My pigeon-approved way of lifeI've

I've spent years NOT taking photos of pigeons
but in Venice, all things are beautiful

Sunlight on the feather caught my eye. Sliding through sunlight down from the eave above. The exuberant swirl as the grey and black piece of flight made manifest danced its way down to mere earth. My steps slowed a little to watch it. I didn’t stop, places to go things to do, but I acknowledged its beauty for a moment.

It was rather the flipside of reading the news these days, where a truly abhorrent man defiantly drowning himself in rage and petty ego to try and cover his sadness is leading a coterie of foolish greed, down off the upslope of history. Pronouncements we haven’t heard since Stalin, combined with the deliberate destruction of hope and protection, and I’ll tell ya, it’s enough to get a fella down.

But you just look at those, acknowledge them, participate when possible, care, but keep going.

So here was an afternoon of sunny sidewalk, and a descending path of a beautiful feather, give it the same treatment of slow acknowledgement and recognition, but keep going.

And the universe endorsed my response. Or at least the pigeon did.

The first gigantic gob of fecal surplus landed right in front of me, where I would have been had I not slowed to admire the falling feather. Then the second splash of posterior production, avian anal abundance, landed right behind me, where I would have caught it had I lingered a little too long.

I was framed in falling pigeon poo, pristine and untouched as I made my way forward into the friendly future. Perhaps the political offal we’re seeing will fall to either side as well, fertilizer for something better.

And if not? Well. At least I didn’t get shat on, on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

Something unexpected and totally normal happened today

I was well into my lineup of questions and answers, ordinal numbers and time sequences in class today, blue marker and red marker, hoping my students were getting something out of my antics when something unexpected happened.

She’s maybe three years old. She has the brightest eyes and incredible laughing smile, and she’d lost one of her shoes somewhere. She plays for most of my English class, blocks and panda bears, while her mother learns at a truly incredible pace, moving rapidly from knowing few words when she got to America two months ago to now, when she helps me teach the other Arabic speakers.

But the little one eventually gets bored and wanders off. She loves opening and closing doors, usually with herself on the other side, and the entire office knows her name and laughter, and soon someone will bring her back, a smile on their face, and deposit her at the table where she’ll look around, find her mom, and exclaim with the purity of a child’s joy “Mama!”

She’d snuck out during my lineup, somewhere around “Who arrived third to class today?” and I was just writing “Who got here next to last?” when she popped out from behind my white board easel with a giggle. Someone had given her a multicolored abacus, and she proudly presented it to me, setting it up with a three year old’s precision then stepping back to make space for my admiration and looking up as if saying “Can you believe this incredible thing!?”

And it was. It was an incredible thing. Because there I was on a Friday afternoon in Oakland, every cell in my body feeling heavy with the ominous portents for my country’s future, but here was this little girl, a Syrian refugee who had been through hell without even the words to name the horrors, and she was giggling up at me and presenting an abacus for my enjoyment.

It was something unexpected, and yet absolutely commonplace. I am privileged to spend some afternoons with these people, these incredible, beautiful human souls, and though the ostensible reason is so I can give them more English words and usage, the reality is that they give me hope, gratitude, and a love for our species that can be hard to grasp in the screen-shaped world.

So yes, I’m terrified for our country, but absolutely, I am confident in the human spirit. I am confident that we will continue to move forward. And I’m confident that we as America will continue to make this the kind of place people like this wonderful little girl and her mother want to come to for safety and a better future.

Hands Around Lake Merritt

Was election night as bad as it gets, or is the worst still to come? That sick feeling of disappointment, of alienation from your nation, of watching a big part of my demographic identity declare itself in direct opposition to everything in my mind, spirit, soul... Yeah, Tuesday sucked.

But faced with that question, if the worst is still to come, I just can’t find my optimism. He appointed a known white supremacist as his chief advisor! I can’t wrap my mind around that. We have a president who wants neo-nazis at his right hand. And Americans are cheering for him. It’s...disgusting.

All last week was trying to keep the spine straight, the head above polluted water, clinging to the emails, texts, and conversations of support and shared awareness, but even when those come from around the planet they feel small when the world at large has gone insane.

Then Sunday. A beautiful warm autumn afternoon in Oakland, when an estimated 10,000 of my fellow Americans gathered to surround Lake Merritt with a message of peace, opposition to bigotry, and dedication to the ideals that made America great in the first place.

My mother, awesome woman that she is, took us to an anti-War protest for the first Gulf War, and I’ve found my way to a few others over the years, but this was the first time I’ve seen thousands of people united in somber silence, peace signs held up in the air, saying without words that we as a country are better than what our “democracy” puked up on Tuesday.

Oakland has seen nightly protests of broken glass and tear gas as small numbers of people manifest their opposition. But this was something altogether more inspiring. Children played tag on the grass, dogs in sweaters, neighbors sharing food and hugs while everyone from old school Berkeley hippies to post-Millennials (have they named them yet?) shared a space and a message.

God it felt good. Restorative. Reassuring. Fortifying. There are four long years of resistance to (let’s be honest) evil ahead of us, but there are a lot of kind and genuine souls in my peaceful army, and I have faith in us. I found my optimism. They gave it back to me.

I want to stop there. But I can’t shake one other feeling. Nor should I. It’s fear, not for me (entirely insulated by my privilege and status) but for the children of America, the minorities of America, the refugees and the immigrants of America, all the vulnerable of America. So many groups are threatened by Trump’s inhumanity, but on Sunday they came together in one little boy. The demonstration was dissolving by then, everyone heading home for dinner, and I felt wrung out. Not ready for the pain of seeing a child having cause to ask this question.

This is not who we are. This is not who I will ever be. And you and I both will do everything we can to protect this child, won’t we? I’ll see you on the barricades if we have to, because this child deserves to live in a country where he never has to ask this question again.

Time to go

The urinal has a starting line. Maybe it’s my history as a runner, but I immediately wondered what time the qualifying heats would begin, but there’s just the one porcelain arena hanging up there on the wall, so I guess it will be time trials?

This is all I’m able to talk about today, since all my photos (unless taken on my phone just now) are in a box in my sister’s garage as I prep for another overseas work shift, and every waking moment is scheduled with goodbyes and errands, last lunches and a new toothbrush holder.

In two days I’ll be airborne, flying to Amsterdam to begin seven weeks of hoping, straining, pushing (with the polite aggression that’s necessary if you want to get on the Roman subway) to help groups of Americans enjoy Europe. And if I do my job right, while enjoying Europe they’ll actually learn to love travel itself.

Seven weeks of long days, “on duty” from breakfast at 7:00 until dinner ends at 20:30, or the night walk ends at 22:30, or the wine is finished at 1:30, and a full night’s sleep is a distant memory. If I survive, my lady and I will be in Greece for a week after that, relaxing with ruthless dedication, then I’ll wander up through Macedonia and Bulgaria for a couple more.

But if I can, I’ll share some of the details we find, the nuances we step on, the mysteries of Europe we gawk at. The mysteries of the whole world! Of life on Earth. Like, for example, why would a urinal have a starting line?

Yes, it's a cat post

I’d seen cats hunting birds with ferocious ineptitude. I’d seen one climb the curtains with kitten claws and an “I’ve made a terrible mistake” expression. And I’d seen a cat sitting with absolute dignity despite the toupee of cobweb stuck on its head. All very normal feline behavior. But I’d never seen a cat worn like a scarf before.

My new apartment was fine, good location and a Japanese maple right outside my window, but it was when I met the neighbors that I realized I’d won the housing lottery. (Again.) The entire building was chock full of people I’d like to talk to, with just this one last neighbor to meet.

His name is Sullivan.

I’ve never met a cat I didn’t like (and only one dog) but this rather corpulent kitty took neighborly likability to a whole new level. And left me with the question, how did I survive three decades without learning about Maine coon cats? (Apparently they’re common in the best houses?)

I’m used to feline independence with the flavor of aloofness, but Sully’s self-sufficient roamings seem more like what he does while he’s waiting to run into you. And whereas I learned that each cat has a very specific set of regulations on exactly how you may be permitted to pet their majesty, with Sullivander? Anything goes.

He’s the only cat I’ve ever seen that doesn’t have to land on his feet. You can hold him upside down, he’s happy, then just sort of lay him down like a sandbag and he just...cooperates. Looks up at you to see what’s next.

When my lady’s five-year old comes to visit, and has the chance to practice getting to know an animal (allergies and modern schedules keep them out of his homelife) I could think of no better animal for it than the Sull-tan of Oakland. Those two fell in love immediately. And watching the two of them, I feel like purring.

My reply to my neighbor's text: "Is Sully with you?"

The Sullimander wanders the hallway like a love ambush, and the second I open my door will lynx slink through to take up puma possession of the premises. It is a battle to remove him, and one from which I don’t mind abstaining, just shove a shoe in the door so he can get out whenever he likes, and perhaps the best procrastination sessions of my life have been petting him until his purrs rebound off the walls and his drool of delight spatters my floor. Totally worth it.

But all good things must come to an end, and Sullivander Hollifield’s owners are moving out this weekend. I’ll miss the furry bugger, but am damn glad I got to meet him.

Flowers, happiness, and non-squished innards

The phrase “botanical garden” feels like my pants don’t fit. That probably needs explanation. When I was a wee lad, we took a summer vacation up to Victoria, British Columbia for a few days, and I remember three things: musicians down by the harbor, afternoon tea at the Empress, and the Butchart Gardens.

The musician was an Irish lad on his way to the international bagpipe championships in some exotic-sounding place. I believe it was Indiana. I was six. Tea at the empress was unnoticed beside the lesson that wearing the dress pants from your uncle’s wedding months prior is inadvisable when you’re a growing boy. I remember sitting at the table, unbuttoning my pleated prison, and taking the first full breath since we’d left the hotel.

Care for a crumpet?

No thank you, I’m busy letting my internal organs return to their customary habitat.

As for the Butchart Botanical Gardens? Well, the lymphatic system only remembers the strongest sensations, so whatever floral fracas they presented were swept away by the sensation of death by abdominal strangulation.

So when my lady suggested we swing by the Tilden botanical gardens after an unreasonably enjoyable Sunday afternoon stroll with her and her preposterously lovable five year old son, it was more their presence than the destination that made me jump at the offer.

But I gotta hand it to the East Bay Regional Park District, they sure know how to garden. Placed in a little dell where a ticklish tributary of Wildcat Creek sneaks through, you can wander among a magnificent array of native California wildflowers, cacti, trees and anything that cared to grow a leaf in this zone over the few thousand years before outsiders arrived.

We sat in the sun and finished the best peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the world has ever known, and smiled with the benevolence of profoundly comfortable people at anyone who walked past.

Safe to say, when I hear the phrase “botanical garden” now, the sensation I get is not one of crushed kidneys.

Am I losing my mind? Or just a piece?

With the help of cold wind, science, and other people’s road rage, I freaked myself out pretty good last night.

Pretty normal Thursday, rock-climbing went well, great conversations with friends old and new, climbed a 5.11D, and finished with a dripping burger and fairly gourmet tater tots. What’s not to like?

Then I took the train back to Oakland, where the wind was sneaking down into the station, chivalrous warning of the chill upstairs, so I stopped, set my backpack on the bench, and dug out my spare shirt. Warmer, I left just ahead of a loud crowd of semi-drunk and fully-young revelers.

Singapore traffic races

That would have been an appropriate time to remember the study I heard about a few years back, about folks mired in that most pestilential of modern traditions: the traffic jam. Specifically, the road ragers. The “I’m gonna beat you” in the daily non-race, and the “Put down your damn phone and pay attention!” and the “How f’ing dare you change lanes in front of me!” etc.

Because rage is aggression is animal adrenaline, designed to aid the muscles in fight or flight, yes? Well, road ragers behind steering wheels have no muscular output (sorry, twitching your calf doesn’t count) so that adrenaline just sits in the blood in the brain, and this study found that it’s corrosive as battery acid in there. Scary thought, n’es pas?

Why you gotta take yourself so seriously, car?
Chicago gets it. (What do you expect,
parking in front of student housing?)

Well I’m not much of a road rager these days, blessed by the benevolence of not owning a car, and when I do, when another bloomin’ BMW/Prius/white car treats my physical well-being with the same respect your cat offers the newspaper you’re reading, I can burn it off with quadriceps femoris, iliopsoas, and sartorius. Feels good. (Especially if there are traffic lights, cuz then I beat them in our little non-race.)

The problem for me is my habit of waking up a couple times a night with a wee blossom of adrenaline accelerating my pulse. No muscular salvation at 3:17 AM, and I worry it’s rotting my brain.

Never said a biker can't enjoy a little speed.
Somebody in Chicago agrees.

Which is why, when I got home last night to discover that I had somehow, preposterously, just left my pack right there on the bench and walked off, I was kinda freaked out. Another bitty bloom of aggression chemicals.

But I’d be less worried, less condemnatory and castigatory, if someone else were to tell me that story. After all, it seems like something people do. Just not, y’know, me. Other people can be fallible, but I should know better. Psh. I forgive myself, and there are worse things to be than a space cadet.

How you doin', Oakland?

Losing my pack wouldn’t have been devastating, since it held my climbing gear, book I’d almost finished, and bike lock, but I admit to a sentimental fondness for the harness and shoes that have given me so much joy over the years. But when I got to BART this morning and found my bag nestled under the attendant’s desk, I was overjoyed. Reunited, and it feels so good.

No one was in the booth at 11:00 last night, which means my bag lay there in plain view overnight. That no one would snoop through it was unlikely, and indeed, someone nicked the carabiner. But the fact that they didn’t throw the rest in the lake, or try to sell it under an overpass for $5, but left it to be returned to me feels like a rather splendid example of kindness.

I see yo over there, Oakland, looking all pretty

Maybe we’re not such a bad people after all, we denizens of a poorly-reputed parallel metropolis. Or maybe my shoes just stink.

Nah, I’m gonna go with a nice lack of greed and presence of kindness. I’m gonna go with gratitude and optimism. And who knows, maybe they’ll  repair some of the holes in my noggin. May you have a gratitudinous and optimistilicious day! (And take it easy in traffic.)

I can see why people want to live here, Oakland

New phone, they say the camera's better, but out
the window of a moving bus is not optimal

This was no exception to my habit of beginning air-travel days in a state of maximal hygiene, fresh shirt and thorough shower, but arriving at the airport nice and sweat-soaked anyway. But given that it was 86° F in Oakland, that wasn’t all that surprising.

Healthy bodies and sunshine smiles were gathered around Lake Merritt, on blankets and in running shoes, and the frisbees didn’t care that it was a workday. In the bus, we stood and swayed, smiled vaguely and forgot that “sweater” can refer to clothing as well as identity. And when we disembarked the AC Transit steed of slightly stained seats, it was into a Frank Ogawa Plaza filled with food trucks, conversation, and sunglasses.

Not even hungry, I wanted to stop and eat anyway.

Smelling carne asada and grass, blinking at sun and skin, I felt the paired desires of my feet, the push to stop to sit meshing in sympathetic opposition with the pull to keep going. A mighty fine place, I can see why people want to live here, Oakland.

But I had a ticket, somewhere in the electric cloud, for a metal bird to carry me, up among the vapor clouds, to Chicago, the Land of Wild Garlic. (Probably should have said more overtly last time that that’s the translation for the indigenous word shikaakwa from which the city derives its name.)

First impression outside the hotel

Upon arrival, there was only room in my mental carry-on for food and sleep, but yesterday I got up and out into the city. Looking through the window of my memory I saw California sunshine, but the window of the hotel showed swirling white flakes.

My coat may have been closed up tight, but my heart and mind were open, looking to see why people would want to live here, Chicago. What waited on these streets?

(And thank you to everyone who gave me suggestions for what to see here. I've already checked a couple things off the list...)

Productive peace and slightly ominous quiet

I've boggled the AT&T guys. Well not me personally, but my antiquated apartment building and its wiring. They go in and look at the cryptic cords, then stand around for an hour scratching their jaws before putting in another work order and promising someone else will take care of it tomorrow.

(Or maybe they've just seen something that unnerves them. My building is built on a slope, with two floors of apartments for living people fully above ground, and a sinister labyrinth of padlocked rooms underneath, with random objects in them, from what appears to be a large collection of modern art in one, and unfamiliar rusty tools in another on top of which sprawls a stuffed lion that looks like the congealed depression of a tortured childhood. The phone wiring is down there, for some reason. Perhaps to facilitate ransom calls?)

Abandon all hope (for wifi) ye who enter here.

So it's two weeks since I had internet access at home. My correspondence is preposterously behind (aka I have 315 emails from people asking if I want to give them money or if I feel the Bern; I don't and I do, respectively) but there is something calming about the absence of that flickering green light of e-omniscience.

(That calm is good, since I was reminded that the ominous labyrinth of torture chambers under my feet includes a short stairwell that leads to a hastily constructed and presumably flimsy wall, the other side of which is right behind my bed. So if anyone escapes their chains down there, the path out would lead directly to my pillow. Sleep tight!)

Free from the www.distractions of modern life .com, I have learned about corpses from Mary Roach (rather a grim thread running through this post, isn't there?) hung with Hemingway, and righted a wrong I've been carrying for almost 20 years.

My high school English teacher told me to read All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren. I made it about 100 pages by the deadline, then read the last two pages in an attempt to deceive her as to my productivity. It didn't work. I saw the knowledge in her eyes, and it settled on my shoulders while Clinton was president.

But now, thanks to AT&T's ineptitude, and perhaps terror, I know the twist. I know the resolution. I know the secret meaning of life that an interbellum political operative found as his cynicism died.

So I guess the moral of this post is that we should all take a break from the internet. That, or it really pays to live over a spooky maze of malevolent chambers. Take your pick.

One of those days

And the bicycle goes where, exactly?

Yesterday was just one of those days. Tasks taking longer, lung-based cold draining further, nothing going forward as fast as I needed it to. (And also, of course my health insurance company messed up the automatic billing and cancelled my coverage just in time for my first doctor’s visit in two years. Why wouldn’t they?) Large scale worries and small scale misfires just sort of leached the feeling of effectiveness from my abdomen. Not a terrible day, just the kind that feels like a low slow growl.

But then! Then I was headed over to the city for Korean happy hour appetizers with three dearly beloved friends. The fresh air of bicycle motion was already soothing, though the day’s misalignment continued as every single stoplight turned red at my approach.

You can go, as long as you don't enter.

I’ve ridden from my house to BART (the subway) approximately seven quajillion times, and I well know that one stretch is the most dangerous. An American-style street of two busy lanes on the left and slanted parking spaces on the right, bikes are advised to float ten feet off the ground I guess.

After merely two mazillion passes, I’d developed an automatic habit of scanning for reverse lights to make sure none of those parked cars wanted to put a windshield between me and my destination, but the sheer normalcy of the passage, splattered with deeply-felt frustration, helped me not notice that the first parking spot was empty.

I don’t know if the driver signaled, since I was alongside them, but it doesn’t really matter. I should have been aware of the possibility of that right turn, crossing right in front of me, if not on top of me.

As it was, they pulled right, so I pulled right, and we both entered the space together, factory-shaped automobile metal somehow not impacting DNA-made me meat, with a good five inches to spare. Good five inches.

I looked at the driver, who looked back at me, both waiting to see if the other would rage and threaten. I love neither of those, so just sort of went around and back on my way.

See now the Dutch, the Dutch
know how to run a bike lane.

Air moving again, limbs still intact, I felt two tugs for interpretation. One, I could be overwhelmed with the frustration and fear of the moment and the day and the week, pour it all into a Republican-style rage of blame against another. Or, I could take that startling moment as a gentle but clear reminder from the universe to get my perspective in order. Sitting on hold while I stress at a long To Do List? Not that bad.

So on Super Tuesday, I elected to vote against anger and fear, and helped myself to a serving of gratitude and serenity after nearly going through a car window. Enjoyed time with friends, determined to take my own advice not to be in such a g’dang hurry all the time, and am happy to be blogging about it today. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have hold music to listen to. And that’s just fine.

Has it really been a year?

I genuinely love these people

I have no sense of time. Made a salad last night, went for the dressing I bought a little while ago, and found, to my dry-rucola’d dismay, that the dang thing had expired. Last April. The bottle looked embarrassed, kinda deflated, the kid in the Jedi robe caught hiding in the back of the theater to watch it again.

And I guess I’m not under the threat of an arrest warrant anymore. Because, again to my surprise, a year has gone by since I was arrested at a #BlackLivesMatter protest. A year since I felt a sliver, a splinter of a sliver, of what it’s like to not trust the police, to see their uniformed bodies as menaces.

“If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear from the police.” (Always white) people soberly informed me. Was I doing something wrong? By peacefully exercising my fundamental American right in support of my community? By trying to get to my bicycle so I could go home? And the guy next to me, hands going blue in his plastic zip-ties? He’d been walking home from BART. He hadn’t even known there was a protest going on.

And in black neighborhoods, where standard police procedure is to pull up next to a man walking down the street, detain him, handcuff him, sit him down on the ground like a naughty child, in full view of his community, maybe his kids, treat him like a dangerous criminal, and only then actually talk to him? To ask what’s going on today. How does that feel? What does that do? And how does it feel to see, again and again, officers not even going to trial after they kill somebody like you? No matter how many eye-witnesses say it was an execution, no matter if the bullets go in their back. Or maybe they merely beat you into the hospital.

I kept going to those protests. And when I’d pass the ranks of police, faces hidden behind riot gear, hands gripping weapons, my body would release adrenalin. My body getting ready to react. Overreact? Survival mechanisms pulling me away from deliberation, the indefatigable animal asserting control over the precarious grip of higher human functions, the amygdala overruling the prefrontal cortex.

But what’s happened in the last year? If there’s been progress, it’s been shy. Perhaps under-reported? The Terrible seems to slide right into the news, while the Wonderful has to fight its way on. Plenty of terrible to see, from Trump supporters’ racism and determination to avoid thinking, to terrorists attacking Planned Parenthood and BlackLivesMatter demonstrations yet receiving only innocuous labels. But I have to believe in progress. I have to hope. I have to. I have to believe that Bernie can win, and can drag our self-sabotaging country forward. I have to believe that humanity’s progress will eventually be reflected in its structures. Because that is one thing I still believe, humanity, in its prefontal cortex, when given peace, wants peace. So with everything in me, may peace be upon you. Peace be upon us all.

My Day In Court, Practicing Nonviolence

Too many names, outside the Alameda County Courthouse

“Appear in court on December 26,” they said. So I cut my family’s Christmas short to be back in Oakland, security-screened by 9:00 this morning. I try not to predict the future, but I was eager to hear the consequence of my peaceful protest. Dismissed? Fined? Charged?

The grumpus behind the glass pushed the words through her frown: “We haven’t received your paperwork yet. Go to the DA’s office to be rescheduled.” No resolution. My three guesses were all wrong. Instead, I have to call in every week for a year, to find out if they’ve charged me. I told the clerk I was going to be out of the country for the next couple weeks. “If we charge you and you do not appear, a warrant may be issued for your arrest,” and she went back to her desk.

Not an ideal arrangement for a traveler, especially one who plans to work abroad for weeks at a time. But also, I find myself reluctant to participate in any more demonstrations. They are pushing me away from the exercise of my Constitutional rights, and into...let’s call it trepidation. My government is engaging in Trepidationism against me.

Trepidationism for me, but make no mistake, the system engages in Terrorism against black people. Or perhaps people of color. Or perhaps the not-rich. When the police, George Zimmerman, and who knows who else, are allowed to kill black people with impunity? It’s time travel.

Because this is what Martin Luther King achieved. He took away the terror of being black in America, in a time when they could be charged with assault just for looking “recklessly” at a white person, or not taking off their hat. (Read this.) I’m reluctant to cite MLK, since I have lived with white privilege my whole life, and despite my best attempts at empathy, have never felt for myself the terror of living in a society that oppresses you this way, but when I see our country sinking backwards into a time of systemic terrorism, I am willing to reach for any heroes I can find.

The list of heroes includes all the civil rights leaders, from Dorothy Height to Claudette Colvin. Does it include Malcolm X? The man whose legacy is clear in our civil religion, the violent alternative to King’s nonviolence? Absolutely.

Some say King’s message only got as far as it did because the establishment looked at Malcolm X and saw the very real possibility of rage released in violence, so took the offered path of peace. I don’t know if that’s true (and though it’s inherently flawed to compare wildly different circumstances, I can’t help but notice that Gandhi had no violent counterpart...or did he? And Mandela?), but either way, the frustration and anger of those who have been too-long abused by this system are very real, and very strong. Undeniable.

The danger is that this possibility of violence, for all its rational origins, ends up being another face of the Terrorism that I denounce. When the system, through police or vigilantes, threatens violence, it’s Terrorism. But when they force those opposed to present the same threat..? That feels like a loss, understandable as it may be.

And then there’s the bloodsoaked example of the French Revolution punching us in the face. Violence to end oppression, that betrayed itself, consumed itself, and only led to another form of oppression.

So, I’ll spend the next year in trepidation, with the looming threat of a misdemeanor (oh my!) and people of color will live under the constant menace of assault, humiliation, exploitation, and outright murder. I don’t need any help with my vague discomfort, but the racial Terrorism in our system has to change. We just have to figure out how.