 25-year old Chicagoan who is digging it. You go gerl’, stretch those dollars.
4. Solar’s Bright Future is Further Away Than it Seems. In related news, in the upper lefthand corner, we’ve had more sun this winter than in any time in recent memory. Almost feels like Denver. To quote Kurt Warner after his SupBowl victory, “Thank you Jesus!”
5. Millennials are screwed. Not the 13 seniors in my January seminar. They’re going to thrive, by which I mean change the world for the better. #skilled #hardworking #sociallyconscious
6. Special Education funding is a priority this session. Shout out to Jeanette Byrnes who is an ace committee assistant this session. Working her butt off wrestling very large copying machines and providing sundry support for two committees. And gaining new respect for working men and women everywhere. Tangent: Jamie Pedersen used to swim at the Olympia Y during session. Bizarre open turns that I’m not even sure I could demonstrate.
One Guess
From James Fallows:
“Based on the excerpts now available, Fire and Fury presents a man in the White House who is profoundly ignorant of politics, policy, and anything resembling the substance of perhaps the world’s most demanding job. He is temperamentally unstable. Most of what he says in public is at odds with provable fact, from “biggest inaugural crowd in history” onward. Whether he is aware of it or not, much of what he asserts is a lie. His functional vocabulary is markedly smaller than it was 20 years ago; the oldest person ever to begin service in the White House, he is increasingly prone to repeat anecdotes and phrases. He is aswirl in foreign and financial complications. He has ignored countless norms of modern governance, from the expectation of financial disclosure to the importance of remaining separate from law-enforcement activities. He relies on immediate family members to an unusual degree; he has an exceptionally thin roster of experienced advisers and assistants; his White House staff operations have more in common with an episode of The Apprentice than with any real-world counterpart. He has a shallower reserve of historical or functional information than previous presidents, and a more restricted supply of ongoing information than many citizens. He views all events through the prism of whether they make him look strong and famous, and thus he is laughably susceptible to flattering treatment from the likes of Putin and Xi Jinping abroad or courtiers at home.”
In all honesty, that’s going soft on him.
Monday Assorted Links
1. The Only Way to Keep Your Resolutions.
“From 1985 to 2004, the percentage of people who reported having at least one friend on whom they could rely and with whom they could discuss important matters dropped to 57 percent from 80 percent. Today, more than half of all Americans report feeling lonely, especially in their professional lives. But study after study has shown that those who are seen as grateful, warm and justifiably confident draw others to them. Because these emotions automatically make us less selfish, they help ensure we can form relationships with people who will be there to support us when we need it.”
2. Why Self-Compassion Beats Self-Confidence.
“Admitting we have flaws just like anyone else keeps us connected to others.”
Brings to mind my favorite sentence of recent days, compliments of Jason Zweig, “If you think you’re the smartest person in the room, you must not have talked to everybody in the room yet.”
3. “Even as a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, I have a red line.”
“Saving the lives of law enforcement and the abused is a nonpartisan issue. . . We can take reasonable steps to prevent deadly acts by people who already have a violent record with firearms.”
4. How Rural Students Define the American Dream.
“I don’t feel like I’m living the American Dream, especially not here, in Southeast Arkansas, being a black female with a big mouth. You’re looked at funny when you want to be something more than just a wife one day and you live in Dumas. . . . If you have dreams beyond what other people feel like you should, you can’t live the American Dream in a place like this.”
What if we all adopt the same resolution for 2018, to support and cheer young, ambitious people.
Wednesday Assorted Links
1. Don’t throw away your Christmas tree.
2. The ten longest bike/ped tunnels in the United States, with a link to the international top ten.
3. Why data-obsessed jocks need a data detox. In my late November Seattle marathon, the first time I took a look at my watch, it read 21.6 miles. Not bad, eh.
5. Neighbors fed up with traffic take matters into their own hands.
Merry Christmas
To you and yours. May we bring more peace on earth.
Ron
A Brief History of Fat
My Fav 2017 Books
A longtime reader of the Humble Blog has a brief respite from reading his high schoolers’ French and German exercises. Consequently, he wants some book recommendations. PressingPausers take note, you too can make suggestions and requests of your benevolent dictator.
My fav books of 2017:
1. America the Anxious by Ruth Whippman. Subtitle: How Our Pursuit of Happiness is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks. An endearing Brit deconstructs the commercial happiness industry. I’m looking forward to teaching it in January.
2. Janesville by Amy Goldstein. Since I’m an economically privileged, tenured university professor, a friend sometimes laments that I’m clueless about the “real world”. He underestimates the power of the pen and the imagination. Goldstein provides readers an intimate look at what it is like to build a middle class life through an assembly line job and then lose it.
3. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. A group of Indians strike it rich when oil is found on their tiny, hard scrabble corner of Oklahoma. Whites purposely marry into the tribe and the proceed to kill them. So much for American Exceptionalism.
If your name is Alison and you’re allergic to non-fiction, consider fast forwarding to my first book of 2018, The Invisibility Cloak by Ge Fei. A “slim comic novel which follows the travails of a likable loser trying to stay afloat—financially and emotionally—in contemporary Beijing.” My literary sources are raving about it.
Muddling Through
A tough semester draws to an end. A time period marked by unusual levels of interpersonal conflict. Here’s hoping for a great resetting when the calendar flips over.
Two things helped me muddle through.
Fall marathon training was a refuge. Ironically, long, conflict-free, predawn runs were renewing.
And my first year writing seminar. Here’s what I just told them at the start of our last class session:
“Thank you. It’s been a challenging semester with the university’s financial challenges and other conflicts in other parts of my life. This class has always been a wonderful break from that. I’ve appreciated how you’ve embraced the course content and worked to improve your writing. Most of all though, I’ve drawn inspiration from the friendly and respectful way you’ve interacted with each other all semester. It gives me hope for the future. I’m going to miss this class.”
Pressing Pause 