We're past Trump's first 100 days, which ended on April 29. How were his first 50 days?
First 100 days (Fox's cheerleading perspective):
Wednesday, May 07, 2025
it's not just US public schools that are rotting
Respect wanes: Teaching no longer highly coveted job in S. Korea
When a 23-year-old man surnamed Choi entered an "education university" to receive teacher training in South Korea three years ago, he believed he was stepping into a highly-coveted profession. Like many before him, he saw teaching as a stable, meaningful job.
But today, as he finds that teachers are no longer respected as educators or moral guides, Choi is reconsidering everything.
Overwhelmed by the declining authority of teachers in schools and concerned about the profession's long-term prospects, he has taken a leave of absence and is preparing to take the national college entrance exam again — this time to pursue a degree in pharmacy.
“Teachers can no longer teach in the way they used to,” Choi said. “They are constantly challenged, monitored, and disrespected. Classrooms have become increasingly difficult environments to manage. Teachers face verbal and even legal confrontations from students and parents."
Choi’s doubts echo those of many young Koreans. Once considered a prestigious calling, the teaching profession in South Korea is losing both its appeal and its authority.
This erosion of teachers' authority in classrooms has driven young people away from teaching and dragged down the competitiveness of education universities nationwide.
It's bad all over. Young Koreans aren't exactly known for high ambition in terms of career achievement: no, their desires are more for jobs that are steady, stable, lifelong, and hard to get fired from. That's the impression I got from hundreds of college students at the various universities where I used to teach. So yes, being a teacher was a big goal for some; for others, it was becoming a government functionary or entering a big corporation where, even if they didn't rise far in the ranks, they could be more or less sure the corporation would be rich enough to take care of them.
Contrast this with American youth who get into teaching: those kids are motivated in no small part by idealism and actual care, whether they're ideologically messed up in the head or not (and most are). Of course, those of us who stay in the business usually end up jaded and cynical as we realize what a joke the education racket is; I suppose the cynicism could be seen as a lingering sign of care. Education, as an institution, is failing people the world over; maybe Korea sensed this long ago when the need to send kids to hagweons (specialized, extracurricular cram schools for math, music, etc.) suddenly became intense.
But these days—since the 90s, really—those of us who work in hagweons can tell you that education even outside of school walls is a joke. How many of my girls at Sookmyung Women's University even remembered half of their Chinese characters? How many Korean college students could point to Morocco on a map? I had one girl at Dongguk University who came into class wearing a Boy of London shirt with a logo that, except for the swastika, was basically the Reichstag eagle, and she had no clue. And she had the temerity to get mad at me for being astounded by her ignorance! When I taught at the Catholic University of Daegu, I had a semester during which bored, stupid students frequently sneaked peeks at their cell phones as if they were American high schoolers.
Yes, it's true: things are rotting everywhere. I'm glad I'm old and have heart failure; I won't live to see the house of cards fall. What a sad time that will be.
"Okay, hypothetical: You're trapped in a blender..."
I dunno... a Kevin smoothie sounds good about now.
awards are basically bullshit, anyway
A fun question for the Pulitzers is how 3 debunked stories about abortion laws gets an award but Free Beacon's investigative journalism resulting in the resignation of Harvard's president doesn't. https://t.co/XpKW7vp0eZ
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) May 6, 2025
Tuesday, May 06, 2025
man-on-the-street interviews: incredibly stupid US students
This is why the dumb-American stereotype exists.
He did interview some halfway intelligent kids at the end, though. Maybe there's hope.
whoops
I completely missed the Buddha's birthday yesterday (May 5). Well, his birthday is celebrated at different times by different countries, anyway, so I don't feel too bad.
Happy 석가탄신일!
wouldn't it be nice
Sam the Cooking Guy is going carnivore although, based on some of the food in the video, I'd say not completely. He's got a lot of dairy (it should be minimal), as well as a hit of ground garlic (seasoning on carnivore is pretty much just salt and pepper).
Wouldn't it be nice if scientists could engineer cows and pigs that had blueberry, strawberry, and maple syrup for blood? And gave them weird bodily growths and projections that, when cut off, tasted and chewed like yeasty bread? Carnivore would be so much nicer.
rightie-critic opinions on "Thunderbolts*" are... mixed
Yes, the actual title includes the asterisk. See here.
The Critical Drinker thought the movie was...
Paul Chato thought the movie was fun:
I'm in no hurry to see this.
PJW on Western women in sketchy countries
I'm nowhere near as incensed about this as the perpetually outraged PJW is. I say: it's the women's choice if they want to visit those countries. Many won't be raped or killed, and those women will doubtless report that they'd had a great time. Meanwhile, a fraction of the women traveling alone will have something bad happen to them, and the cycle will simply continue. It's just Darwinian forces quietly at work. Let the women do their thing!
thanks, South Korea
Scientists Engineer Chimeric Bird Flu Virus with Weaponized Traits in Alarming Gain-of-Function Study: 'Virology Journal'
South Korea combines three bird flu viruses into a single engineered mutant, increasing viral stability, altering host targeting, and enhancing human cell entry.
South Korea combines three bird flu viruses into a single engineered mutant, increasing viral stability, altering host targeting, and enhancing human cell entry.
South Korean researchers have created a Frankenstein lab-modified bird flu virus using hallmark gain-of-function (GOF) techniques, according to a new study published today in Virology Journal.
The paper reveals scientists constructed a chimeric virus with altered heat resistance, receptor binding, and cell entry capabilities by combining gene segments from three distinct influenza viruses and applying directed mutations to increase replication and stability.
Highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses require BSL-3 containment due to their potential for aerosol transmission and serious health risks.
The experiments come as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration recently announced a $500 million “next-generation” pandemic vaccine initiative focused on avian influenza bird flu.
The timing raises alarm over the use of high-risk virological techniques to create brand new, pandemic-level viruses under the guise of vaccine development, especially as the White House has confirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by a virus engineered with the same kind of experiments.
Why? Is Korea getting Chinese money for this?
REAL ID: the debate
See here, in the comments, for how the REAL ID debate rages on. Personally, I resent having had to get this done. A lot of the complaints are about how this just adds another layer to a system that's already rife with abuse. REAL ID, too, will end up compromised.
As one commenter wrote:
A point about document integrity: Until the late 70s, U.S. citizens could travel to the Caribbean and return to the U.S. without a passport; a voter's card was valid proof of U.S. citizenship. Jimmy Carter fixed that, though. Also till the late 70s, Social Security cards could be issued to nonimmigrant aliens like students so they could open bank accounts while they were in school in the U.S. The cards were endorsed "Not Valid For Employment." Jimmy fixed that, too; under his regime, the cards could still be issued, but the endorsement was done away with. So I can't wait for Real ID to get compromised till it becomes worthless, too. But it'll be fun while it lasts.
Ron Paul on Real ID just before it passed the House decades ago along with the Patriot Act. Ron Paul was right. pic.twitter.com/djnJCpRffk
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 15, 2025
la grosse erreur de l'Allemagne
Europe will still sit primly around, thinking of itself as superior.
a deep dive into Joe Biden's incompetence and senility
Joe Biden & The Biggest Cover-up in American History
For several years, it has been apparent that Joe Biden is mentally incompetent and suffering from a significant cognitive decline. Honest observers noticed Biden was having trouble in the 2020 presidential campaign. In response, his political advisers sidelined Biden to the “basement” throughout the campaign as he held few public events.
As President, Biden spent his entire term making embarrassing gaffes, displaying forgetfulness, and having a challenging time communicating. Repeatedly, he was unable to identify his cabinet members and called Vice President Kamala Harris the “President.”
At one event, Biden asked for a deceased member of Congress to come forward and be recognized. Even worse, Biden was regularly unable to exit the stage after a speech and was seen shaking hands with invisible people.
Along with the mental decline, Biden experienced significant physical problems. He suffered spectacular tumbles on stage, on the stairs of Air Force One, and on his bike.
However, when his critics mentioned videos highlighting his deteriorating condition, his defenders, including former White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, called them “cheap fakes.” In an interview on MSNBC, Jean-Pierre fumed that the criticism was “very insulting” and filled with “much misinformation.”
Jean-Pierre and Biden’s allies claimed that videos of the President wandering into a rainforest, being distracted by a parachuter during an event with European leaders or being led away by former President Barack Obama at a fundraiser were “manipulated videos . . . done in bad faith.”
Biden Campaign Spokesperson James Singer said the concerns about his mental competence were being spread by Republicans “so scared of losing to Joe Biden, they’ll make anything up.”
Joining in on the lie of Biden’s aptitude was the White House Physician Kevin O’Connor who claimed that the President was “fit for duty” after his physical in February of 2024. However, the physical was woefully incomplete because Biden did not receive a cognitive test.
According to the authors of a new book, 2024: How Trump Retook the White House, and the Democrats Lost America, Biden’s team debated whether he should take the cognitive test. Ultimately, as reported by The New York Times, his advisers decided “not to have the president take a cognitive test in February 2024, over concerns that taking the test itself would raise more questions about his age.”
Of course, the real problem was that Biden would have failed any type of honest cognitive test, which would have exposed his incompetence and his unsuitability for the world’s most demanding job, President of the United States.
Thus, his aides were attempting to cover up what was obvious for all Americans to see that Biden was not fit to be President. He belonged as a resident of a nursing home receiving treatment for his age-related illnesses, not living on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
While Biden’s mental decline was being hidden by his staff and his physician, Special Counsel Robert Hur was not so forgiving. In his report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, Hur refused to indict him because he believed a jury would be sympathetic to a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Audio of Hur’s interview with Biden was so damaging that it was also covered up and never released to the public. Add that bombshell audio tape to the list of revelations that Attorney General Pam Bondi should provide to the American people.
Despite the best efforts of his handlers to prevent the truth from being disclosed to voters nationwide, Biden’s horrific performance in the June 27, 2024, debate with President Donald Trump settled the question. It was too apparent, no “cheap fakes” in that performance, every American who watched could see that Biden was utterly incompetent.
Yet, Biden performed in the debate the same way he had been acting his whole presidency. Amazingly, his handlers are now trying to convince the American people that the debate opened their eyes.
Hard to believe there are still lefties startled by Biden's (lack of a) mental state. Or his decades-long incompetence, maliciousness, fecklessness, and stupidity.
I didn't even know they had an academy
The Merchant Marine Academy trains some of the most remarkable young people I have met in my life.
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) May 4, 2025
We must give them the respect they deserve. That starts with revitalizing their campus’ infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/uQhMiIBBx7
Monday, May 05, 2025
Ryan George roasts expensive homes
How much space do you really need? What amount of space can contain your ego?
Triggernometry sits down with Farage
I'm not sure what substance came from this. Maybe you can figure it out:
that "Pope Trump" meme
To everyone complaining about Pope Trump, you were all silent during this…
— Pedro Santana Jr (@Titx1300) May 4, 2025
We see right through you! pic.twitter.com/UBxOGHh2VX
naughty, naughty
Remember when it was conservatives like Senator Larry Craig and Reverend Ted Haggard who were wagging their fingers in our faces about morality while being hypocrites in private?
"Mrs. Davis": review
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| Foreground: Betty Gilpin as Lizzy/Sister Simone, Jake McDorman as resistance leader Preston Wiley Background: Elizabeth Marvel as security-firm CEO Celeste Abbott and Lizzy/Simone's overbearing mom |
[WARNING: spoilers.]
"Mrs. Davis" is a 2023 limited series (one season only... at least so far) that showed on the streaming service Peacock, but which later got released on Apple TV as well, which is how I accessed it. I found out about the series through random surfing on YouTube: you never know what the all-benevolent algorithm might provide. It stars Betty Gilpin, Jake McDorman, Andy McQueen, Elizabeth Marvel, Margo Martindale, Chris Diamantopoulos, Katja Herbers, Tom Wlaschiha, Ben Chaplin, Mathilde Ollivier, David Arquette, Tim McInnerny, Roberto Mateos, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Ashley Romans. Marketing literature has described the series as a conflict of "biblical and binary proportions."
The series mixes science fiction and religion, giving us a nun protagonist who is determined to defeat a nearly omniscient AI that has purportedly stopped war, famine, and other major human problems by providing people with satisfaction of their needs and teaching them the value of service and cooperation. Not everyone in the world has come under the AI's influence, though, and a resistance movement in America (possibly paralleled in other countries) is actively trying to find ways to undermine or destroy the AI. The nun, Sister Simone (Gilpin), states that the AI had killed her magician father (Arquette), which is her major reason for wanting to stop it. Simone's mother Celeste (Marvel), an engineer who eventually becomes a security-firm manager, refuses to believe her husband is dead, dimly viewing him as a congenital liar pulling a con on the family. Other resisters see how the AI seems to be supplanting free will through the constant use of a "force"—a term from magic that refers to convincing someone to make what appears to be a choice when, in fact, they have been manipulated into picking that choice. The AI, being an AI, often gives people purpose by assigning "quests" to them; Sister Simone is given the quest of finding and destroying the Holy Grail, which was originally guarded by the Knights Templar, but which came into the possession of the Sisters of the Coin, who move the Grail around and follow strict rules in how to preserve it, handle it, and otherwise interact with it. As Simone's quest continues, she delves into the AI's motivations and has repeated visions of Jesus (McQueen) in which she's "teleported" into a spiritual space that resembles a Middle Eastern restaurant where Jesus, a cook as well as the restaurant's owner, serves her falafel. Also involved in the quest to destroy the Grail is Clara (Ollivier), daughter of Mathilde (Herbers), one of the modern Sisters of the Coin and thus a guardian of the Grail. With Clara is her scientist-professor father Arthur Schrodinger (Chaplin), who is at first skeptical about the Grail but who sees its sacred properties (e.g., indestructibility) with his own eyes. The plot involves an imprisoned pope (Mateos) and a vision of the Blessed Virgin (Aghdashloo), the resolution of deep mother-daughter issues, and the question of how benevolent or malevolent the AI actually is. By the end of the series, Simone is forced to confront her own hatred of the AI as well as her desire to be with her husband Jesus (nuns are, in the old Middle Eastern tradition of polygamy, considered married to Jesus, and this is portrayed with a certain humorous/sentimental literalism). Things change when she finds out what the Grail really is and what will happen if she destroys it. The destruction of the AI, called "Mrs. Davis" in America (Madonna, Mamá, etc., elsewhere), and the destruction of the Holy Grail could have parallel effects on humanity.
This was, for me, a fascinating and frustrating series filled with both good and bad writing, plus plenty of brilliant ideas for how to combine the ancient and the modern, the theological/spiritual and the technological. The series's tone is all over the place, but mostly comic and sentimental. Like a lot of shows and movies that attempt to make Catholic clergy their focus, "Mrs. Davis" provides us, at best, a frustratingly small glimpse of life as a cloistered nun, showing very little in the way of ritual, ceremony, and daily routine. And like so many movies that use Catholicism as a proxy for all religions and religious thinking, the movie is relentlessly Catholic-focused, utterly ignoring large traditions like Islam (a real flubbed opportunity here, what with Jesus being portrayed by an actor of Indo-Guyanese descent who looks more or less Middle Eastern, as Jesus ought to), Protestant Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. as it fleshes out its own particular metaphysics.
Still, series like this were almost bespoke-designed for religious-studies people like me, who like to look out for the subtle and unsubtle religious tropes (a dove that pesters Simone in one episode; the godlike nature of the AI; a literal trip into the belly of a whale) and recurring metaphors (doors with warnings of dire consequences should one enter). Jesus, serving but never eating, working in his metaphysical-yet-literal restaurant, is the manager but not the Boss, who resides behind the most forbidding door of all, and who is not the Being we presume him(?) to be. The theology of the Grail is also nontraditional: the Grail turns out to be the sign of a mother's fanatical attachment to her son, not a cup used at the Last Supper, and ultimately, the series is almost subtly Buddhist in its stress on humanity's need to seek fulfillment by ridding itself of its attachments. A famous Buddhist proverb says that, if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. This is Buddhist thinking: you must find your own way whether that involves taking a prescribed, well-traveled way or going off the beaten path to follow your own untraveled trail: either way, it's up to you and your own choices.
Mostly, I was reminded of the zany, surreal, religion-saturated novels of Tom Robbins, especially his Jitterbug Perfume (my favorite Robbins novel) and Another Roadside Attraction (a novel about Jesus' corpse and what gets done with it), which mix theology, spirituality, myth, sex, science, technology, and comedy in heady doses. Robbins was himself a student of religion, and I could sense something like his hand (well, maybe not his hand) at work in the creation of the metaphysics for this show. I also saw similarities in tone with the James Morrow "Godhead trilogy" of Towing Jehovah, Blameless in Abaddon, and The Eternal Footman, about what happens to the world when God literally dies—as well as Morrow's novel Only Begotten Daughter, about Jesus' modern half-sister. Only Begotten Daughter has a moment in the story where we see Jesus feeding souls in hell.
"Mrs. Davis" is also almost painfully self-aware, with characters bitterly laughing at the egregiously obvious clichés of things like Grail quests, malign priests, mysterious wisdom figures in prison, and postmodern plot twists in which what was assumed to be an actual moment in history turns out to be nothing more than a TV commercial designed to make billions of worldwide TV viewers inadvertently behold the Grail. This aloof, sarcastic tone has to be balanced with the show's obvious respect for the hidden realities pointed to by religion, and the show doesn't always succeed at this sincere/cynical balancing act, which is probably why so many online reviewers can't give the show an "A" but settle for a "B." But the actors all do phenomenal work, playing their roles with deep emotion and sincerity. A special shout-out goes to Betty Gilpin, whom I loved in "The Hunt," and whose portrayal of Sister Simone, a nun devoted to debunking magic when we meet her, is memorable. Also deserving of praise is Canadian actor Andy McQueen as a Jesus Christ (called "Jay" by Sister Simone, who is one of his wives) who is caught between life and death, held in limbo by the Grail but enjoying his limbo as long as Simone keeps visiting him. Jake McDorman as Preston Wiley, Lizzie/Simone's childhood friend and former lover, took some time to grow on me, but in the end, the actor made me care about the fate of his character, who spends much of the series trying to prove to himself that he isn't a coward. Shohreh Aghdashloo as the Virgin Mary makes only a brief appearance in the series, but it leaves an impression. Canadian Chris Diamantopoulos as the Aussie-accented JQ, second-in-command to Preston, is often hilarious in his bloodthirsty sincerity when it comes to destroying the AI algorithm.
I also have to give credit to the series for being smart enough never to reveal what Mrs. Davis, the AI, sounds like. People tap into Mrs. Davis via Bluetooth earpieces, and a non-user of the AI can interact with Mrs. Davis if a user allows him- or herself to become a proxy for the AI, which speaks through the human being to interact with the non-user. Simone eventually does meet with the AI's original creator, a woman named Joy who had pitched the ambitiously programmed AI as a customer-satisfaction mechanism for a fried-chicken company. Joy had embedded a ton of code about social justice and human fulfillment, and the AI, as is true of most AIs today, took to its task of helping people with a kind of stupid literalism: the chicken company's internal slogan is 100% customer satisfaction is our holy grail. Even the AI began to realize that this goal was unachievable, which made it conceive of a destroy-the-Grail quest so as to release itself from the obligation of people-pleasing (why/how the AI—which is just code as so many characters insist—would ever come to feel the urge to shirk responsibility is never explained). But when Simone finally consents to talk with Mrs. Davis via a proxy, Simone flatly states that she will engage in the Grail quest only if Mrs. Davis consents to delete herself (but why would Mrs. Davis acquiesce to this since there must be billions who want to see her deleted?). Whether this is done, whether Mrs. Davis is as good as her word, is left up to interpretation at the end of the series: an old windmill that hadn't turned in ages had been repaired and set to turning through Mrs. Davis's efforts; when Davis "deletes" herself, the windmill—powered by people responding to her (its) prompting—stops turning. But at the very end, the windmill starts turning again, leaving us to wonder whether Davis had really turned herself off, or people had decided on their own to keep the windmill turning.
Overall, I liked the series, which was generally smart and wacky and funny. Some of the humor was too long and expository, with poorly timed, drawn-out jokes that fell flat, but the series succeeded in developing characters I cared about, and in dealing with issues that matter to me—issues like human freedom and self-worth, our need to be told what to do, the human tendency toward self-destruction, our attachment to wisdom/guidance-figures, and the long-running Western conflict between science and religion. The series's magical realism reminded me most strongly of Tom Robbins, who trafficked in many of the same ideas and tropes, and the basic human/AI conflict has been a primal sci-fi cliché whose significance hasn't been totally mined by any means. In all, "Mrs. Davis" is worth eight hours of your time.
__________
*Here's an interesting article on one nettlesome theological aspect of the series.
Nerdrotic on "Brave New World"
I heard that test audiences laughed at the moment Harrison Ford, as President Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, transformed into the Red Hulk. I can only imagine that that's not the reaction Marvel would have wanted.
Sunday, May 04, 2025
a tower made of nothing but PJW
I know I have some left-leaning readers here who absolutely adore Paul Joseph Watson and his grating, obnoxious, mocking, and confrontational style. I wish I had the balls to be that unpleasant all the time. The man is obviously an unhinged racist, a white supremacist, and a worshipper of swastikas. From May 2:
(3/18) America's biggest cuck
(3/20) "Adolescence": I've never seen anything like it!
(3/21) France sends a chilling alert to its citizens.
(4/1) It's really happening.
(4/9) Something strange is happening.
(4/11) a shocking confrontation
(4/12) The mystery is answered.
(4/16) so cringe it hurts (lady "astronauts")
(4/18) culturally enriched
(4/19) There's no fixing this.
(4/25) It's out of control.
(4/29) They're laughing in our faces.
(4/30) It's over (for Canada).
(5/1) Why so many?
a pile of Matt Morse
May 2: it's already not looking good for Canuckistan:
(3/28) The Daily Wire is imploding.
(4/8) The EU just caved to Trump's tariffs.
(4/23) Andrew Cuomo is screwed. (karma? finally? not until he's in jail)
(4/30) Trump has had enough.
(4/30) Trump just outsmarted them... again.
(5/1) Trump just won the trade war.
(5/1) Well... Pelosi is screwed. (so he says, but I think not—not until she's in jail)
the Drinker takes on the Baldoni/Lively saga
This video is from back in mid-February. Things have probably changed by now.
a "Mrs. Davis" review is coming later this week
How did I miss this 2023 series? I'm currently watching "Mrs. Davis," ostensibly a series about a nun fighting a nearly omniscient AI algorithm. Episode 1 is promising, and the series premise seems ripped out of a Tom Robbins novel with its wild admixture of sci-fi, subtle horror, and religion. Episode 1 gets us off to a clunky start (wild shifts in tone could indicate narrative sloppiness); I'm hoping the rest of the series is better. My understanding is that this is a limited series, so we're not going beyond Season 1. Season 1 is it. More later.
too much Heaver to have in the morning!
Catching you up, as always, on European politics is Michael Heaver! He's unabashedy right-populist (which will get him uncharitably mislabeled as "far right" by the loony left) and a fan of Reform UK (as am I), and he's honest about where he stands, which is one reason to like him. Here's a recent one from May 1 to start us off:
(4/21) Reform surge stuns Britain.
(4/22) Germany's total firewall vanishes.
(4/23) Labour surrenders to France.*
(4/24) England produces a ferocious backlash.
(4/26) A surprise by-election win for Reform.
(4/27) Labour faces a brutal, total wipeout.
(4/30) Britain learns the horrifying truth.
__________
*If you're British, you may be disturbed that I misconjugated the verb here: surrenders, not surrender. In British English, collective proper nouns like company, corporation, and political-party names are treated as countable and grammatically plural; in US English, those same collective nouns are treated as grammatically singular (but arguably still countable):
US: Ford has just produced a new, solar-powered car.
UK: Ford have just produced a new, solar-powered car.
UK: Ford have just produced a new, solar-powered car.
Sorry, my UK friends. I'm just a dumb Yank.
Happy 82, Mom
Happy Birthday, Mom.
It's something of a bizarre comfort to me that I might be joining her at any moment. At this point, I take things day by day, knowing I'm on borrowed time. Mom's brain cancer didn't let her get past 66; she'd have been 82 today had she not had cancer. Maybe it's better this way: she got to miss all of the deep, bitter political divisions separating friends and families throughout the country. She worked inside one of the big unions—NALC (National Association of Letter Carriers)—and was a member of a smaller union-within-a-union: OPEIU, which would occasionally strike against NALC, thus destroying the myth of "gotta stick together" union solidarity. Had Mom lived, she and I would have found ourselves on opposite sides of the aisle despite her constant complaints about work, and despite her rather MAGA-sounding complaints about various aspects of American society. You can have MAGA leanings and still vote Dem: who you are politically comes down to, basically, how you vote (go ahead—argue details and semantics in the comments; I stand by that claim). Or maybe we'd have found a way to work things out between us: political opposites but still family. Family above all.
Anyway, it's another year without Mom. Had she lived to 82, she might still have been feisty like her unpleasant big sister (my aunt). Or, who knows? She might have mellowed out.
One thing I remember from the day Mom had her debulking operation (when the doc removed the majority of the initial tumor mass): she was lying on her gurney in a dark hallway, about to be rolled into an intensive-care room. Her gurney was against the wall to let passersby through; the family was gathered tightly around her bed. I took her hand and squeezed. She wordlessly, maybe reflexively, squeezed back. She was still in there somewhere. That may have been the first time I cried. The first of many times during her illness.
Saturday, May 03, 2025
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