As I go back and think about my reading patterns in the last 15 years, I realized I stopped reading more serious books, in any genre, around 2007. The primary reason was that I started as a full-time professor in 2007 and finished my doctorate in 2008.
I kept teaching full-time until 2012 (which meant 70 to 80 hrs a week) and no energy to read anything other than student papers. Sometimes, in August, in the summer, I'd be able to read a serious book.
I left teaching in 2012 because of bad labor policies and a terrible case of pneumonia. I wasn't as ill then as I am now - I didn't I really became disabled until February of 2014, in my own view at least.
I use February 2014 for the start of my disability because I had been taking Abilify in combination with Effexor for about five months then, and it was in that time period that I called to cancel an interview for a full-time job as a statistical analyst at the Minnesota DHS.
After five months on Effexor with Abilify, I was so tired all the time that I didn't see how I could work full time. Abilify was approved as an "add-on" to anti-depressants in 2007. But that's a different story, although in the scheme of corporate corruption, the same story.
So, over the years between 2007 and the present, I have tried to read serious books. Books that the New York Times likes. And so many of them are terrible. They are narcissistic novels that dwell on the problems of a very rich white elite.
I have been a sociologist for so long, and taught Social Problems for so many years that I was just horrified by the award winning garbage that I was reading. The years 2005 to 2008 were financially difficult in the Midwest. 2008 was the 2nd worst year in U.S. financial history.
People lost their homes. Families doubled up. People in their 20s graduated with massive debt and no prospect of good jobs. Funding for education at all levels was slashed. Funding for human services was slashed. Soldiers were returning from war with severe PTSD.
All of this was hapoening from about 2007 to 2013-14. President Obama saved this country. But he couldn't stop the inevitable pain caused by the second worst financial disaster in our history.
I was suffering myself, leaving teaching, dealing with illness. But nobody was writing about our country. There were no movies, no tv shows. I couldn't find books about job related ptsd. I couldn't find books about economic pain from 2007 to 2015.
We've been drinking a lot more than Koolaid for the last 15 years, and it hasn't been served to us by Trump. Let's impeach that motherfucker, but let's also turn a bright spotlight on the Koolaid dealers. The national newspapers. The national "talking heads" stations.
What the hell has been happening with the global concentration of media? Why the fuck were people so surprised that Bush lied us into a war in Iraq, and the media played along. It didn't begin with "her emails". The rot in the fourth estate began long before.
So, let's impeach Trump, but let's also track back the Koolaid dealers. Those who danced for their corporate donors and reported the news they wanted to hear.
And if @AOC wants to dance, and congresswomen want to say "Fuck", I say, Fuck Yes.
1/? As I am beginning to pack my motel room to move to Madison, the grief and struggle of the last 8 yrs overwhelms me.
2/? I think about the doctor that I trusted who precscibed Ability, the worst possible drug given what I had told him about my concerns about Fatigue and the price of Provigil.
3/? I think about the doctors I saw in 2014 ( two gynecologists - one of whom was at the U of Minn Women's Health Center). I think about how I told them I couldn't work, and how they ignored me.
In September of 2001, I was 38 and fortunate enough to be living in Madison, WI. I am not an expert, and certainly know less than those who actually fought in Afganistán and Iraq. But there were those of us who protested both wars from the beginning.
In late September I was in Washington, DC for a meeting about global debt relief, and some people there were from New York. They were visibly shaken and had lost family members. When I protested the war in Afghanistan, I did so knowing that the attack on 9/11 was horrific.
But putting Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld in charge of ongoing wars against "terrorism" seemed like a very bad idea. The authoritarianism appeared almost immediately - the idea that you could not criticize the government, the surveillance, NSA, and "Homeland" "Security".
I remember the flight from Kampala, Uganda to JFK in New York City in August of 1969. My father wasn't on the flight with us because he had already gone back to the U.S., but my sister couldn't travel yet because she was a baby.
It was fairly uneventful - I still remember that I left some coloring pens on the plane. My father and uncle met us st the airport and as they tell it, there was no traffic at all in New York City at 3:00 a.m. 2/
Later, my grandmother would tell me that I had helped shepherd the smaller children through the airport - but I think that was creating the myth that I was so well suited towards the parenting I would do when my mother died. 3/
As the U.S evacuate its staff from Afghanistan, and as the usual gibberish is being spewed by Faux News and it's warmonger allies, let's remember that it was the Cheney-Bush administration that invaded Afghanistan. #Afghanistan#BushCheney#bushgang
Let's also remember that it was Cheney-Bush and their administration that made up the claim of weapons of mass destruction so that they could invade Iraq. If there were any really dangerous weapons in Iraq, they would have been weapons the U.S sold Iraq to fight Iran. #bush#oil
Let's also remember that it was President Obama who captured Osama Bin Laden, in Pakistan, a country that we had given a great deal of aid, in weapons and access for imports to the U.S. #oilwars#BushCheney#imperialism
Some of you may have access to my notes on the Farm Bill which I created for my upper division class on Farming and Agriculture. I have them backed up on flash drives in my apartment, on my old laptop (really old, needs to be recycled), and my newish laptop (bought 2014).
I might have uploaded the Farm Bill notes to a course website, and by then, Google was backing up all our computer interactions.
If you have somehow gained access to any and all of my class notes, powerpoints, and teaching materials, especially my Statistics courses, I ask that you credit me for the powerpoints and course materials. Creating them took a lot of work. Not citing me is like wage theft.
Finally, and I am going to say this as tactfully as possible, I get tired of urban people moving farmers and rural life. I did not grow up on a farm, but I studied agricultural trade for my dissertation. Farming is difficult, uncertain work. But farmers provide our food.
The last film I saw in a movie theater was Interstellar. I had a really hard time with the movie, because crop failure is *not* inevitable. But it is really depressing that we can send people to the moon and maybe Mars, but we can't organize against Monsanto.
I went to see the movie with my brothers and my family, and we went to the Cheesecake Factory (which some of you may know - you're quite good, I had no idea until 2016 that I was being spyed on). Anyway, my brothers and I discussed the movie.