Midlife Meditation

LaVoy Finicum addresses the press at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.  Note the pistol on prominent display. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." --Matthew 26:52 It's not over. Not nearly. There are still four insurgents occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, begging on YouTube for backup, demanding full pardons before they will lay down their weapons and surrender to the authorities. Meanwhile, a right-wing organization called the Pacific Patriots Network has issued a "call to action" for militants to "peacefully" travel to Burns to protest the shooting of LaVoy Finicum following his attempt to evade a traffic stop. So even with the occupation's ringleaders in custody, this is not over. There's no way of knowing whether the militant right wing community retains any enthusiasm for Ammon Bundy's nutty cause, and if anyone at all will respond to ...

I've got students who are like this guy--though he wears a much cooler hat than they do. All right, Ammon, you had your turn to say whatever the hell it was you wanted to say. I realize it makes sense to you and some tiny fraction of the rest of the country. Now can we please get back to what we were doing before you grabbed the spotlight? Two or three times a week, I have to tell a student something very much like what you just read. For reasons too complicated for me, their classroom teachers, their parents, the administrators responsible for discipline at our school, or any of their classmates, these individuals feel the need to make music class be all about them. They talk loudly, bang on drums (it's music class), abuse instruments, roam around the gym shouting (yes, due to a stuffed-to-overflowing school building, I teach grades 3-5 in the gym), are utterly unafraid of me calling an administrator to come and get them, care not a bit about the referrals I'm suppo...

First things first: it bugs me, too. The meme comes by way of "Brave New Films," and features this image: Violating a court order, Mary Ann Grady Flores continued to protest drone warfare at an Air Force Base in upstate New York. She was arrested and jailed, sentenced (over the objections of the prosecutor) to a year in prison, but as far as I can tell from a cursory Google search, is still out on bond while her case is being appealed. While most peaceful protesters are tolerated by authorities, it is not uncommon for them to spend time in jail. Jail time is, in fact, a key part of civil disobedience strategy, as it highlights the irony of a government that has to protect its enormous firepower from sign-waving grandmothers. And yes, there's no denying that the gun-loving, government-hating right wingers occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge post a far greater threat to government officials, ordinary citizens, and themselves than do any pacifists who have ever...

Ground zero. First things first: I get the outrage. No, I'm not talking about anything being said by any member of the Bundy family, whether it involves claiming they have a right to graze their damn cattle anywhere they damn well feel like it, for free; or the notion that occupying a publicly-owned wildlife refuge is somehow a patriotic defense of the Constitution. Any outrage expressed by either Cliven Bundy or his son Ammon is hypocritical nonsense that ought not be given even a tiny fraction of the air time it's receiving. How could anyone seriously believe such things? (Though, in light of the rabidness of first the Tea Party movement and, more recently, Donald Trump's followers, it's clear there's a significant minority of Americans who do.) The outrage I understand is that of the progressive voices I see everywhere I look on the social media I peruse, voices angrily comparing nationwide violence by police against persons of color with the measu...