Good fortune and bright light shone on me yesterday. As far as fortune went, Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty found inmates for both Nicole and me to correspond with through their program. Neither of us believe in capital punishment, both of us recognize mass incarceration as one of our country’s biggest issues, and we applied to MADP to try to assist in a personal way. The response to the program had been so robust that they initially had no one to pair us with.
Bright light came in two forms. We successfully released “Scrappy,” a stray cat who found his way to Columbia’s Cat Capitol and got trapped and SNPed. To our surprise, he stayed put on the deck for a tuna treat. But…why were we even surprised? Also, our great friends Kenny and Gwen Wright chose us for their first Zoom double-date and we laughed into the night. Their youngun Ethan will soon be driving the most conspicuous and be-bumper-stickered teacher vehicle in town, only he’ll be doing so in Birmingham. We’ll meet in Memphis for the transaction, so that will be bright light for the future. I wish they were our next-door neighbors.
Oh yeah: I finished grading those papers. Beer. And dropped off a mega-load of recycling. Beer. And finished Jennings & Duffy’s mind-blowing graphic adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Beer. Apologies, but I had been needing some release, and was stubborn in coming.
Streaming for Strivers:
Comin’ round the mountain…
The Overeem Farewell Tour: Dispatches from the Public School Trenches 