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"... and the college provides training for faculty and staff, as well as other assistance — all free of charge. By offering these services, Hillsdale seems to be trying to thread a needle — creating a vast K-12 network that embraces its pedagogy and conservative philosophy, in many cases taught by its graduates, while tapping into government money to run the schools.... While many educators applaud the phonics and rigor, they question the infusion of conservative politics into the curriculum, particularly in history. Hillsdale's 1776 Curriculum... appears to be partly an outgrowth of President Donald J. Trump's 1776 Commission.... Sean Wilentz, a professor at Princeton who was one of the chief critics of The Times's 1619 Project, also criticized the 1776 Curriculum, calling it overly positive. 'It talks about the enormity of slavery, but in almost every case, everything that's bad about America will be undone by what is good,' Dr. Wilentz said. 'Almost, literally, that American ideals will overcome whatever evils may be there.' Hillsdale's history curriculum also appears to take on the modern liberal state. A school curriculum guide posted in one school's charter lists the book 'New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America.'...."

From "A College Fights 'Leftist Academics' by Expanding Into Charter Schools/Hillsdale College is building a national charter school network. Tennessee invited the college to start 50 of them, using public funds" (NYT).

Why shouldn't parents have the choice to place their children in either a 1619 or a 1776 school? Is one more truly history than the other? I doubt it. It does seem unfair to the children to feed them propaganda — either way — but if the only choices are propaganda, why not let the parents decide which form of inculcation they want? Vote with your children.

"It talks about the enormity of slavery, but in almost every case, everything that's bad about America will be undone by what is good. Almost, literally, that American ideals will overcome whatever evils may be there." That reminds me of something I read earlier this morning:

It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll be able to realize them!

Written by a child.

It's optimism. Given the choice to teach one's child optimism or pessimism, who would choose pessimism?!

I like this owl sculpture.

Posted: 17 Apr 2022 09:39 AM PDT

Video'd by my son Chris (in Austin, Texas):

Background: "Inspired by the 18th-century robotics of Wolfgang Von Kempelen, Kempelen's Owls... is an interactive sculpture that fosters curiosity. Two Texan great horned owls, each standing ten feet tall and constructed of layered metal and composite materials, perch atop dodecahedrons and silently observe their surroundings. The interactive features of the work are hidden, awaiting discovery by visitors who can activate them to trigger movement in the owls."

"A Kentucky man who was fired days after he had a panic attack at his workplace over an unwanted birthday party was awarded $450,000 by a jury last month..."

Posted: 17 Apr 2022 09:42 AM PDT

"... or lost wages and emotional distress. The man, Kevin Berling, had been working at a medical laboratory, Gravity Diagnostics in Covington, Ky., for about 10 months when he asked the office manager not to throw him a birthday party because he had an anxiety disorder, according to a lawsuit filed in Kentucky's Kenton County Circuit Court.... Mr. Berling had a panic attack after he learned about the planned lunchtime celebration, which was to have included birthday wishes from colleagues and a banner decorating the break room. Mr. Berling chose to spend his lunch break in his car instead. The next day, Mr. Berling had a panic attack in a meeting with two supervisors who confronted him about his 'somber behavior,' Mr. Bucher said. He was fired three days later in an email that suggested that Mr. Berling posed a threat to his co-workers' safety...."

The NYT reports.

The legal claim was discrimination based on disability. The company's legal position seems to be both that it wasn't informed of Berling's disorder and that the condition was not a disability within the meaning of the law.

What should you do if you have an anxiety disorder and risk getting triggered by workplace interactions?

Berling struggled to control himself, at one point pushing his closed fists against his chest, which seems to have caused coworkers to fear him. There are incidents of workplace violence, so can't management fire people who seem like they might snap?

The article quotes a mental health counselor: "Social anxiety can... get triggered in the workplace when interacting with managers and co-workers becomes expected. If an employee is uncomfortable and feels anxious by having a birthday party in their honor or taking part in a celebration for others, then they should be allowed to opt out from it."

Should we reconsider birthday celebrations in the workplace? I suspect only a minority of office employees like these things, and extroverts fail to appreciate how much of a burden they can be to introverts and many others. Oh, why limit it to the workplace? Maybe in the future, all celebrations will be deemed too burdensomely intrusive on sensitive people. It's funny, Berling was fired because his co-workers saw him as a potential aggressor, but they were, it seems, by his lights, aggressing on him.

"As Disney prepared to introduce its streaming service in 2019, it began an extensive review of its film library. As part of the initiative, called Stories Matter..."

Posted: 17 Apr 2022 09:01 AM PDT

"... Disney added disclaimers to content that the company determined included 'negative depictions or mistreatment of people or cultures.'... The Stories Matter team privately flagged... characters as potentially problematic, with the findings distributed to senior Disney leaders, according to two current Disney executives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information. Ursula, the villainous sea witch from 'The Little Mermaid' (1989), was one. Her dark color palette (lavender skin, black legs) could be viewed through a racial lens, the Stories Matter team cautioned; she is also a 'queer coded' character, with mannerisms inspired in part by those of a real-life drag queen. Tinker Bell was marked for caution because she is 'body conscious' and jealous of Peter Pan's attention, according to the executives, while Captain Hook could expose Disney to accusations of discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities because he is a villain. At least some people inside Disney are concerned that such sensitivities go too far. One of the executives worried that looking at artistic creations through a 'politically correct filter' could chill creativity."

From "Disney, Built on Fairy Tales and Fantasy, Confronts the Real World/The entertainment behemoth spent decades avoiding even the whiff of controversy. But it has increasingly been drawn into the partisan political fray" (NYT).

I think they should be proud of making such a strong female villain. It there's any problem here it's there's too much sexuality for children (the Little Mermaid desperately wants legs, i.e., a crotch):

"What happened next is that, once I figured out I was a male, I also realized I had always had a certain idea of what masculinity is."

Posted: 17 Apr 2022 08:05 AM PDT

"I thought that to be a man is to be a certain way. Now what I think about is different. What I ask myself all the time is, 'What is a man?'"

Said Edoardo Beniamin, quoted in "In Venice, a Young Boatman Steers a Course of His Own/'What I ask myself all the time is, "What is a man?"' says Edoardo Beniamin, a trans man training to join his father's profession as a gondolier" (NYT).

Singing and talking a lot is a job requirement. Beniamin's speech therapist Eleonora Magnelli said he was "bothered" by his "very metallic" voice. You can't just rely on testosterone to lower the voice, she explained, because "pitch is not the only parameter." She notes that this speech therapy is different from other speech therapy, because they are dealing with speech that is "not affected by any pathology." They are changing a client's voice to help with "affirming their identity."

Beniamin says: "What brings me euphoria is feeling people see me as I see me."

And here's a quote from Dr. Giulia Lo Russo, "an aesthetic surgeon with a subspecialty in performing chest masculinization": "The point is not just to remove the breasts and reduce a female torso... You have to make a male torso.... My psychologist asked me why I do these surgeries... Why me? I'm not L.G.B.T.Q. But I am deeply anti-conformist. I have had three children with three different men."

Here's the highest rated comment at the NYT: "What a beautiful story to read this Easter morning. It's a kind of resurrection of identity that inspires me greatly."

"Racism, dead penguins and retaliation: Why the Vilas Zoo lost its only Black zookeepers."

Posted: 17 Apr 2022 07:42 AM PDT

That's the headline for a Madison.com article about the zoo here in Madison. You might think racism is somehow killing penguins — those birds who might seem to embody the peaceful harmonization of black and white.

There were 2 black zookeepers, and each left to take a job at a zoo in another city. But their exit interviews contained some criticisms, including some things about the treatment of animals, most notably the decapitation death of a penguin. Who would decapitate a penguin?! A raccoon. Wild local raccoons take the liberty to come and go as they please, including slipping into the enclosures of captive animals.

We're told that, according to an exit interview, the zoo's general curator, Beth Petersen "decided to stop trapping raccoons that got onto zoo property and instead put Epsom salts on the ground in an attempt to repel them." At least one raccoon was insufficiently repelled, got into the penguin exhibit, and bit the head off Alice, the "elderly African penguin."

Petersen then, it was said in the interview, switched back to trapping, but the trapped raccoons tried to dig out of the traps and ended up with torn up hands and had to be euthanized.

Other African penguins died too: one from a fungus infection and others "from capture myopathy, an often fatal disease for animals in captivity caused by overexertion and handling." With too few penguins for "a successful penguin colony," the zoo used "stuffed animals and mirrors to make them think that they are in a larger colony." Again, that's the assertion in the exit interview.

Moreover: "A capybara named Shrek jumped into a drained pool while it was sedated, breaking its legs.... A hornbill was introduced into a meerkat exhibit and was later found dead and partially eaten by the meerkats. A young seal named Lucille had a common intestinal issue, yet died within a week after Peterson declined to take the animal to the vet. Two green aracaris, a species of toucan, drowned after being introduced to an exhibit with an aquarium."

Perhaps this is a normal or even exemplary record for a zoo. I don't know. But where's the racism? The 2 black zookeepers both asserted that racism drove them away. One of them said she's "been the victim of many microaggressions" and has "witnessed racism." But neither interviewee specified the instances of purported racism. There's also this:

[O]ther documents show [complaints] to county officials... that [Joseph] Darcangelo, the zoo's deputy director, was accused by other zoo staff of referring to a Chinese restaurant in February 2020 as "Ching-a-Ling's" and said it served "Ching-Chong" food....

"Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich... took an adolescent girl’s diary and raped it into The Diary of Anne Frank, a sitcom...."

Posted: 17 Apr 2022 05:50 AM PDT

"The Frank family, you will recall, have been hiding from the Nazis and squabbling about 'whose turn it is to feed the cat.' At the end, the Nazis show up to take them all to their (offstage) deaths. The Hacketts' play ends with Anne's line: 'I believe people are still good at heart.' I'd always considered this merely loathsome twaddle.... For whether or not the line was scribbled by Anne Frank, the Hacketts adopted it as the punch line for their play, that is, that by which they wished their vision to be remembered. But the line brings to mind that of Joseph Goebbels. Addressing the Gestapo, he said, 'History will note that we did these things while still preserving our essential humanity.' The Hacketts' line, similarly, can be understood as 'These monsters are basically good at heart, despite what they have done to the Jews.'"

Writes David Mamet, in "Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch."

I don't think Mamet means to question whether those words appear in the diary (as it was published), just the placement of those words at the conclusion of the play. Here's the full text of the diary, and here's the context of the line that the Hacketts chose to put at the end of their play:

Anyone who claims that the older folks have a more difficult time in the Annex doesn't realize that the problems have a far greater impact on us. We're much too young to deal with these problems, but they keep thrusting themselves on us until, finally, we're forced to think up a solution, though most of the time our solutions crumble when faced with the facts. It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.
It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll be able to realize them!

Easter sunrise service.

Posted: 17 Apr 2022 04:48 AM PDT

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