It was really nice to have been off for the past four days. I hope you were able to get some time off (sorry you had to work, Andy) and enjoy the holiday. I got about a quarter of the things done that I’d hoped to do, which means it was unusually productive time off. I’d really like to see this country go to a rotating 4/3 work week. Four on, three off, three on, four off, etc. That seems fair to me. Things were pretty warm here on Monday, but it was ungodly hot and humid yesterday, so our pet deer spent most of the day relaxing in the shade by the driveway.
Since the air conditioning here at work seems to be functioning, I’m almost glad to be back today. Almost. If I had a window (even one with a view of the parking lot), I’d be reasonably content. But I don’t, so I’, not. Thank goodness it’s a short week.
In other news, our Governor has scored a bit of a coup, if the rumors are true. It seems that he’s about to have the NY State Board of Regents rubber stamp MaryEllen Elia as the next state commissioner of education. This is a woman that was too incompetent for Florida, if you can imagine that.
Elia was fired by the Hillsborough Board of Education last February in a 4-3 vote…. [C]ritics complained about micromanagement, a top-down style, lack of transparency, and complaints from parents of students with special needs. One board member who voted to dismiss her “accused Elia of creating a workplace culture of fear and bullying, and failing to pay enough attention to minorities, including Hispanics.” Others, including parents, said that her disciplinary policies had a disparate impact on African American students.
Fear and bullying? Lack of transparency? Gee, I wonder what Cuomo sees in her?
Hillsborough County received about $100 million from the Gates Foundation to design and implement a value-added measurement system for evaluating its teachers. Its plan apparently included a promise to fire the 5% lowest performing teachers every year. Florida has a harsh style of accountability, launched by Jeb Bush and carried forward by Governor Rick Scott and the Republican-dominated Legislature and state board of education.
[…]
She is a strong supporter of the Common Core.
[…]
So, New York, once a bastion of liberalism, is getting a state commissioner who supports value-added testing and school choice, like John King. This aligns with Governor Cuomo’s agenda of “breaking up the public school monopoly” and using test scores to evaluate teachers.The biggest news in the state in the past year was the historic success of the Opt Out movement. Last year, 60,000 students refused the state tests. This year, nearly 200,000 did. If MaryEllen Elia is state commissioner, will she raise the stakes on testing? If so, don’t be surprised if 400,000 students refuse the tests next year.
So, Sue, sounds like a good time to come out of retirement, no?
I fucking hate all of you.
There’s undercover police officers following me around, news crews and fucking weirdos — and I’m not even carrying a phone they can track. Maron makes fun of me on Kimmel, the local news is making fun of me and the fucking President has made fun of me. I feel like I’m on the verge of being assassinated, and I don’t even have a job, a vehicle or a place to call home. Like I typed before, I fucking hate all of you. Stop hacking and tracking my shit, motherfuckers!
I hate this fucking website, too. My assumption is that this is an FBI smear campaign.
Assholes following me around telling me to do shit to help their investigations.
Had a nice meeting with my upstate NYS cousins. I think they were mildly impressed by my ‘grasp’ of NY pollyticks and sports thanks to you folks. I waited until all were done eating before dropping ‘Snotball’ on them.
I wish we could send Governor Snotty someplace.
It is amazing how expert people who have never taught have become on how to teach. I had a friend who said that everyone thinks s/he knows how to teach because everyone has been a student. That is a big part of the problem as the classroom looks very different from the front. I am surprised that anyone is becoming a teacher these days. I assume that if the economy continues to improve there will be a shortage of people willing to do the job.
Former NY Gov. George Pataki announces he’s running for president in 2016
How the hell does Pataki even think he is viable in any way? His rampant delusion disqualifies him at the gate. Kind of like Carly and most of the repug buffoons.
Someone I used to know who used to be in the rekkid bidness likes this guy Eric Kingson in NY-24. Then again, the guy is also pals with Danny Goldberg-Scmuck.
Hmm. NY-24 is my district. Our congresscritter is John Katko. He’s a Republican, but he actually seems to not be nuts (sat with Democrats at the SOTU and has voted with Democrats a couple of times). There is a professor of social work at SU named Eric Kingson who appears to be a decent guy.
In honor of #Menstrual Hygiene Day:
If Men Could Menstruate
by Gloria Steinem
Living in India made me understand that a white minority of the world has spent centuries conning us into thinking a white skin makes people superior, even though the only thing it really does is make them more subject to ultraviolet rays and wrinkles.
Reading Freud made me just as skeptical about penis envy. The power of giving birth makes “womb envy” more logical, and an organ as external and unprotected as the penis makes men very vulnerable indeed.
But listening recently to a woman describe the unexpected arrival of her menstrual period (a red stain had spread on her dress as she argued heatedly on the public stage) still made me cringe with embarrassment. That is, until she explained that, when finally informed in whispers of the obvious event, she said to the all-male audience, “and you should be proud to have a menstruating woman on your stage. It’s probably the first real thing that’s happened to this group in years.”
Laughter. Relief. She had turned a negative into a positive. Somehow her story merged with India and Freud to make me finally understand the power of positive thinking. Whatever a “superior” group has will be used to justify its superiority, and whatever and “inferior” group has will be used to justify its plight. Black men were given poorly paid jobs because they were said to be “stronger” than white men, while all women were relegated to poorly paid jobs because they were said to be “weaker.” As the little boy said when asked if he wanted to be a lawyer like his mother, “Oh no, that’s women’s work.” Logic has nothing to do with oppression.
So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not?
Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event:
Men would brag about how long and how much.
Young boys would talk about it as the envied beginning of manhood. Gifts, religious ceremonies, family dinners, and stag parties would mark the day.
To prevent monthly work loss among the powerful, Congress would fund a National Institute of Dysmenorrhea. Doctors would research little about heart attacks, from which men would be hormonally protected, but everything about cramps.
Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. Of course, some men would still pay for the prestige of such commercial brands as Paul Newman Tampons, Muhammad Ali’s Rope-a-Dope Pads, John Wayne Maxi Pads, and Joe Namath Jock Shields- “For Those Light Bachelor Days.”
Statistical surveys would show that men did better in sports and won more Olympic medals during their periods.
Generals, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation (“men-struation”) as proof that only men could serve God and country in combat (“You have to give blood to take blood”), occupy high political office (“Can women be properly fierce without a monthly cycle governed by the planet Mars?”), be priests, ministers, God Himself (“He gave this blood for our sins”), or rabbis (“Without a monthly purge of impurities, women are unclean”).
Male liberals and radicals, however, would insist that women are equal, just different; and that any woman could join their ranks if only she were willing to recognize the primacy of menstrual rights (“Everything else is a single issue”) or self-inflict a major wound every month (“You must give blood for the revolution”).
Street guys would invent slang (“He’s a three-pad man”) and “give fives” on the corner with some exchenge like, “Man you lookin’ good!”
“Yeah, man, I’m on the rag!”
TV shows would treat the subject openly. (Happy Days: Richie and Potsie try to convince Fonzie that he is still “The Fonz,” though he has missed two periods in a row. Hill Street Blues: The whole precinct hits the same cycle.) So would newspapers. (Summer Shark Scare Threatens Menstruating Men. Judge Cites Monthlies In Pardoning Rapist.) And so would movies. (Newman and Redford in Blood Brothers!)
Men would convince women that sex was more pleasurable at “that time of the month.” Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself, though all they needed was a good menstruating man.
Medical schools would limit women’s entry (“they might faint at the sight of blood”).
Of course, intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical arguements. Without the biological gift for measuring the cycles of the moon and planets, how could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space, mathematics– or the ability to measure anything at all? In philosophy and religion, how could women compensate for being disconnected from the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of symbolic death and resurrection every month?
Menopause would be celebrated as a positive event, the symbol that men had accumulated enough years of cyclical wisdom to need no more.
Liberal males in every field would try to be kind. The fact that “these people” have no gift for measuring life, the liberals would explain, should be punishment enough.
And how would women be trained to react? One can imagine right-wing women agreeing to all these arguements with a staunch and smiling masochism. (“The ERA would force housewives to wound themselves every month”: Phyllis Schlafly)
In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician. (For instance, here’s an idea for theorists and logicians: if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn’t it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? I leave further improvisation up to you.)
The truth is that, if men could menstruate, the power justifications would go on and on.
If we let them.
(c) Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. NY: NAL, 1986.