.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The original, outdated Bristol County jail was built in 1829 as a very up-to-date addition to the then existing part of the jail built when John Quincy Adams was president and was then totally replaced in 1888 because it eventually lost that title. The newer building was added on to when Grover Cleveland was president, and in 1920, when Woodrow Wilson was president, the jail got a dining hall, so inmates no longer had to eat standing up in the yard.

As it is used by the Bristol County Sheriff’s department to house inmates with proximate court dates, it is the oldest continuously running jail in the United States.

Lizzie Borden was held there in 1893 during her trial and acquittal, and, because she was important, the door to the cell she occupied is now among the collection at the Old Dartmouth Historic Society, the mother organization of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Certain changes were made to upgrade the jail as time went on with the introduction of indoor plumbing, implementing the 1983 court order to add toilets in some cells finally in 1984, and ending public hangings, but the building is old and shows its age.

In recent years, the Ash Street Jail has been getting a lot of attention as concerned citizens have been calling for closing the outdated jail.

Before the recent calls began, in 1937, former FBI agent and Bristol County Sheriff Patrick H. Dupuis called the jail “antiquated and a menace” to the welfare of inmates and wanted it replaced. The most recent former sheriff’s predecessor had included the closing of the Ash Street Jail in planning for the new Bristol County House of Corrections campus in Dartmouth completed some thirty years ago. After moving on to the state legislature, he was replaced by a political appointment who spent his many years as sheriff profiting from the position financially and politically and wishing in the worst way, as Pinocchio did to be a real boy, to be a Western style sheriff in a place that had no use for that type of figure.

As part of his tough guy image the new sheriff then incorporated his overt racism and anti-immigrant animus in his outdated, old-school ways of tough guy law enforcement ignoring the facts that supported the closing, choosing instead to label those members of the Bristol County community who gave reasons to support the closure as unpatriotic, anti-law enforcement, pro-criminal, Socialist, outlaw sympathizers who were out to get him for his political beliefs making their complaints personal and political. In spite of the 1937 proposal of Sheriff Dupuis, the most recent former sheriff also dismissed calls for closure as some new, radical, anti-whatever-the-sheriff-believes-in movement, stamped his feet and held firm.

This was the same sheriff who, after an investigation by office of the state’s Attorney General determined the sheriff and his policies and practices had violated the civil and human rights of inmates while making recommendations for remedying the situation, at a press conference he called when  the report was released demanded  to know who the Attorney General, his boss, thought she was  to tell him what he needed to do.

She is now the governor.

The original determination for disclosure was made over 85 years ago. It was not new, radical, or a personal attack on the then sheriff.

Having read the room wrong, he was ousted by the people of Bristol County he thought were in the minority but who voted in the majority for the person who ran against him.

Unlike the previous sheriff who dug in his heels, pouted, and refused to even give the impression he would look into things even as he had no actual intention to, the new sheriff has decided to at least look into whether or not it would be the right thing to do in closing the jail. The possibility is there that closure would save on the cost of utilities and upkeep while exposing the inmates held there to needed programs only available now at the Dartmouth campus, and consolidating resources.

The two options to accommodate the closing would be reconfiguring the now closed ICE detention center which would actually be too cramped for the 100 or so inmates that would be housed there as opposed Ash Street, or killing two birds with one stone by modifying the unused 9,600-square-foot gymnasium that would cost less than redoing the ICE building for 100 inmates, and with a high gym ceiling would accommodate two levels of cells, while the ICE detention center could be refitted as the House of Correction’s training academy eliminating the cost of having personnel trained in a rented facility, saving $144,000 per year.

Of course, in spite of good intentions, besides the possibility that a feasibility study may come to a different conclusion than the one expected, there is still the chance the state will decide to maintain the status quo and leave things as is.

It could take up to six months to arrange the funding of the study at the State House if legislators accept the idea and another 12 months to perform the study with the overall project being completed within the next five years.

Rather than the stomping of a foot and a toddler’s, “no I don’t want to”, seeing a study of the issue is in no way a political or personal attack, the new sheriff is at least open to looking in to closure and determining the feasibility of it without getting defensive and protecting the jail because despots, even county ones, hate to lose any part of the territory they rule.

Unless there is an election, that is.

The old guy could have done this with no intention of following through and look good enough to keep.

The new sheriff made a campaign promise and seems to be carrying through on it.

Even if he were faking it, it does give a good impression.

The people were right.

.

.

.

.

.

.In case you want to remember why or compare.

Fifty years ago, this very day, I stood with my family at Logan Airport in Boston prepared to board my flight to California where, after finishing my college course work a semester early by taking summer and evening classes as well as my daytime ones, I had a permanent substitute teaching position in Richmond that I had arranged in lieu of the final semester student teaching period assignment as I would not have that semester.

I had gone through a Catholic elementary school with the old style nuns, went on to a junior seminary, novitiate, and two years of Philosophate (major seminary with an attached accredited college where Philosophy was the major) all of which were heavy on judgment, and, knowing that student teaching involved constant and minute judgements, I chose the permanent sub route where judgment may be constant, but you are left on your own unless you really screwed up. Less overt judgment.

The school was a private Catholic school run by an order of priests and brothers with whom I was very familiar having attempted to join the order but found it was not for me.

Richmond is across the Bay from San Francisco, but in those days I had yet to connect the dots and San Francisco was a place of tourism and wonderment, not a place for the partying I could have gotten involved in without the knowledge that came a decade later about AIDS. Being there when I had just recently rejoined the world after the seminary and, although having a vibrant social life during the period between leaving the seminary and this point, my time was taken up with college, a job in a liquor store, trying to learn what life was like on the outside, and learning who I was beyond all previous expectations of mine and others that had brought me to this point while experiencing teaching in a classroom for the first time.

Although I assumed I would follow the norm, i.e. job, marriage, house, kids, etc, and assumed my thoughts regarding sex were the same as any other male, I was unconsciously dealing with the acceptance of my true self and realizing that some of what comprised my assumption that my thoughts were the same for all males that would have me find the right woman, were actually the unrecognized signs this was not meant to be as those thoughts were not universal but were indicative.

For me, the City by the Bay was tourist attractions on Saturday. I saw them all and then some as my location made me not a tourist. 

I was a working tourist and saw much of the Northern part of the state as well as the Southern.

During the Dust Bowl, many Oklahomans who went west ended up in Richmond in their own enclave like any group of people migrating to a new place in large numbers, so my first classes of my career included a number of descendants of those people who still harbored the assumption that they would eventually go back. Many of my students were the children of the little “Okies” that had come to the Bay Area with their parents. They only knew the stories.

Thirty-eight years later my teaching career came to a close in Oklahoma, ironically after that initial need for self discovery, living on my own a continent away from family and friends that began with Okies at the beginning of my career and me not knowing who I was yet learning, and me leaving the profession sure as hell knowing who I was.

Book-ending by coincidence as, what happened between, was often a matter of rolling with the punches, especially those self-administered by conscious and unconscious decisions, actively or passively brought about.

I have to admit, in all honesty, I committed every mistake a first year teacher makes that semester, and in retrospect after years of teaching, as I recognized then, I had made them all and got them out of the way for the most part.

That position led to ones in New York, Massachusetts, a second and better California experience in Los Angeles, and the final act in Oklahoma.

I got to institute educational programs for my students, advocated for my students and fellow teachers as a union officer in each town, city,  and state in which I taught, advocated for the ignored and demeaned Gay students, became the official cartoonist of the Los Angeles teacher’s union for which I won a national award, and educated a train load of kids.

It was not always easy as the nature of school board elections introduces the possibility of educational abuse begun by those who, while not in the classroom, saw themselves as experts in what happens in one.

When allowed, most often after a battle with the adherents of the educational status quo I got to start that sheltered workshop as part of my Special Education classes in one town, began using video with my Special Education students in Los Angeles that became a city-wide program, and successfully advocated for all the letters of the Rainbow Alphabet in another, the one where “Okies” saw and had to deal with the finished product.

In the career started 50 years ago, I got to be an Assistant Band Director marching in two St Patrick Day Parades in NYC, was the Illustrator of college text on American diplomacy, the creator of a Special Education Sheltered Workshop, the first Emcee on Quiz Kids on the Boston Public School Cable TV channel, helped begin the Video in the Classroom Program for the L.A. Unified School District and, along with my students was the subject of a Case Study presented to the California legislature concerning use of video for Educational purposes, an original staff member and founding faculty member of College Academy, Framingham State College, Instituted the videotaped morning announcements at Taft Middle School in Oklahoma City, Assisted in designing an environmental curriculum for OK Dept. of Environmental Quality, and successfully advocated for inclusion of every student in the Rainbow Alphabet before retiring.

In my career I met many people in many parts of the country, not because of design, but by accident and that rolling with the punches thing.

I got to direct a church choir, be the emcee of annual community fundraisers, had a run as President of a town’s teachers’ union, was on the board of the teachers union in Oklahoma City, and in Los Angeles was chair of the Union’s subcommittee on Gay and Lesbian Issues when it became a full standing-committee and was among the few teachers who, as members of that committee, walked in the Pride Parade that year as a group for the first time with the support, both moral and financial, of the union.

I got to be a member of the OKC Gay Community band which performed at Clinton’s 2nd inauguration, was on the committee of Cimarron Alliance Group in Oklahoma that helped get a more liberal governor elected, served time on the OKC Gay Pride Committee, was a founding member of the Oklahoma Stonewall Democrats, and winner of the Irene Tyson Memorial Award for public service and the Cimarron Community Service Award. Eventually I was awarded the ACLU’s Angie Debo award for my work on behalf of the Gay students.

My teaching positions allowed me to be a member of the Gay Men’s Choruses in Boston, Los Angeles, and Long Beach CA, the last two being instrumental in my having comfortable, though not deep, friendships with political and entertainment celebrities.

I got to march and rally for multiple causes directly or indirectly connected to education and the rights of workers and students.

And throughout I did my best for my students.

Most of what happened during my career, and even now in the years since retirement that brings the total time span to fifty years, was not something that happened necessarily because it was planned.

Quite the opposite.

Never got the house. Had one once for a short time and discovered I was a horrible homeowner.

Never met the woman to marry and with whom to have children like most of the peers I thought I was just like. That turned out not to be me and the State would not allow for my getting married as myself.

Met more people than I would have ever imagined meeting and had close associations and friendships with many as opposed the few I would have gotten to meet and know if things had gone according to the general script.

And the career ended with me sliding to the base and not taking the walk.

So thanks to anyone I taught, knew, worked with, lived with, attempted a relationship with, was an activist with, sat on the bar stool next to me, marched in a parade, sang in a chorus, helped hold a huge banner, and took their lumps along with way with me or like me, and to all the people I  befriended from the highest celebrity to the homeless men I discussed philosophy with at the Beach in Southern California sharing their wine about which I asked no questions.

This would include those people and places that entered my life 50 years ago, shaped me during the following years, and now have to look upon what their influence has wrought.

Little ones, do not get discouraged that things may not be going according to plan. See what you can make of what happens as you go and control that narrative as long as you can knowing you have the strength and ability to move on to the next adventure. Like any party, a pity one has to end and the clean up begin.

It was a great time, teaching and after.

Wouldn’t change it for the world.

.

.

.

.

.

.

We are still in January and close to 70 people have been shot dead in mass shootings already in 2023.

If this continues as an average per month, adjusted as there are a few more days this month, by New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2023, we will have lost over 840 people heading toward 1,000.

How many more cold, dead hands?

I had been to the Science Museum in Oklahoma City a number of times both as a teacher chaperoning field trips and on my own. It might be a bit of coastal snobbery, but I found the planetarium a little inadequate. It was like any other planetarium except much smaller, both the projector and the dome itself. Although it was a state thing, the city that housed it was pre-rebirth at the time and, since apparently at the time, few people travelled and few of those that did would go to a planetarium elsewhere, if they saw this one would think it was like all of them.

My snobbery was based on big city planetariums, like Boston, NYC, and L.A., and this one just seemed to give up the wow-factor and settle on the meh one.

I was, therefore, happy to read that the museum will be getting a bigger better planetarium.

As the city and, by extension, the state has energetically moved itself forward, the attention to improving people’s science knowledge was evident in this and quite a change from the time I lived there.

And then, like the Biden docs putting some water on the Trump dumpster fire and letting some air out of the joy balloon, that happy moment was followed by one that pulled the state back to the days it had been leaving behind.

State Representative Kevin West has filed House Bill 2186, to be heard February 6, that would make it “unlawful for a person to engage in an adult cabaret performance” in public before a minor with a fine of $500 to $20,000 and a possible 30 day behind bars.

His explanation for the bill makes it clear it is a targeted bill.

“But if you have a private venue and parents want to take their children there, then that would not be affected by this bill. It wouldn’t be allowed where just the general public would be able to see the performance. So like a library or a school or something like that would fall into being under the jurisdiction of this bill.”

Many parents bring their children with them to Pride Festivals and many festivals include “Family Friendly” spaces and activities.

The one in Oklahoma City brings in lots of tax dollars and may very well still be the biggest parade/festival in the city that took its time realizing that, and the state now includes it in Board of Tourism’s catalog of things to do when visiting the state. The festival takes place in the open, so the area is public and anyone can enter the crowd outside the fenced in ticket-holder space to watch any show.

The same holds true for the Tulsa Festival and those in smaller towns where closet doors are being removed from their hinges.

Would this violate the law, and either be the excuse to deny a festival and or parade permit or control its content by banning the inclusion of Drag Queens in any outside entertainment, or for waiting until they have performed and then, because they broke the law, arresting each Drag Queens after they leave the stage, producing pictures in color that mirror the black and white ones that we have seen of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion?

Along with his bill specifically naming Drag Queen story hours as events that would be considered unlawful, it would also create a misdemeanor for anyone who organizes or authorizes such performances with fines of $500 to $1,000 and a maximum one year in county jail. 

One’s right to assemble would be under attack.

Although Drag Queens put on clothes to perform, along with wigs, padding, jewelry, make-up, and all manner of items called for to complete the illusion, and basically have to remain dressed to sustain it, West’s bill compares Drag Performers to strippers and topless dancers where clothes removal is essential and silent body gyrations are for the Representative somehow the same as lip-synching a Diva.

Although not meant to be but could be taken as insulting on certain levels, the comparison is more toward clowns and mimes which involve dressing up not down and do not imply the unacceptable.

In my time in Oklahoma City, I got to know many Drag Queens. These were, for the most part, professional performers who might get raunchy at a show inside a club where minors cannot enter but tone it down when performing in more public spaces. Yes, there are always exceptions or clueless people in any group, just look at Republicans and the clergy of any religion, denomination, or sect, but these do not define the group. They stand out from it.

Like so many such bills written by a person of one group to criminalize members of another, purposely defining that group according the definition’s usefulness to that end and ignoring reality, West’s bill defines a Drag Queen as a “male or female performer who adopts a flamboyant or parodic feminine persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup.”

You know, like that child groomer Minnie Pearl.

So, any female entertainers of Oklahoma, regardless of venue or genre. check your dress and mannerisms so neither being a flamboyant persona and/or glamorously dressed, could get you arrested, fined, and jailed.

West objects to the characterization  that his bill is an attempt to ban Drag shows because,

“clearly nothing in the bill says that those are being banned. It’s just making sure that they’re done in the location where it’s intended.”

Wouldn’t that include Drag Queen Story Hour because having a Drag Queen read a book to children like police, firefighters, clowns, and clergy among others do, in a public library is what is intended?

Continuing without giving real examples of harm done or what Drag Queen story hours really are, he attempts a subliminal picture by pointing out,

“I think that it really just comes to some of those boundaries. We have a lot of laws on the books that prohibit certain activities in public spaces and with everything that we’ve been seeing for the last few years on this subject, I think that’s why you’re seeing a lot of bills like this.”

Other than the conservative right’s performative outrage, what has anyone actually seen?

Usually the view is of a room full of children with parents listening to what appears to be a well-dressed and perfectly coiffed woman reading a book to kids who are listening.

I say “usually” because there has been an increase in neo-nazis and the like entering the room and yelling derogatory things at the reader while children are in the room.

West’s bill follows the lead of Arizona, Texas, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, Missouri, Tennessee, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia.

But following is not new to Oklahoma.

In spite of no problems in sports, bathrooms, and other places divided by gender that had been predicted, during the 12 years that Gender Identity was included as protected in the school district’s policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination, when states like the above mentioned were falling over each other to be the first to pass anti-Trans laws based on ignorance, chosen or otherwise, not wanting to be left out, the state legislature ignored the reality of its own  capitol city and went with the other states and removed those students from the policies.

But lest you think this is just a local, red state, delusional approach to a non-issue, last October, Republicans in the US House introduced a bill to “Stop the Sexualization of Children,” targeting drag queen story hours as “sexually-oriented events” based, obviously on the trope that Gay (that would include all the letters) and sex are the same because that is how they, not the Gays define it.

The bill would allow (encourage) parents to sue public libraries for “sexually explicit materials or programs.”

Again, as defined by them.

The Gays and Lesbians have shown they are not now nor were ever what they had been portrayed as.

Having lost the traditionally accepted targets of bigotry and their use as a scare tactic, Jews, Irish, Italians, Blacks, etc., losing the Gays too meant a rush to fill that gap, and so, in spite of having been here and having been abundantly visible through such things as RuPaul’s Drag Race, the attempt is being made to demonize what is more familiar to people than the right has chosen to believe, Drag Queens.

In every school, every day, every student in Oklahoma recites the Pledge of Allegiance based on the expressed belief that it has meaning and is not just a rote exercise for looks.

But it will seem just that if the state decides that not everyone gets to share in the “Liberty and Justice for all”.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Unless you live in a large city, homeless people are usually only seen during the daytime and few are aware of any encampments in the area as, wanting to be left undisturbed in what they have to call a home, such encampments are where people just do not generally go- the far fringe of a local airport, a small stand of trees near an industrial park.

In places like Los Angeles, although there are some isolated places where the homeless might set up an encampment, so many people go West for the good weather that there are very few such places and this forces encampments to grow on the streets of the concrete jungle usually in areas with the least traffic than the rest of the city.

They are on the streets of Los Angeles because that is all that is there, streets.

As with icebergs, there are more homeless people than most people know because they only see what can be seen. The assumption of what a homeless person is supposed to look like has the general population noting those on the low end of the downward spiral while not seeing those, like children, who do not fit the stereotype.

Why are those children hanging around that homeless guy?

While there are solutions, these cost money, even if only an initial outlay, and take time, so the go-to solution to homelessness is architecture that prevents the homeless from lying down in certain areas because of the placement of spikey things where a person could lie down, or constructing obstacles to make panhandling difficult by making smooth surfaces impossible to stand on, with the most popular approach being the annual clearing out of the homeless encampments that people see for the first time and realize they never noticed them even though they were right there when a picture of the sport of Homeless Encampment Clearing is printed in the media or videos show up on television news broadcasts.

Where the homeless end up going is of no concern. That they have to go somewhere else and become someone else’s “problem” is enough to claim the homeless situation has been addresses.

In a city like the one in which I live, sprinkled with closed factories from its heyday of manufacturing, any available old factory building gets converted into high end loft apartments and condos for those with no problem finding housing. Yet, in spite of all its claims to be a renaissance city, what with all the new money moving into the homes others had to leave and perhaps become the homeless, and touts all the great new construction and city renewal, and in spite of investing money in the city improvements not for the people already here but those they want to attract once they get the Great Unwashed out by purchasing real estate, the city could take the time and funds to take one of these empty factories and convert it into places for people presently homeless as, besides a place to call home, a person needs an address to get a job, and that might be all that is keeping a person unemployed and homeless.

Some cities have taken empty lots and constructed little houses for the homeless with strict residency requirements among which are usually the requirement to attend counseling sessions, show up for medical appointments, and looking for work if able bodied, all with the goal of re-establishing oneself to move on and back to the housed.

 These lots have little houses as plain or as fancy as they need to be to match the ambience of an area. Converting a factory makes fitting in automatic as, presently, the big factories, as high-end condos or abandoned, all look the same- long, three-story buildings, with huge windows, plenty of open space around the building, and a useless smoke stack from the past. Unless a sign indicated it was housing for the homeless, such a place would be as much a blight on the neighborhood as the expensive apartments and condos would be.

But that takes time and money.

We used to care about the homeless or, at least, put up a good front. Our tax dollars were used so that we, without having to lift a finger, were helping those less fortunate.

That changed when during a speech in 1981 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Ronald Reagan told religious leaders that if they each took care of 10 needy families and the homeless, the problem would eventually work itself out. Subsequently, HUD had its funding cut by 60% and this eliminated programs that subsidized housing or supplied housing vouchers which, along with the closing of federal institutions dealing with the mentally ill, forced many people out into the street.

Now the homeless are just eyesores

During the recall attempt of California Governor Gary Newsom, one of the candidates, John Cox, said he would step up enforcement against people living on the streets.

“If someone is just insisting that they can live on the street, they either have to be arrested and put in jail or they have to be arrested and put into a place where they can get the treatment they need. If they don’t want either of those, they can certainly leave California.”

The assumption being that all homeless people have a drug addiction or mental illness, ignoring those who, like the rest of us could have and still might, became homeless when living paycheck to paycheck failed.

I and the tenants in 23 other apartments faced homelessness because of gentrification and, with many living paycheck to paycheck, this could have rendered some homeless as seemed certain with some of the tenants.

Last spring, Tennessee State Senator Frank Niceley educated his Chamber on history.

“In 1910, Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while. So, for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with the masses, and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books​. So [for] a lot of these people, it​’​s not a dead end. They can come out of these homeless camps and have a productive life, or in Hitler’s case, a very unproductive life.”

I understand the intention, but question why Hitler and not some American Dream, up by the boot straps figure, unless the intention was to subliminally turn people against the homeless on any level it is necessary to equate them to a known evil to make the state’s job easier.

The usual, “Oh, they can give money to the homeless, but what about my insulin?”

Gays to pedophilia sort of thing.

As a Gay man, I am all too familiar with the tactic of making the claim that if something is, by another’s definition, a life style choice, it can be easily condemned as superficial and optional, and this allows for the denial of rights, goods, and services.

With the homeless, this excuses anyone who, while in a position to address the problem effectively from actually doing what needs to be done, things that take time, energy, and funds, conveniently blaming the homeless for their condition and all it would take is the “love of a good woman” to make the change.

And, although he may want to inspire the homeless to “come out of these homeless camps and have a productive life”, he never gives even a hint at how this could be done and who would be best to help.

In Hitler’s case, maybe some guidance would have helped.

Another politician explained that being homeless, although a poor one, was a lifestyle choice and, finding it convenient, many choose this lifestyle, so, why should the rest of us worry?

After visiting California in the summer of 2019, Trump disparaged the homeless population of San Francisco in an interview, and his EPA accused the city, where many of us have left our hearts, of violating the Clean Water Act because the city’s homeless people were contaminating the water supply with raw sewage.

Trump was mad at Pelosi and used the homeless as a tool without doing anything to correct the problem.

And, if you can’t get people to hate the homeless directly because they are just there or, as in Caitlyn Jenner’s case, ruin the scenic drive to the airport where she keeps her private plane, better to get people to feel a threat from their presence and one’s own need to, like Christ, feed the hungry and give a widow a mite.

However, in some places the widow might get her coin but at the giver’s legal expense.

Republican Charlotte, North Carolina Councilman, Tariq Bokhari, said that people who are bringing food and clothing to homeless shelters are “only making themselves feel good,” and suggested that “perhaps we explore making that a misdemeanor” that way as his city looks for solutions, people can just go hungry even though as a temporary form of assistance people get Christ-like. He wants the best medical care and will forgo the first-aid until it arrives.

“People aren’t getting it, and they’re still bringing food and clothing and resources directly to folks that are out there right now. They’re only making themselves feel good.”

Presently, his city’s leaders are creating a plan to end homelessness and expand affordable housing that will take five years to get up and running. In the meantime, there will either be increased appearances in court or very hungry homeless people.

In Massachusetts, already an expensive state, as in many other places, the dream of making their cities Class-A ones because of the money that translates into has many city leaders allowing the uprooting of people presently living in their cities and who, regardless how low it might have fallen, stayed and supported the city until it was ripe for their removal and replacement for monetary gain limited to a select few, and that means no homeless as they ruin the real estate pictures.

Just across the border in Rhode Island an encampment was bulldozed after its residents, having been told by authorities to choose what is most precious to them among their possessions and leave the rest, were removed to a charitable facility.

The thing is, when you basically have nothing, anything you have is precious. It’s like when you move or lose a loved one. As you go through what to keep and discard, the value of things takes on a new meaning.

I was present in court when a homeless man was called to the bench for having a shopping cart which in that state was a crime although he had found it abandoned in a ditch. He objected to having to give it up as it was his mobile home. In the end he lost the cart but got to keep his filled trash bags he would now either have to carry around or go through and give things up. All for an abandoned and rusty shopping cart violation.

The ruling was made, the cart taken, and the man was walked out of the building and back onto the streets.

In Rhode Island, the day after this encampments was removed, additional encampments were bulldozed with the people who refused to move somewhere else still in residency.

What should be disturbing is not the presence of these encampments, but the number of them and who the residents are.

And rather than tear them down, creative ideas need to be presented for preventing their need in the first place.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Peaking with the election of Donald Trump and the undying support of Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan, the tradition in the Republican party to point out the splinter in the eyes of others while ignoring the beam in their own has passed through former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, Tim Nolan, chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in Kentucky, state Senator Ralph Shortey, anti-abortion activists Nicholas Morency, John Allen Burt, and Howard Scott Heldreth, County Commissioner David Swartz, judge Mark Pazuhanich, Mayor Philip Giordano, campaign consultant Tom Shortridge, Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, pastor Mike Hintz, legislator Peter Dibble, Congressman Donald “Buz” Lukens, fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio, activists Mark A. Grethen, Marty Glickman, Parker J. Bena, John Allen Burt, John Butler, and Randal David Ankeney, Congressman Dan Crane, activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell, Congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman, Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti, legislative aide Howard L. Brooks, Senate candidate John Hathaway, preacher Stephen White, talk show host Jon Matthews, anti-gay activist Earl “Butch” Kimmerling, party leader Paul Ingram, election board official Kevin Coan, politicians Andrew Buhr, Keith Westmoreland, County Councilman Keola Childs, candidate Richard Gardner, Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner, County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter, City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr., parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall, city councilman Mark Harris, businessman and former Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Jon Grunseth, director of the “Young Republican Federation” Nicholas Elizondo, benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., and now Brett Kavanaugh, now in a bit of a pickle because of a documentary that exposes much of what the FBI failed to uncover because of the pressure not to properly vet him.

So, although I would hope the eagerness to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop because of all the legal and national security concerns, however, hearing there may be dick picks and based on the GOP track record, this was only a partial list, there may be other reasons its contents are such a target of GOP curiosity.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Sixty school districts throughout the United States have been involved in a pilot program for an Advanced Placement class, African American Studies, designed by the College Board as a college level class for high school AP students with college credit given if the students do well in the course and on the final exam.

It is not a form of “special treatment” of a particular segment of the population as similar courses are offered in other cultural areas like Asian Studies and European History.

In spite of the success of the course, while having no problem with other cultures, in Florida, the Critical Race Theory obsessed state, this course has been found to lack

“educational value and is contrary to Florida law.”

It can only be instituted or even considered there once its content

“comes into compliance and incorporates historically accurate content.”

“Historically accurate” according to what measure established by whom?

DeSantis’s deputy press-secretary seconded this sentiment.

The Advance Placement Program of the College Board has countered explaining,

“The AP Program is committed to developing AP African American Studies and has already engaged faculty from hundreds of colleges and universities to ensure the course reflects the academic rigor of introductory college courses within the discipline.”

Forget pilot programs and revamping the class to be historically accurate, Florida has decided that the course must be Florida Accurate.

Watch out Zora Neal Hurston, you work among the African Americans in Florida in your time is obviously fiction.

The program, like other AP programs, has undergone

“ a two to six-year development process before they are implemented in the classroom.”

Last year, DeSantis signed the S.T.O.P. Woke Act  saying,

“This legislation is the first of its kind in the nation to take on corporate wokeness and Critical Race Theory in schools in one act.”

While his fans cheered, he did not define what he means by “wokeness” and neither does the Act. You cannot base a law on something so generic. It would be like passing a law prohibiting the doing of bad things without definition and, therefore, would be open to interpretation and personal bias.

And, as in the WOKE act, what the state Department of Education in Florida has failed to do is explain what it means by, or supplying any examples of, the “Lack of educational value”, and, without definition or listed parameters, somehow thinks African American Studies violates state law which, in a way, it does since the law is so open-ended, anything could violate that law.

A sign that this is more performative than necessary, useful, or well though out, is DeSantis’s claim, while assuming a leadership position which so far, without other states following, makes it the height of self-aggrandizement, that he is the first of anything when, in reality, he is, so far, the only.

The implication is clear. DeSantis wants the people of this country to believe he and his state are not alone, but a leader ahead of the pack which does not seem to be gelling all that much.

First, he came for the Gays.

Now he has come for the African Americans.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.