My Daily Musings

 Worry about my kids' stutter. S has it like Se. Se got better though. He still struggles sometimes. I'm reading The Piano Lesson and Fences. Trying to figure out a way to teach them and read them in person and online with the folks at home. I have to prepare them for the AP Exam too. My dog has been staying with us. Will he go back to W? He's my dog. Do you ever feel by being flexible as a person it lets the inflexible take advantage of you? Until you explode. Like a raisin in the sun. I need to read all the writing by the Film Studies students. There's no way around it. They need feedback to progress. I need to show them I care about all the work they've put in. If I don't call my brothers or my parents will they ever call me? Why do I always have to be the one to call? 

Some family members are not going to get the vaccine. Some of my students are not going to get the vaccine. We are up to about 40% in Santa Clara County who have taken it. Segun. It will be interesting to go to Mexico in August. My suegra has lost faith in AMLO and says Morena are a bunch of Communists. I wonder what my suegro thinks. She wants to vote PRI again. G is going to go down and visit S and his new girlfriend. He spent $7,000 on her in a month and has no money now. He's using the credit card. 

You wonder about the remaining years of your parents' lives. What gives you purpose to go on? How can a person organize their lives so as their health fails they still have a reason to get up in the morning? What animates my life? My children. My teaching. A parent can invest all they have in their children and then their children can turn their backs on the parents. No one can predict what will happen but you have to do what is right in the moment and hope for the best. 

You buy all these books about writing but there's no substitution for writing. What can I write about? What unique perspective can I bring? A white male heterosexual middle class kid from Southern California who lives in Northern California now. I have lived in Mexico. I live with a Mexican wife and have a little experience with Mexican culture. I have tried to get to the heart of American culture, but I don't care about that anymore. I couldn't wrap my hands around it, so I decided to focus more on what I could control. 

I still love soccer and the U.S National Team. I don't care about basketball or football anymore. I still love track and field. Music still matters to me. It gives me great pleasure to get to know my catalog more deeply. I like some country music and folk music. I love the story telling and wisdom how it distills greater truths into a song. John Prine for example. Jason Isbell. 

C encounters the same challenges with every nursing job. She makes a point of doing things right and this threatens certain entrenched interests that don't want to do things right. She then keeps her head down and they want her to be more assertive. When she is assertive her coworkers work to get her fired.