So many ideas fill my brain on a daily basis that cause a quick cessation of my heartbeat that I think I might need a defibrillator soon. There appears to be an influx of news and stories that hurt my heart and soul much more than ever. Perhaps it is that I am aging?
The Tea Party Ted Cruzian chooses no words that should fall from the mouth of a Christian. He supported blocking aid to the families of Flint Michigan who have been literally poisoned by their Republican Governor and his appointed “emergency managers” running the state. When an aid bill came up for a vote – Ted Cruz said, “No” to the lead-poisoned citizens of Flint, Michigan. In a quote from this article: “The main Republican objection to the bill is that they believe that the people of Flint should have to pay for their own federal assistance.”
Really? This from a Senator whose own state of Texas had just received federal assistance after their own request for such relief. You have got to be JOKING ME? No, this is America the (once long ago) beautiful. Remember these lines from the song, Ted Cruz?
“America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!”
No, I didn’t think you remembered it. You certainly don’t when you espouse your completely AntiChrist views of the way the budget should be spent. You are a heathen. I dare say that whatever Lord there is that may amount to some good would not welcome you to her table. You can go straight to the hell your types have created here on earth. A stockade with you bound to it in the center of the town of Flint, MI would be too light a sentence for you.
Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, wrote the lyrics to “America the Beautiful” in 1893 at the age of 33. That’s always been a favorite age of mine as it marked my entree into the global world of the Internet (thus by danaj33 moniker). The song is a little too white for me with the “alabaster” reference, but she was expressing her visions in the travel writing about Chicago and the World Columbian Exhibition (aka the Chicago World’s Fair) and all that she encountered on her trip to Colorado.
And then this:
A line from an article in the NY Times, “What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team” perfectly suited to a revelation I had just this early evening:
Our data-saturated age enables us to examine our work habits and office quirks with a scrutiny that our cubicle-bound forebears could only dream of. Today, on corporate campuses and within university laboratories, psychologies, sociologists, and statisticians are devoting themselves to studying everything from team composition to email patterns in order to figure out how to make employees into faster, better and more productive versions of themselves.
How to make employees more productive. How quaint. That appears to be the tent I have been living under at the college that I have devoted my adult life to teach others how to have a fantastic career immersed in the world of sound. But that inspiration that I used to give has been mired in the data collection trough that requires that I prove my self worth to the institution by gathering data right down to the student ID# so that someone can figure out how well I’m getting through to students of various colors. I’m buried in meaningful conversations and professional development surrounding the wonders of Student Learning Outcomes Assessment and disaggregated data. I was just pondering this when I realized someting about the 25-30-year-old “techies” who have taken over my once amazing city of San Francisco. This I wrote in my journal tonight:
After reading several pages in “The Typewriter Revolution” while my brain gently decompresses after a week of teaching with one of the lectures focusing on analog tape recorders and finding my students completely enthralled, I connect some very important dots regarding our young society in America. The shrinking middle-class has much ado with regard to the digital age where everything is “virtual” as we touch pictures of things that once were real and physical items before us. These are now emulations of our previous tactile experiences. I exist that interesting ‘tween time when I have the knowledge and experience of living in the truly physical and tactile era of the analog domain of my elders, but also understand, know, and flow with today’s youth and their completely digital existence. I am sad for them. No wonder that San Francisco is run amok with these new imprints of adulthood that I call “insensitives” who have moved here to take short-term jobs that pay well for the moment with most of their earnings spent on $4,000-per-month apartments that push the real SF (workers, artists, musicians, teachers) out of SF. These “techies” have never experienced a truly tactile domain in their lives so how can one expect them to be sensitive to others? If they have been living in an artificial game world, then they know nothing of truly sentient experiences. Perhaps the Amish people become more relevant by the minute? *SnAP* Reality Show idea: Send some techies to work on an Amish farm in the state of Pennsylvania for a month to learn a bit of enlightenment.
OH, and now Mr. Cruz has changed his mind. My, my, the power of social media! I think that Preparation H asswipes would be better in the White House. This man runs for the position of “Leader of the Free World”. My head hurts.
Americans today: what the hell have you been ingesting to make your fool minds operate in this way?
