Luna del'Corvo

I love the Middle Aes, but I don't want to live there

2025-03-05T17:46:59Z

I have been reeling in the wake of the constant barrage of insanity from the White House, as I am sure most of us have. I remain convinced, now more than ever, that the Christo-fascists want to create a neo-feudal society, and everything being done now seems to indicate that is not hyperbole.

Forcing farmers out of business while Vance's firm enables wealthy oligarchs here and abroad to buy up that land for pennies on the dollar, while he has deported the large part of the workers who work that land. How will these 'investors' see a return on their new 'manor farms?' By getting peasant serfs to work them, of course. And where will they get a massive workforce who will accept such conditions? All the veterans, low-income workers, unemployed, and the other poor, hungry, and vulnerable whose protections, safety, and education he has been gutting.

When there is nowhere else to go, no other place to work, no other way to eat, those of us who survive that long will be the new peasant class. It's funny, I just taught the Three Orders of Medieval society: Those who fight, those who pray, and those who work. Those who fight are the monied aristocrats, owners of the land, the wealth, and the power. The notion that they actually fight is now obsolete, of course, but they will, as the gluttonous nobles did, lord over their little kingdoms with all the smug superiority of a fat, 9th C duke.

Those who pray, the clergy, the Joel Otseens and the Pat Hagees of this new feudalism will also hold land, wealth, and power. If the excesses of the medieval clerical class in the Middle Ages have shown us nothing else, it is that 'men of god' like to eat fine food and sleep in silk sheets just as much as any noble. Those who are the luminaries of the new Christian Nationalist Regime will stand at ease beside the oligarchs whose rule they endorse.

And those who work. All the rest of us. I have said many times that the wealth inequality in the US today is most closely mirrored by that of the feudal Middle Ages, before the 12th C Renaissance recreated the lost 'skilled, craftsman, or middle class. That inequality has been growing, and under the new regime being crafted before our dumbfounded eyes, it will continue to grow. With healthcare made inaccessible, birth control a distant memory, food insecurity the reality of life for the vast majority of Americans, and education reduced to the bare minimum needed to ensure compliance with basic directives, the new peasant class will be created. Call them proles, serfs, or whatever pseudo-patriotic and paternalistic moniker the oligarchs will craft, a peasant is still a peasant.

If you think this all sounds a bit too much like some tawdry Russian novel, well, I think the recent White House debacle makes clear why that is. Russia has always struggled with democracy, and even at those rare moments when some regime or other had the chance to elevate the peasant class, they have demurred (sometimes in fear for their lives, yes, but still.) If Russia has readily absorbed American Evangelical misogyny and bigotry (as evidenced by their oppression of LGBTQ folks, and the recent decriminalization of wife beating for example), then the US, or a certain red-hatted segment of it, has just as readily embraced the oppressive totalitarianism that would sacrifice its own wellbeing and that of everyone around them in the name of being able to shit on someone they hate more than the ruling class whose favor nd approval they crave.

The time to resist is now, but it is, I think, a window that will close far sooner than most of us think. The damage is being done now, there is no 'waiting it out for four years.' Barring extraordinary upheaval or some meaningful pushback, I genuinely think this reshaping of the American experiment will be fait accomplis by the time spring turns to summer. I know that Godwin's Law exists, as does its corollary, but it would be wise to recall that it took Hitler less than two months to dismantle German democracy. While the true effects of that may not have been evident until a year or two later, the core work was done in only 53 days. Fifty-three days, or one month and three-quarters, or seven weeks; however you phrase it, it is a mind-numbingly short time. 53 days. We are on day 45.

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lunadelcorvo @ 2025-02-19T14:27:00

2025-02-19T19:27:31Z

Just sat in a long meeting about how 'traditional' ways of educating are 'no longer enough.' I have a few things to unpack here.

1. 'No longer enough' implies there was a time when they were, in fact, quite adequate. What's changed? I suggest that what has changed is this very mindset, the bloated pedagogy and jargon soup that has utterly eclipsed actual teaching. The other thing that has changed is the value we, as a society, place on learning things. 'Alternative facts' and 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge,' and 'experts are just arrogant shills' have eroded any value on education or academic success, and this starts long before they get to school. And no, it's not technology. There is no reason students cannot learn technology, but NOT be glued to it every moment.

2. If 'traditional education' is no longer enough, why are traditional schools, whether private or the traditional schools within public school systems, the highest performing academically? Oh, well, they get the brightest students, you say? Hmm, you may be onto something, but all I hear is how we have to create the same opportunities for all students, and there are no 'AP and regular students.' So which is it?

I am so fucking sick of this self-aggrandizing, pseudo-scientific, pedagogical garbage! No, what we need is NOT more 'balloons, tape, and string' 'project learning.' We need kids who are taught early HOW to learn, and then we need to teach them the stuff. OK, yes, I get that learning how to learn is more important than subject content - in first grade! I watched kids come from shirty public schools and flourish under far more demanding standards. The difference was small classes, and teachers who were thoroughly versed in and passionate about their subjects.

This kind of hand-holding, 'everyone gets an A' nonsense is, in my opinion exactly why we are where we are as a nation.

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Post a day twofer: Snakes and Optimism

2025-02-13T18:02:38Z

Feb 1: Serpent Day: How do you feel about snakes? Would you ever keep a snake as a pet?
Feb 2: Optimist Day: Do you consider yourself to be an optimist or a pessimist?

Snakes - I love them, actually. I don't have snake motifs all over the place or anything, but I think snakes are awesome creatures. I also know that the presence of snakes is a very positive sign of the eco-health of a place. When I had a house out on 10 acres, I had a contractor who screamed like a 6-year-old girl on seeing a little rat snake. I never let him live it down, and absolutely refused to let him kill the snakes. He nearly quit!

I would not mind having a snake, but if I'm being honest, I don't need the extra work. Four cats are enough, thanks! And even if that were not an issue, I could not stand feeding living creatures to a snake. I respect the predator/prey dynamic in nature, but I don't want to be the one dropping some helpless, struggling creature into certain doom. (There are reasons I'm a vegetarian, and that's one of them!) Feeding live crickets to a handful of anoles back when my son was little and just HAD to adopt the class pet was more than enough of that!

Optimism: Ouch. Not a good time for that one. Overall, I think I generally assume the best of humanity as a whole, but rarely like people in reality. I'm sort of a misanthrope, but these days, can you blame me? I think I am more of a realist if I'm anything on that scale. My grandmother always said 'expect the worst, hope for the best, and work with what you get.' I guess that Northern European practicality runs in the blood, to something. Though, these days, it's getting really damned hard to even hope for the best, especially when you realize the worst you can even think to expect is probably not as bad as what you will get.

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Reading is so last century (apparently)

2025-02-13T17:47:39Z

In my school, 4% of students read at grade level. (We have grades 6-8). 40+% read at grade 3-5. That means 50+% red at a kindergarten to 2nd grade level. Over half of the kids age 11-13 read at the level of a five- to seven-year-old.

Think about that. Yes, it's only one school (one of the better schools in the region, alarmingly enough), but it is a glimpse.

Fun fact, these are NOT the COVID kids. Apparently, the district decided to not teach phonics for a few years. And now, the Dep't of Ed is under fire, including halting a billion-dollar service that targets quality of education for poor schools.

We are so fucked.

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Oh, my head!

2025-02-06T17:11:44Z

About seven years ago, I was in and out of the hospital for a month on account of, of all things, an ear infection. It was a doozie, no question. That sucker tore right through most of my outer ear, worked its way through the labyrinth, and stopped just short of the cochlea. I lost a good chunk of bone to that beast. I also lost roughly 90% of my hearing on one side.

I mention this because today I realize the loss of 90% of my hearing on one side was not nearly enough.

You see, we often have to cover classes for out-of-school teachers. For me, on this day, that means I am sitting in a large room with two dozen beginning band students and as many instruments (from a tuba to drums and everything in between) ineptly (if earnestly) blatting at me and I cannot describe the headache.

My nerves are already frazzled to the very edge, and never have I wished more sincerely to be fully, completely deaf.

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Because not everything has to be gloom and doom....

2025-02-03T17:43:52Z

I mean, it takes effort, because every day there is some absolutely insane thing happening, but here we go; a list of Good Things™.

It is a sunny, gorgeous day, supposed to hit almost 70. For February, that is a wonderful thing. Feb. is hard because it's usually so grey, so this is most welcome!

I splurged and ordered myself some new colored pencils (I do not need these; y'all have no idea how many colored pencils this gal has!) in hopes of getting my drawing groove back on. I've been at that place where I feel the itch, just not the motivation.

I am working on what I hope will be a cool thing for the kiddos at school. We're studying China, so I had them all color circles (about 7" across) with Chinese motifs but didn't tell them what for. Another SS teacher and I are going to assemble them with added head and tail, into two gigantic dragons that we will hang in the hallway outside our classrooms. It won't last the week, I am sure, but I hope it will be at least a little bit of a 'wow' for some of them. (Yes, I will post photos if it works out!)

My next unit will be the Middle Ages, which is something of a mixed blessing. Yes, it's my medieval jam, so that's awesome! I get to talk about the 12th C Renaissance and Dante and manuscripts... But I can't teach it in anywhere near the depth I'd like, and the studied indifference of the middle schooler stings a little extra when it's something I'm super enthused about. Alas... but Middle Ages! Yay!!!!

My tinkering project lately has been getting a somewhat 'modernized' (i.e. modded) version of Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion running and stable. Mixed success, but I'm discovering a lot of things that seemed incongruous in Skyrim actually make sense now, so that's cool.

I found a new place that has amazing (and cheap!) falafel, and the deliver to my school. I positively gorged on falafel and hummus for lunch, and it was glorious. It's funny how really good food can make things seem a bit better. Now I need a nap, though. Grrr.

So there we go. It's far from ground breaking, but it felt good to think about some positive stuff for a change.

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Post-a-day - this one's perfect!

2025-01-29T21:42:39Z

29 – Curmudgeons' Day: What is a curmudgeon? Do you know any curmudgeons? What do you think of them? Today is also Freethinkers' Day. Do you think a curmudgeon might be just a freethinker?
___
I am a curmudgeon. Loudly, proudly, and with great intention. A curmudgeon voices the doubts everyone else has, but won't say, the flaws everyone else sees but won't point out, and the idiocy everyone recognizes but is too intimidated to call out. That's me. I am always the curmudgeon in my work life, at least. To be fair, I am an old-school academic surrounded by School of Ed folks - it's inevitable!

I am also a freethinker (by certain lights), and no, I don't really see the two as interchangeable, particularly with how 'free thinker' is used nowadays. In the more common (more correct, perhaps?) use, 'free thinker' as I know the term means more or less the same as 'atheist' or at least 'actively questioning religion.' In a slightly broader sense, it can also mean, 'actively questioning the powers that be,' to whatever that may refer in context. In that sense, yes, definitely, I am a 'free thinker.'

However, too often, I see it used to excuse, justify, or gussy up otherwise unacceptable or unsupportable opinions. Anti-vaxxers, for example, consider themselves 'free thinkers,' though if there is anything that less exemplifies 'free thinking' than succumbing to mass panic over blatantly counterfactual nonsense, I can't think of it offhand.

People who are vaguely disreputable, disagreeable, irresponsible, or generally dissolute seem often to invoke 'free thinking' as their raison d'etre, in much the same way they do 'enlightened.' (The Buddha weeps, or he would if he existed.) The notion that somehow, someone's utter disregard for order, rules, or just common decency is the result of 'free thinking,' 'enlightenment,' 'thinking on a higher level' or some other Deepak Chopra gobbledegook and the rest of us are simply to dim to get it is precisely why I hesitate to claim either moniker.

Then again, what can you expect? I AM a curmudgeon, through and through.

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Post a day, Jan 23 (Yeah, I know)

2025-01-26T03:30:49Z

Handwriting Day: Do you still write by hand? Can you write (and read) cursive? Do you think cursive should be taught in schools?

Yes, Yes, and OMG, Yes!!!!

It infuriates me that the defense of cursive has become an 'ok, boomer' topic, when there is solid science indicating considerable benefits to learning cursive. I'm also a huge calligraphy geek, AND a fountain pen nerd (I need to get some pen porn up in here....), so handwriting and cursive are incredibly important to me. As a historian, it's so blindingly obvious how important it is to be able to read cursive - there are already tons of forms of script that we must employ experts to read—one word: Sütterlin.

If you're not familiar with it (or if you didn't have half a dozen generations' worth of German ancestors and their ephemera milling about), Sütterlin was the last iteration of a class of scripts known collectively as Kurrent, which evolved alongside German blackletter in about the 16th C. Sütterlin was developed as a 'modern' form of Kurrent around 1911, and used widely in Germany, or then, Prussia. Up into the 1940s, it was taught as the sole form of written script in German schools. It was briefly banned by the Nazis, and while enjoyed a brief resurgence after the war, it never came back into prominence. Now very few people are left who can read it without special training. All the letters, postcards, diaries, and journals written in that period by an entire nation, including those that lived through and documented both World Wars - unreadable to most.

Already, people interested in things like history or genealogy struggle to read census records and other documents written in cursive. The current political climate already threatens to destroy any meaningful past. Much of that past is recorded in cursive. To me, it almost seems like knowing cursive is, if you will pardon the unintended and klunky rhyme, almost subversive...

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Post-a-Day Jan 21

2025-01-21T18:11:59Z

I see this is already not an 'every day thing!' I'm choosing the question for Jan 18th, since the one for today is sort of dumb (sweatpants to work - whatever.)

Thesaurus Day: Do you own a thesaurus? How often do you consult a thesaurus to find just the right word?

I do own a couple, actually, the physical, bound paper kind, even! And while I don't use the book versions as often, I do use a thesaurus quite often, usually when writing fiction. I have always been a verbivore and had a thing for weird, wacky, and wonderful language facts and oddball words. What I find disappointing, however, is how often someone comments (roughly 50/50 whether it's complimentary) on my word choices. Like, dude, 'viscerally' is not an especially lofty word...seriously?

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Life Teaching Middle School: Installment 3, The Wildly Inflated Middle

2025-01-17T18:11:38Z

Have you ever had the sneaking suspicion that public education in the US doesn't have time to help the best and brightest reach their true potential, and ignores completely the students who struggle the most, have the biggest gaps in their knowledge or abilities, or are at the bottom of the grade scale?

If so, I have bad news for you: you are 100% right, and ( it's probably worse than you think. )

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Post-a-Day, Jan 17

2025-01-17T17:03:44Z

Today's question: 17 – Ditch New Year's Resolutions Day: Do you make New Year's resolutions? If so, how successful are you at keeping them?

Generally, no, I don't make New Year's resolutions. An age ago, I answered a similar question that I don't really care for making sweeping declarations once a year. It seems disingenuous and sort of show-offy. Instead, I try to always be self-reflective and undertake small, but meaningful and sustainable changes. I don't always succeed, mind you, but I try. Offhand, I'd say I have been more successful with this approach than when I have made NYE resolutions.

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"Post-a-Day" meme, mostly for reference, but grab it if you like.

2025-01-17T16:52:45Z

I found this (slightly dated) gem second or third hand (from jo's journal originally, I think), so I thought I'd at least post it. I'm a sucker for memes, and while I am positive I will not get to all of these, its might be fun to have handy. Feel free to grab it if you. like!
( It's seriously long, be warned before clicking! )

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Welcome and onto the steppes...

2025-01-14T17:46:53Z

Back at it today, though yesterday was a weird schedule - we were on a 2-hour delay. Zthe kids are not quite as feral as I expected, which is nice! Then again, we aren't out of the woods - we have the looming threat of NTI (online learning) at some point this week, and another storm possibly around the end of the month.

There are several new folks here, and please let me say WELCOME! I know I have not gotten to respond to all of you in person yet (I pretty much got home from school and was out cold by 6-ish?), but I will, and I am SO glad you're here!

This week we started on the Mongols. It's a fun unit to teach, and it leads nicely into our upcoming coverage of medieval China. Of course, I had to introduce the kiddos to the Mongolian metal band, The Hu. If you haven't ever seen them, check them out below!

(Not sure if iframes still work here; I guess we'll see!)

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Life Teaching Middle School: Installment 2, the Highs and the Lows

2025-01-12T06:21:58Z

Teaching here is a strange journey. It's so wildly different from teaching Uni (more than the obvious stuff, I mean), and even from teaching at the private school (to distinguish from the Islamic School. More on that here.)

( Read more... )

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Back to the grind soon

2025-01-12T05:39:30Z

Well, it's one more day and a wakeup before I'm back in the classroom. I can't complain - I got a full extra week on account of the snow, which I will never turn down. It makes going back seem so surreal though.

It will be a day of reteaching expectations (how to be a student as opposed to a feral meerkat), and then it's on to Mongols, then China, then the Middle Ages. I think for China, we will do the blue pottery art project again, and for the Middle Ages, I'm thinking of having them make manuscript pages... I've done it in a one-week, half-day summer camp, so maybe? No calligraphy pens, though! I'm not that brave!

For now, though, one more lazy, snowy Sunday ahead... Time for cocoa, I think.

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Welcome!

2025-01-11T14:57:28Z

Consider this the obligatory (-ish) introduction sticky.

Having said that, I have no clue where to start... I did a life update thing a few posts back, but that was more of a 'what I've been doing since' sort of thing.

I'm a teacher/professor (depending on what gig I can get), and I specialize in history, medieval history in particular. However, I taught a bang-up English class for 7 years, and I have taught art, literature, religious studies (as in history, not theology), culture, and even graduate-level courses in video game studies. Lately, though, it's middle school history, which is insanely frustrating, and not just because it's middle school.

I'm a gamer (shocking given above, I know!), artist, frustrated reader (who has the time?), and I dabble in fanfic (by 'dabble' I mean I have two 75K+ word fics and a handful of shorter ones on AO3 & FF.net). I have an amazing adult son who lives at home (because economy, also we're kind of besties), and 4 cats, I bake like a fiend over holidays, drink too much coffee, and have been vegetarian for..let's just say decades and leave it at that.

I am unapologetically left, atheist with a mostly stylistic & literary witchy streak, anti-capitalist, feminist, anti-racist, totally supportive of LGBTQ+ folks. I am also strongly pro-science, evidence, reality, and that sort of thing.

Here you will find everything from life updates, political commentary, tales from the (junior) academy, fandom squeeing, and fair warning: I can never see one of those 'fill out these weird questions' kind of memes.

Beyond that, welcome!

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Moar snow days!

2025-01-10T04:06:15Z

Yes, folks, I was off today, and they called it around 2pm for tomorrow. That's a FULL extra week of break. Which is awesome!

It's also weird! I didn't have anything planned, and the snow made going anywhere impossible, which isn't a problem by itself. But I just sort of feel like I'm in some weird time bubble. There was already a sense of strangeness about the holidays this year, and now I'm in this long liminal thing... I know, cognitively, what day it is, but I don't have any feeling of time, if that makes sense.

It doesn't help that I know the kiddos will be freaking insane after the extra long break. They are not as bad as the crew last year, but gawd, they can be tiresome at times. Ah, well, I have three more days to chill, anyway.

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My adventures at an Islamic school...

2025-01-07T18:14:10Z

I think I really need to write a book about my year at the Islamic School. Suffice it to say I certainly got an education, if the kiddos, somewhat less so. This will be long, so if you're not interested, have a picture of Jinx, being the cutey-pie goblin she is for tax, and enjoy your day. If you're curious about the inner workings of Islamic education in America however, grab some popcorn, and settle in.

( Read the sordid tale here... )

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Snow days!

2025-01-07T16:01:30Z

Sitting here with a cat on my lap, a cocoa at my elbow, in my jammies, enjoying the second of three (three!) snow days. Gotta be grateful for the gifts that come, eh? Though, I will admit, there is a touch of 'delaying the execution' in terms of the dread of going back. And I know the kids will be bonkers! At least I will only have them for 2 days before the weekend, right?

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It's been a weird holiday...

2025-01-03T18:12:56Z

On the one hand, this is the first year I've felt holiday-ish in quite a while (and if you've known me for a while, y'all know I love Christmas, godless heathen notwithstanding). Last year I was just too beaten down by the School year from Hell to where we didn't even get a tree (more on that later, too; I have a lot of backstory to fill in, don't I?), and the year before Dad had just passed. But this year, I was into it!

I've been baking up a storm (as usual, if a week or so behind schedule), and was all set to host the family Christmas morning brunch. It's a lovely event if I do say so - roughly 8-12 people, a big breakfast including eggnog pancakes, and of course, all the bakery in the world: cookies, stollen, fruitcake, and this year a few new entries, like a snowberry crostada.* I had invited everyone on Thanksgiving, and gotten enthusiastic acceptance. So, I called around the 23rd to confirm the time, and got a shock. Apparently, since I had not been calling and flogging this thing every week since Thanksgiving people didn't feel like they'd actually been invited ('didn't feel invited enough,' that's a direct quote). So none of them showed.

Now, just between you, me, and the lamppost, my son and I both ended up being sick as dogs Christmas day, so it was, cosmically speaking, for the best, but they didn't know that, so I'm not letting anyone off the hook!

SO we've been baking at our leisure (still at it, actually), and enjoying a quiet, lazy sort of holiday. Which is nice. But...

I still feel like I'm caught in the week before Christmas, and here I am three days from returning to school (blech; not as bad as last year, but...blech.)

*About the baked goods: don't @ me about fruitcake, this is great-great-grandma Ada Sue Winchester Dunn's famous Southern fruitcake, and it is nothing at all like the doorsteps hawked by the 'cheese and sausage pushers.' It's spicy, moist, and boozy as heck. It's delightful, I swear. And if the snowberry crostada sounds vaguely familiar, you might have played Skyrim. It--and a number of other new regulars on the house menu--come from the Elder Scrolls Cookbook. I cannot recommend it enough; even if you're not a fan of the game, there are some real gems in there.

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So where've you been these last few years?

2025-01-03T06:01:11Z

Where indeed? It's been a ride, I can say that much. I'll try to keep this short, but in as much as it's supposed to be a journal, I suppose I should at least fill in the gaps a bit, no?

And if you're new here (Hiya, if so!) consider this something of an introduction.

( Read the tale here )

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Adventures in the uncanny valley of AI

2024-12-31T23:07:49Z

The implications of AI are huge and very, very worrying. In the realm of social media and internet culture, AI has become a tool of misinformation and disinformation, both intentional and simply as a result of how AI works.
( Read more... )

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Last post before....well, I suppose we'll see...

2024-12-30T16:41:41Z

I'm realizing that this journal has become a series of 'hey, I'm back and gonna try again!' So, I'll forgive you for any skepticism if I say, well, yeah. After years of more or less living on LJ, LJ got squirrelly, DW was pricy (compared to my lifetime permanent, Cadillac, all the perks (aka icons) membership at LJ, and FB became a thing.

FB has become increasingly toxic, and while I have so many people and communities there which I cherish, the insane influx of sponsored, forced, 'recommended,' and otherwise unwanted BS has been getting more and more annoying. I spend more time blocking unwanted accounts than I do reading the people I love. And now, AI.

I have my own run-ins with AI, which I will describe in another post, but I am becoming convinced that AI and the inevitable dumbing down of the population that comes with it pose an even more salient threat to humanity than fascism, climate change and nuclear war combined. If nothing else, it will be the complete loss of any kind of objective reality that will allow these other threats to reign unchallenged.

So when FB has made AI inescapable, even as the AI itself admits that it is programmed to prioritize 'engagement over accuracy,' I think it may be time to do as others have done and just bow out of FB entirely. I left Twitter ages ago, but FB is a two-decade record of my life and experiences. It's hard to let that go. It's also the only point of contact I have with some people I really don't want to lose track of. I'm not quite there, but I think it's becoming inevitable.

I'm on BlueSky, and looking at Mastadon, and of course, I've been here for ages, even when I haven't 'been here.' We shall see. I think it is time for me, personally, to return to recording more of what I see happening in the world anyway.

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Art is awesome!

2020-01-19T18:14:11Z

In better news, I have my kiddos making hand-bound books, and it's awesome! I'm also working on perfecting a way to marble paper that I can have the kids do. I have always loved marbled paper, and I am so excited about being able to make my own. My first forays have issues, but I'm getting there. Pics soon, promise!

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What a New Year...

2020-01-05T19:51:28Z

Or, rather, what a train wreck! The tragic losses in Australia - half a billion animals lost for fire... yes, Billion, with a 'B.' And the political community seems not to care. Heaven knows the PTB there are doing little, and the denial of what is happening all around us remains as vociferous as ever.

Then the travesty of impeachment. This problem has so far exceeded what was ever envisioned by the framers of the Constitution that the law has no tools for addressing it. We are discovering what power a president has, and how easily the rule of law can be subverted. The crimes are clear; but what authority can bring the charges, prosecute them, and enforce proper consequences?

And meanwhile, the proven criminal is sitting in his lair, starting a war with a nation with whom we had a treaty, by which they were abiding, for no other reason than...what? Pride? Self-aggrandizement? Self-preservation? Or to serve his masters who are working for our destruction?

The new year is supposed to be full of hope. So far, it has offered little. We must fight. But how?

(I had retired this icon when Obama took office, and Bush was no longer the embarrassment of our nation. Oh, those innocent days...)

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