“In Praise of Zigzags”–A Poem by Jane O. Wayne for National Poetry Month

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

NationalPoetryMonthLogoBy Elaine Magliaro

In Praise of Zigzags is one of my favorite poems. It brings to mind all of the students that I had during my years in teaching who marched to the beat of a different drum…who didn’t always follow directions…who sometimes needed to do things their own way. I think I’m sometimes like the girl in the poem myself.

I found Jane O. Wayne’s poem many years ago in The Invisible Ladder: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poems for Young Readers, which was edited by Liz Rosenberg (Henry Holt and Company, 1996).

IN PRAISE OF ZIGZAGS
For a Girl Failing Geometry
By Jane O. Wayne

Maybe she does her homework
the way she does her chores.
She moves quickly when she vacuums,
forgetting corners in the living room,
repeating others,
zigzags recklessly across the carpet,
raising those pale tracks
behind her in the wool, crossing
and recrossing them. And not once
does geometry cross her mind.
Outside she wanders aimlessly
behind the lawnmower,
rolls toward the middle of the lawn
then doubles back.

Click here to read the rest of the poem.

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Posted in Art, Literature, Poetry | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Kevin Bollaert, Creator of a “Revenge Porn” Website, Sentenced to 18 Years in Prison

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

images copy 6By Elaine Magliaro

Last Friday, Kamala D. Harris, California’s Attorney General, announced that Kevin Christopher Bollaert, “the operator of a cyber-exploitation website which posted nude photos of individuals with personal identifying information without their consent, was sentenced to 18 years in prison.” This is reportedly the first criminal prosecution of a cyber-exploitation website operator in this country.

Bollaert, a resident of San Diego, created and operated a “revenge porn” website called ugotposted.com, “which allowed the anonymous, public posting of private photographs containing nude and explicit images of individuals without their permission.” Personal information about the individuals was also posted along with the photographs.

According to the Associated Press, more than 10,000 images, mainly of women, were posted between December 2012 and September 2013. AP said that individuals “who sought to have the explicit images taken down were directed to changemyreputation.com and charged $250 to $350 to remove the racy content.”

Associated Press:

Victims included teachers, wives and professionals. The compromising photos cost people jobs, damaged relationships and led to one attempted suicide.

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Posted in Courts, Crime, Internet, Law Enforcement, Media, Short Video, United States, Weird Crime | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

San Francisco Police Officers To Be Dismissed for Sending Racist and Homophobic Text Messages

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

CA_-_San_Francisco_PoliceBy Elaine Magliaro

Timothy Williams (New York Times) reported on Friday that Greg Suhr, San Francisco’s police chief, said that “he had moved to dismiss seven officers who sent or received text messages that spoke of lynching African-Americans and burning crosses. Ruhr said that the texts, sent by the officers in 2011 and 2012, “are of such despicable thinking that those responsible clearly fall below the minimum standards required to be a police officer.”

Williams:

The messages — which included one that said, simply, “White Power,” as well as others with denigrating comments about homosexuals, Mexicans and Filipinos — were sent or received by as many as 14 officers in the department, the police said.

Williams said that officials had acknowledged that the texts had “shaken confidence in the Police Department, which is responsible for public safety in a city that has long prided itself on inclusiveness and open-mindedness, has a large gay and lesbian population, and is among the most racially diverse cities in the country.” He added that lawyers for the officers involved in sending the offensive texts said that they “did not represent their clients’ opinions and were little more than naïve banter meant to blow off steam in their high-stress jobs.”

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Posted in Equal Rights, Homosexual Rights, Justice, Law Enforcement, Local Government, Racism, Society, United States | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Frogs: God’s First Attempt At Making Humans

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Bob Stone

Carl Jung liked to think that frogs were God’s first attempt at making humans.  He once said  “The toads and the frogs are God’s first attempt to make man on the cold blooded level, and then he didn’t quite succeed. But he kept the idea, he kept the idea in mind, and made us later.”  In my own mythology, infallible as He is, God apparently got it right on the first try; evidenced by Him calling on his first creations in Exodus to help Moses free the Jews from Pharaoh.   After all, let’s face it; without the help of the frogs, Moses and the Jews didn’t have a chance.

On that note, here’s a lovely article from the Atlantic entitled “Frogs: The Surprising Star of the Passover Table”

“Over the past decade or so, I’ve noticed a fundamental shift in the thematic focus of the Passover Seder—the ritual meal that recalls the Jews’ journey from slavery to freedom. My childhood memories are of songs and symbols of liberation: a trail of matzah crumbs leading out of the wilderness, fresh green sprigs of parsley emerging from salty water like an enslaved people emerging from a sea of tears. The Seder also contains equally vivid recollections of the horrors of divine wrath (blood, boils, darkness, gefilte fish). But in the 21st century, one symbolic element has usurped the focus at countless American Seders I’ve attended: frogs.

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“CONSOLATION”: A Poem by Wislawa Szymborska

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

Posted by Elaine Magliaro

NationalPoetryMonthLogoFor the first Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month, I’m posting a poem by my favorite poet–Wislawa Szymborska.

Poet Wislawa Szymborska

Poet Wislawa Szymborska

CONSOLATION
By Wisława Szymborska
(Translated By Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak)

Darwin.
They say he read novels to relax,
But only certain kinds:
nothing that ended unhappily.
If anything like that turned up,
enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

True or not,
I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,
he’d had enough of dying species,
the triumphs of the strong over the weak,
the endless struggles to survive,
all doomed sooner or later.
He’d earned the right to happy endings,
at least in fiction
with its diminutions.

 

Click here to read the rest of the poem.

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Posted in Art, Literature, Poetry | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

NYPD Detective Who Verbally Abused Uber Driver Placed on Modified Assignment

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

NYPDLogoBy Elaine Magliaro

Patrick Cherry, a New York police detective assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force with top-secret security clearance, has reportedly been stripped of his badge and his gun and placed on modified assignment after verbally abusing an Uber driver on Monday. Officials said that Cherry “faces suspension, reassignment or loss of his clearance after an incident with an Uber driver” was captured on video.

The video was taken by Sanjay Seth, a passenger in the Uber car. Sanjay posted the video to YouTube—where it went viral. In the video, Detective Cherry can be heard shouting at the driver, using profane language, slamming the side of the car, and asking the driver how long he has been in this country.

Police Abuse of Uber Driver in New York City – March 30th, 2015

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Posted in Law Enforcement, Media, Short Video, United States | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Rotten to the Common Core?: On the Subject of Education Standards, Arne Duncan, “White Suburban Moms”…and Bad*ss Teachers

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro
Arne Duncan Secretary of Education

Arne Duncan
Secretary of Education

By Elaine Magliaro

After reading Mike Spindell’s column Fake Colleges and Lousy Student Loan Programs today, I thought I’d post an article about Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Common Core that I wrote back in November of 2013 for Res Ipsa Loquitor.

I wrote the article after I read reports about Arne Duncan’s apologizing for using “clumsy phrasing” when he made comments about some critics of the Common Core Standards—which he has championed. (Note: Common Core—a set of educational standards developed for public school students in kindergarten through twelfth grade—has been adopted by most of our states.) Duncan was speaking to a group of superintendents recently and just couldn’t help himself—it appears—when he said the following:

“It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary. You’ve bet your house and where you live and everything on, ‘My child’s going to be prepared.’ That can be a punch in the gut.”

A punch in the gut, you say? Here’s one right back at ya, Arne. Lots of people aren’t ecstatic about the “common core” effort to standardize curricula across this country and to institutionalize a “one-size-fits-all” cookie cutter approach to educating our children. It isn’t just “white suburban moms” who aren’t happy with the Common Core standards. There are myriad others who are also concerned about the them—including other parents who don’t belong to the cohort of “white suburban moms,” school administrators, teachers, other education experts, child development experts—as well as a number of liberals AND conservatives.

As DSWright (Firedoglake) wrote, Duncan exhibited “the kind of condescending attitude one expects from education privatizers. But when confronted with such an amazingly arrogant statement Secretary Duncan only apologized for the ‘clumsy’ phrasing, not the sentiment.”

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Posted in Barack Obama, Education, Government, Politics, Propaganda, Society, United States | Tagged , | Comments Off on Rotten to the Common Core?: On the Subject of Education Standards, Arne Duncan, “White Suburban Moms”…and Bad*ss Teachers

Regarding the State of Indiana, Mike Pence, Planned Parenthood, and an Exploding HIV Outbreak

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

Indiana-StateSeal.svgBy Elaine Magliaro

Last week, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana “declared a public health emergency in Scott County, Indiana…after 79 people tested positive for HIV linked to intravenous drug use.” Today, Laura Bassett (Huffington Post) said that Scott County has become “the center of an exploding HIV outbreak.” Unfortunately, the county has “been without an HIV testing center since early 2013, when the sole provider — a Planned Parenthood clinic — was forced to close its doors.” Bassett noted that the clinic did not offer abortion services.

Mike Pence (R) Governor of Indiana

Mike Pence (R)
Governor of Indiana

Bassett:

The Scott County clinic and four other Planned Parenthood facilities in the state, all of which provided HIV testing and information, have shuttered since 2011, in large part due to funding cuts to the state’s public health infrastructure. Those cuts came amid a national and local political campaign to demonize the health care provider. Now, the state is scrambling to erect pop-up clinics to combat an unprecedented HIV epidemic caused by intravenous drug use.

The fact that Scott County was “without a testing facility until a few weeks ago is a glaring example of the kind of public health crisis that results when prevention and testing are left unfunded,” said Patti Stauffer, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky’s vice president for public policy.

Bassett said that the GOP-led state legislature in Indiana “was one of the first to declare war against Planned Parenthood in 2011, when it passed a bill that defunded the family planning provider because some of its clinics offer abortion services.” She added that a “federal judge later blocked that law from going into effect.” The state, nonetheless, “continued to slash various sources of funding to Planned Parenthood at a time when the cost of operating a medical facility continues to rise.”

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Posted in Conservatives, Equal Rights, Government, Health Care, Political Science, Politics, Religion, Reproductive Rights, States, United States | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments

In His Book “American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity,” Author Christian Appy Looks at the Myth of American Exceptionalism

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

AmericanReckoningBy Elaine Magliaro

Over at Salon, there’s an excerpt from Christian G. Appy’s new book American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity, which was published by Viking in February. Appy is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of two previous books on the Vietnam War. Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides was a main selection of BOMC and won the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction.

Christian G. Appy

Christian G. Appy

In his new book, Appy posits that the myth of American exceptionalism is a lie—and that our country has not been a force for good. Appy believes that “only an honest accounting of our actual history will allow us to chart a new path.”

Excerpt:

My main argument is that the Vietnam War shattered the central tenet of American national identity—the broad faith that the United States is a unique force for good in the world, superior not only in its military and economic power, but in the quality of its government and institutions, the character and morality of its people, and its way of life. A common term for this belief is “American exceptionalism.” Because that term has been bandied about so much in recent years as a political slogan and a litmus test of patriotism, we need to be reminded that it has deep roots and meaning throughout our history. In many ways the nation was founded on the faith that it was blessed with unrivaled resources, freedoms, and prospects. So deep were those convictions they took on the power of myth—they were beyond debate. Dissenting movements throughout our history did little to challenge the faith.

That’s what made the Vietnam War’s impact so significant. Never before had such a wide range of Americans come to doubt their nation’s superiority; never before had so many questioned its use of military force; never before had so many challenged the assumption that their country had higher moral standards…

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Posted in American History, Countries, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Government, Government Propaganda, Imperialism, Literature, Political Science, Politics, Propaganda, United States, US Military, Vietnam, War, World History | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

New York City Mayor de Blasio Says Someone May Have Improperly Tapped a Gas Line Before Building Explosion

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Elaine Magliaro

NYCExplosionFireBy Elaine Magliaro

New York City officials reportedly “suspect that leaking natural gas was the source of Thursday’s explosion and fire, which sparked a raging blaze that took hundreds of firefighters to quell.” Last Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that someone “may have improperly tapped a gas line before an explosion that leveled three apartment buildings and injured nearly two dozen people…as firefighters soaked the still-smoldering buildings and police searched for at least two missing people.”

Mayor: Gas-Related Blast Causes Fire, Collapse (AP, 3/26/15)

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Posted in Crime, Local Government, United States | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment