It's the Guns

Why does the U.S. continue to have mass shootings while the rest of the industrialized world does not? Because the gun manufacturers are more concerned with making a profit. They like money more than they care about people dying. 

The world is (figuratively) on fire, and there's so many things I can be ranting about today, but the guns are what's on my mind. Why? I couldn't tell you specifically. 

I guess I was thinking about greed. The gun manufacturers created the NRA. They use it to lobby politicians. The politicians like the money flowing from the NRA, so when another mass shooting makes the news, they offer "thoughts and prayers", but then do nothing about restricting the guns. 

Make no mistake, the Second Amendment stuff, the "guns don't kill people...", the discussion of "rights" and "protection", the drumming up fear of someone attacking you, all of this is just a way for the gun manufacturers to keep making money. Because really, it would be very simple to restrict the guns. Restrictions are popular. People wouldn't mind registering their weapons or getting a license or being trained, etc. But this would cost the gun manufacturers money. 

So, they muddy the waters. They give all sorts of excuses as to why "you" won't want these restrictions. Really, they don't. 

And so, they pay off politicians so they won't enact legislation. And we the people are stuck with unfettered access to guns, guns that fall into the hands of people who have no business with guns. People who are going to use them for nefarious purposes. People who choose violence against whoever they happen to want to lash out against. 

What's the saying? Love of money is the root of all evil. I think it goes something like that. 

What would it take for those in power to finally limit access to guns? I don't know. Because, if anyone knew, they would have done this decades ago. 

A Month Late

So, it's been a minute since I talked about eldest nephew's Christmas sweater. Because I hadn't touched it in a while. The only knitting I'd been doing had been on Saturdays when I went out, and when I got the sweater to within a half inch of binding off, I couldn't very well take it with me. But last week I managed to finish off the back and start the front, so progress has been made.

The back is done:

It's drop sleeves, and the collar is knit on after, so it's just one big rectangle. 

Then the front, thus far: 

So, not much there, yet, but it's begun. 

My goal was to get the back completed by the end of August. I finished it by the end of September. Ah well. 

Now that I'm not distracted by lesson planning and grading (as I'm back to day-to-day subbing), I will have some more head space to get back to this sweater. Will I finish it in time for Christmas? I don't like my chances. 

But, progress.

Sweater Tracking:

• Starting the Sweater
• Getting to the Back
• Missed Deadline
• Distractions from Knitting

One Last Time

Friday. I was back in the art class one last time.

When Ms. D was hired, she already had plans for certain days. They asked me to sub those days, and I said yes. Last Friday was the last of these days. 

And, I had been dreading it. Seventh period had been an issue for a while (as I mentioned), but after Monday's crazy (when I had them for less than a half hour), I knew they were now on sub behavior with me. Deep sigh. 

The assignment had them cutting paper (it was a 3D landscape thing). I knew this was going to be a mess. So, I had a strategy for how I was going to get them to clean up after. 

The school (it might be the whole district) has a new cell phone policy this year. No phones during class time. They even got the classes these nifty boxes: 

The kiddos (are supposed to) put their phones in the box at the beginning of the period and retrieve them at the end. And it has a lock on it. 

(I caught a girl on her phone during class time. The first consequence is just to lose the phone for the rest of the period, but the second consequence is that the phone goes to the main office. I've been keeping careful track of first offenses...) 

I usually don't bother to remove the key from the lock. No one has tried to retrieve their phones before time. But on this day... 

So, clean up time. I explained what needed to happen. And I informed them that no one would get their phones back until it was done. 

It got done. 

There was a mess. Play time for middle schoolers means mess. Thrown paper. Spilled water. Pencils on the floor. Flowers everywhere. (There's a plumeria outside the classroom that has blooms. On their worst days, they get obsessed with bringing in flowers.) It wasn't supposed to be a play day, but they weren't cooperating. 

The mess was picked up, so they got their phones. (They would have gotten their phones back, of course. I just made sure to leave them enough time to get the room picked up.) 

And that was goodbye. Phew. 

Earlier that day, a bunch of new assignments popped up on the subbing app. One of them, for the following Friday, was for Ms. D. I didn't get it. Mostly because I didn't click on the button that said "book". 

Beware the Cobra Chickens on Campus

"Oh, the ducks are back..."

It was Wednesday, my first day out of that middle school art class, and I had caught a BEST class (which is an acronym, but I don't know what it stands for). Basically, it's a small, self-contained class for students who have issues. Special ed, but for emotional rather than developmental problems. 

The instructional assistant's remark got me to turn around and see the "ducks". Only these were not ducks. No, these were cobra chickens... 

This is a t-shirt. (And I found another, too.)

...otherwise known as Canadian geese. 

A couple weeks back, while driving to campus, I had noticed a flock of these beasts on the practice soccer field. I have no idea when they showed up and decided to make the school their home, but apparently it now is. Sigh. 

The geese were eating grass. There were at least a dozen of them, all full grown. We kind of watched them in between the work the kiddos were to do. (They were doing a review of The Crucible which they were to have a test on, and then they were learning about herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores.) 

I did explain to the IA that they were geese not ducks, but she insisted on continuing to call them ducks. Oh well. I'm now calling them cobra chickens anyway, so... 

It used to be that we'd have seagulls all over the place. At the end of lunch, you'd always have to be careful to not get pooped on as the seagulls took off. (Kiddos leave trash with food. The seagulls knew where to get fed.) But, as of late, we don't have as many seagulls (although I'm not out in the lunch area at lunchtime, so I might just not see them). After the Covid shutdowns, the seagulls kind of drifted off. 

But now, Canadian geese. Yikes. 

At one point, one of the maintenance guys came driving through on his cart, and then security came by on her golf cart, and they ended up chasing the cobra chickens. I enjoyed that display way too much. 

Reprieve, Sort Of

Monday. Fifth period. 

I was back as a sub in the middle school art class. The kiddos had a shading assignment. Things were going as well as could be expected when a weird alert sound came over the clock/PA system. 

"Lock down..." was announced. 

Uh oh. 

I took the blocker out of door one, and I went to latch door two. (Door two doesn't close all the way. I have to lift it just a bit to get the lock to catch. It's not a big deal now that I know the trick.) 

The kiddos expressed concern. 

Me? I've been through a few of these before. I explained that there was nothing to worry about and that we'd learn what was going on soon enough. 

Since the long term, I still had access to the school emails, so got informed like all the other teachers of what was going on. There was a police issue at an apartment complex not too far from the school, so to keep everyone safe, they put us on lockdown. 

The kiddos had enough work to do. And it was still the middle of fifth period, so no biggie. 

Then, it was the end of fifth period. I asked the class if they liked their seventh period. Many did not. I said, "Good news, you don't have to go." 

And it was good news. For me. I had been dreading seventh period. And now, I didn't have to see them. For a while...

With about a half hour of the day left, the lockdown was lifted. Yay?

Fifth period left. Seventh period arrived. All wound up. 

We had maybe twenty minutes of class. Which was about all I could take of them. 

"Did the teacher quit?" they asked. 

(Why she'd quit after one day...) 

We didn't do much of anything in seventh period. And then the day was over. Whew. 

A Rebuttal

About a week and a half ago, one of my fellow bloggers, someone I've been following for years, published a post that took me aback. It was about the assassination murder of that personage who had the ear of our dictator tyrant so much so that he treated the whole thing as a state event, ordering flags to be flown at half staff. 

Deep sigh.

I wanted to scream. How could this blogger not see who that guy actually was? Talking about how he was "honest, factual, open and helpful". How "[h]e was a warrior for Christ". And that "[t]here will be many people who...celebrate his life and salvation". Uh...

It's rude to go onto someone else's blog and scream at them. Right? So, rather than make a rude remark in the comments, I thought I'd go off on my tirade here. 

Because, seriously? The white supremacy, misogyny, and celebration of violence is okay? Holy, even? The N*zi stuff didn't bother them? This is who they think is a "good man"? That's terribly frightening. And it kind of explains where we got where we are today. Too many people are okay with the authoritarianism and the violence against immigrants so long as it's wrapped up in the Bible. 

I mean, slave holders were "good Christians" too, right? They went to church and read their Bibles and worshiped God and all. The fact that they owned other human beings (with all the implicit violence that entails) was fine? 

I read somewhere online that this man said many things that sounded good to the scary Christians, and even though he said the awful stuff out loud, too, the scary Christians somehow didn't hear the awful stuff. Which is just flabbergasting to me. 

So, let me bring the receipts. Why am I horrified at the acclaim this man had? Why am I railing against a man who was brutally murdered in public? Why am I upset over a blog post talking about this guy as if he was a good and holy man? 

Because of things he actually said and advocated for. 

Link: What the Public Memory Revealed

• “Black America is poorer, more murderous, more dangerous” than when Black people were living under Jim Crow.
• “The pride and trans movements have always been about grooming kids.”
• He espoused the racist Great Replacement Theory, which argues that white Americans are being systematically replaced by multiculturalism and by brown and Black immigrants.
• He said, “There’s a war on white people in this country."
• He contended that Black people commit more crime than white people and that the blame lies in a Black culture that accepts that Black men “impregnate women and they don’t stay around”
• 17 percent of his episodes contained an unsubstantiated or false claim (from a 2023 article)
• Mimikama collected 135 quotes: 67 verified, 68 are still unchecked. Together, they reveal how language is systematically used as a weapon against facts, minorities, and democracy. (From a German website. Google translated it for me.) 

I'd rather not look any further. If you do a cursory search of stuff he said, you're sure to turn up some more awful things. 

This is why I'm so upset. Because I've been aware of what he said, what he advocated for, for a while. And it all horrified me. Then, people who I thought were good and decent people are now talking about him as if he was such an honorable man. No. No he wasn't. 

It's scary how quickly we devolved into fascism. It's scary how now a person who in normal times would have been reviled by the mainstream is suddenly seen as some sort of truth-telling good person. I don't recognize this country any more.

Well Travelled

Last week, Alana spotted the "design choice" I made. Perhaps this week (with another pattern repeat added) it'll be a little easier to see. 

That kind of double yellow band, where it's yellow, then not, then yellow again, is where I started a new ball of yarn. And didn't look for the color where I left off to make a seamless transition. 

Well, I did look, but for some reason I couldn't find the yellow (even though, clearly, it was right there). And I gave up. 

I kind of like the break in the color sequence, so I'm keeping it. 

A week ago I mailed the previous version in the different colorway to my sister-in-law for her birthday. Which is tomorrow. Plenty of time to get there, right? 

Well, plenty of time if it went right there. Unfortunately, the package made a little detour. On Friday, this is where the tracking said it was: 

Hawaii. The package was in Hawaii. 

Hawaii?!?

That's not even on the way. Unless we're going the long way round the world. (I live in California. Sister-in-law lives in Ohio.) 

I just... I had to double check to make sure I didn't do something stupid like put the wrong address on the label. According to my records, no, I used the correct address with the correct zip code. Sigh. 

So, her gift will be late. Sigh. But it did make for a funny text in explanation. 

*shakes head* I guess my knits are better travelled than me. Sigh.