Black lives matter?

So I just wrote this thing to my dad. Those familiar with me will recognise it as the most of my thoughts/ feelings I have expressed to my dad in a decade or so. I have an accelerated heart rate as a result. I dunno.

Hey Dad,

So while we were out to dinner you brought up black lives matter and said that every case of a black person shot by police officers had been armed. 

And I didn't respond to that at the time, I was kind of shocked for a start, I've never heard any one say anything close to that and also I don't have a quick encyclopedic kind of memory. But I've been thinking about it a lot recently, maybe because I'm listening to the new season of serial or maybe because I'm thinking about you cause I'm thinking about grandfather more recently. 

But it's just not true is the thing

Like

Stephon Clark St Louis had a cell phone not a gun

Alton Sterling Louisiana CDs no gun

Terence crutcher Tulsa hands up no gun 

Walter Scott shot five times in the back unarmed ran from a broken taillight stop SC

Rumain Brisbon hand in pocket unarmed shot to death over a drug thing

Micheal brown the guy from Ferguson was unarmed and sitting in his car

Eric Gardiner the I can't breathe guy was unarmed and selling single cigarettes

Charles Kinsey who wasn't actually killed but was one of the cases that most affected me want unarmed of course he was caring for an autistic adult and was begging the police not to shoot his charge at the time. They were both sitting down on the road. 

Micheal brown the hands up don't shoot guy, there's different reports as to if his hands were up and if he really said that Ferguson mi but he was unarmed and was shot and I'm pretty sure that was the same town where they charged a guy for bleeding on the officers shoes after a beating, you know destroying police property which affected me almost more than the killing.  

Tamir Rice 12 years old had a toy gun do you count that?  I played cops and robbers as a kid and had a BB gun 

This is not exhaustive by any means, I just lifted a few. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/03/29/police-killings-black-men-us-and-what-happened-officers/469467002/

http://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article144190724.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_up,_don't_shoot

And of course some people were armed but then there's the other thing that it's not actually illegal to be armed in the US and it sure as hell doesn't carry the death penalty.

Look I know you like to stir people up a bit so I don't know if you even mean this stuff you say or if you're just trying to get a rise out of me, which I get, I like to poke a controversy stick sometimes and see what falls out sometimes. 

And I know you're super right wing and I'm super left wing so we're never really going to see eye to eye on a lot of what's going on in the world kind of stuff. We just have really different value systems and opinions on how things should be. And that's ok too I guess. But like surely we can agree that facts exist? That would make it easier to talk anyway. 

Anyway, let me know what you think. That's what I've been thinking.

Hugs,

Maile

Aaaanyway Jes said that it wasn't necessarily doing my dad any favors to be pleasant to him at the cost of not telling him literally anything about myself and she accepts some degree of conflict to be her authentic self in her family relationships and that is fraught but leads to the relationships like really existing and having meaning and stuff. So maybe I'm trying that?

I've learned on my refugee podcast

The US is the largest funder of refugees worldwide by like an order of magnitude. I don't think I knew that before. Both I don't think that I really credit or understand properly how much money the US has vs other countries, in much the same way as we can't really understand how much money the 1% has or whatever.  Your instinct is to be like yes there's rich people and they're richer than us but you don't really get how there's like 50 people who control the GDP of the world and then the rest of us kind of live off the rounding error like it's that different and as a part of that you also can't really understand how much the world could be different if we could use that 90% of the world's wealth by the principles at which we currently use 10% of the world's wealth like what are we paying for the luxury of having a super rich elite exist. For deciding inequality is like kind of ok if we're not desperate. Which we aren't largely that's the devil's bargain of the post WWII first world right we get to eat and have shelter and not have kids chewed up in mines and even get our cancer cured and stuff it's a lot better than the last peasant serf deal. Still. That's a tangent.

The US is like the whole pie of refugee funding worldwide. That's something I kind of didn't notice and part of the reason is because of the above and the other part is because on the left you're more focused on the deficit rhetoric of how small a piece of the US discretionary spending/national budget/ GDP pie that is ( BTW did you know Britain just committed to .7 % of their one of those it's a big deal imagine if that were the world standard what we could do?) But that can blind you to how much it means that we do what we do.

This is less out of texts than my own head but I find it interesting that both my birth country and even more so my adoptive countries are all immigrant nations. I mean we killed off the overwhelming majority of our native born populations (Aboriginal Australians and native Americans both represent like a percent of the country's population today). And something like two thirds of Australia has a parent born overseas. Like it's extreme. So what's interesting is the total lack of self reflection in the national debate of both places when talking about"immigrants." I mean racism is strong I guess but the ability of a country where literally every person has immigrants in their family tree to have a problem with immigrants as a monolithic other is confusing to me. Like I really don't understand how it's possible.

On Deck with the House

New stove
Bedroom door
Fixed fence

Nearest pathway to be able to rent the room to strangers.

Michael and Hannah aren't moving out but their dream is a townhouse, and I want to be ready not hopelessly confused when the time comes and they are ready. Plus it's a downside of being in the apartment that it becomes possible to just ignore stuff about the house and our lifestyle there that makes us unhappy, cause we'll always be gone in a few hours. But in Europe I was far enough away to see what I wanted.  Plus the stove was making them crazy too. And just makes us more pro.

Spring means growth

Put the garden to bed
New mulch?
Pruning before the grow season
Possoms in the roof again

This is just making me happier stuff. Michael takes care of the mowing atm but there's a bunch of stuff beyond that which requires our knowledge of what is good and bad and what we want where and what trees need to be dug up.  I gotta be in it but there's a lot of it and it's in such a below my standards state that working feels like being not good enough not like accomplishing things.

Micheal and Hannah's house project

So they have moved a couple of times and when they moved with us there were a bunch of cardboard boxes below. When we were mostly in the apartment they started going through it all, and that's been kind of ongoing but Hannah just left for the states and that was there completion plan so now I could help Michael finish bc it's mostly done.

Our lifestyle stuff
Stop crouching over a laptop with your food in bed like a gollum
Be able to find a towel without having to sort through stuff
Dresser combined
Move out big dresser
Move in couch
Get 3d monitor screen and docking station to house
Blackout curtain behind?
Clear linen closet

When we moved into the back of the house we put both our dressers in the library where the click clack bed used to be so they fit nice but there's no place in our area to sit. Which we've still got the living room but a bunch of things happened. Mostly we moved the computer out of there and the TV is useless to us without it but also there was sorting in there and j is a total introvert who retreats into his hidey hole (he and Michael living together alone would like never see each other boys are weird). But I can't cope with the rat in a nest thing and I miss having a quiet place to sit that's not my bed and you don't always want to take over the public area. So anyhow we combined our dressers into the smaller dresser and moved the big dresser to the front room and etc. Now we have both a couch and a guest bed in there.

Stuff we always want both places, should I rebuy
Espresso machine
Sonicare toothbrushes
Js razor we kinda accidentally rebought

Cleaning out our filthnests
Ok there's two, one of balls just needs to go to Goodwill, plus empty tubs but maybe they're a part of papers

Papers is the hard one but I need a staging area for that so it's at least after the M&H sorting project finishes and also I need to commit to doing it like a job once it gets started and I have no idea files, notebooks what's the form of this but it needs to happen bc Lord knows what's under there and it's the last of my coming home projects.

Rent out front room

Empty front room
Clear linen closet
Lockable door
Improve back door maybe combination
Occupied thing on bathroom
Maybe a locking hardware on Michael and Hannahs room, same as ours
Rejig living room
TV in one of the bedrooms instead?
Table in living room with two couches as social space can it happen?
Get rid of linen closet or dresser for new person
New bed
Is it worthwhile to try to create second real carpark?
Clearing projects
Bathroom, we need to go from two drawers to one or install a medicine cabinet gordion knot question what is the length of screw that won't pierce my single skin walls
Kitchen reduce and combine appliances so we can have 3rd shelf free.
Go through pots, sell copper etc to create zones for people if they cook
Dishes and glassware do they need to change?
Is a bigger fridge a necessity, how big will fit in that hole

Bear in mind at the start that everyone's against this plan to begin with so it may not even happen, and of course it's a negotiation with Michael and Hannah too (which room do they want bedroom is bigger but front room could have the closer entrance, good parking space, exclusive use of the porch) but of course they might not even be there when that is happening so we'll see and don't want to change their world til it's actually necessary. But I consider most all the stuff on that list good ideas just because, there's a lot of things I still have full time stuff there for and I'm living there part time, you gotta change with your life. So I'm gonna proceed down the list and see where we are.

So I've done a bunch of this stuff already, the stove, I've found the doors, we've mostly moved into our space and I've swapped the couch in. And a bunch is unstarted. I'm kind of planning on this project taking me to the end of the year. So we'll check in on what's left then. Me going domestic out of town a bunch is also a thing tho.

Turtles all the way down

The best thing about it is the theme of hosts and parasites bigger and smaller organisms and what that means for identity.

Like the bacteria are our parasites and maybe they are calling the shots or maybe they're just hitching a ride.

But also we are like the bacteria of our institutions of the schools and society, and maybe we're calling the shots or maybe we're just hitching a ride.

And knowing which we are, bacteria or host, as well as knowing who's in charge, is not easy.

Quitting teaching

You know it's just hard to know after a while if you're doing any good, if anyone cares, if you're not just a professional I'm screaming at children. And I've had real moments, evidence I hope that that's not the case but there's a lot of the people you're trying to help telling you that you're no good and they don't want it and it becomes tempting at some point to just say ok.

And you get a thicker skin to it after a while but you know with your skin so thick it becomes harder to feel anything. And I wanted to leave it before I stopped caring, always. I kind of left it at the peak of my career and my powers but that is like me too I suppose.

People always say it's not the kids it's the bureaucracy and bullshit that makes them leave, but not me. I mean it's the kids that make me stay as well, I mean they're the thing I care about. Bureaucracy might add hours to my day but it doesn't give me feelings. If anything it's not the actual reporting on stuff that I mind it's like the way the tools we have to use are made to be super user unfriendly which means you know that my life being faster and easier, my time was not valued by the institution. And it's very hierarchical which is not the best way to run an organisation and they try to pretend it's not in some ways which just makes you more resentful.

But most of all it's just exhausting kind of work, sandpaper on the skin, so much stimulus and noise and aggression from all sides. I'm not sure I can plunge back into that cold bath. I stayed pretty good for a long time. I went in there singing right to the end. I just don't want to yell anymore. I don't want to beg to be heard.