“Illinois has no place to go”

Thus said our president this morning on Twitter. And he’s right. We’re hemmed in by other states: Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Kentcky, Missouri, Iowa. There is Lake Michigan, but Illinois can’t squeeze in there. Truly, our state has no place to go.

Except to the polls, to vote this president out.

George Floyd in high school

The Washington Post continues its series on how systemic racism shaped George Floyd’s life. The focus in today’s article is education, in high school and college. From a description of life at Jack Yates High School in Houston:

In Floyd’s senior year of high school, 21 percent of the juniors and seniors at Yates who took the mandatory state test passed all three sections, compared with 43 percent in the district and 54 percent statewide. About half the class took college entrance exams, but almost no one scored at a college-ready level.

It was a school where many students came from poor families, with little support at home, and where teachers were flooded with students with significant needs. So it was that students like Floyd, good kids who didn’t cause problems, could skate through academically, able to do the minimum. . . .

For top athletes at Yates, things were easier — for Floyd and also for Dexter Manley, the former Washington Redskins star who graduated in 1977 even though he was unable to read or write.

“One thing about athletes, at every level there were people to help you,” Manley said in an interview. “Because football is king in Texas — I mean king — that means those faculty are going to work with the head football coaches. They’re going to give you the support. They’re going to give me the help.”

Teachers asked little of him, he said, satisfied that he turned up for class and even that he sat toward the front. “You’re getting a lot of credit for attendance,” Manley said. He laughed when asked if he ever was asked to write a paper, and said he’d get “help” from girlfriends on tests.

Near the end of his all-pro career, Manley testified before a Senate panel on education that he had been illiterate through high school and college. He struggled to read his statement. “The only thing that really made me feel good in schools was athletics,” he said through tears. “That built self-esteem and some self-worth in Dexter Manley. Other than that, I had no identity.”

“You didn’t fail, sir,” Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) told him. “The system failed you.”

Four months later, George Floyd started high school in that same system.

A related post
Opportunities

Brooklyn, represent

I called the assisted-living place to reserve the gazebo for a visit with my mom. “You sound just like her,” the staff member said.

I have long known that I sound just like my dad. Plumbers, when I would answer my dad’s business phone: “Oh, jeez, you sound just like your father.” But yesterday marks the first time anyone has told me that I sound just like my mother.

As the staff member went on to say, she meant my accent, or alleged accent. Students, too, used to tell me sometimes: “I love your accent.” Only people from elsewhere have accents, of course.

The Brooklyn lives loudly within me.

[That final sentence is meant to ring a bell.]

“Red meets black, you’re okay, Jack”

[Mark Trail, October 12, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

Mark Trail has a new artist. Her name is Jules Rivera. She calls herself Mark Trail’s new dad. Here’s an article about the change.

Yes, that’s a camcorder, not a phone, in Cherry Trail’s hands, which I think must be a joke at the expense of the early aughts.

*

And now I’m surprised to see that news of the switch made The New York Times in September.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

A precept from Paracelsus

It’s National Coming Out Day. And by chance, I read this sentence this afternoon, in Robertson Davies’s The Rebel Angels (1981), where it’s attributed to Paracelsus:

Be not another if thou canst be thyself.

Man and Superman

The New York Times reports on a Donald Trump* scheme:

In several phone calls last weekend from the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Mr. Trump shared an idea he was considering: When he left the hospital, he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. But underneath his button-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer. He ultimately did not go ahead with the stunt.

Bikes and birds

A former Trump* White House official speaks:

“They aren’t even considering what happens when he’s feeling worse than he’s feeling now, when he’s hopped up full of steroids and other performance enhancers. He’s on the sort of drugs you’d see with a Tour de France rider in the mid-’90s!” Another way to say this, the former White House official said, was that the president is “hopped up on more drugs than a Belgian racing pigeon.” In keeping with the bird theme, this person said the president’s illness was proof that “the chickens are coming home to roost.”

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is a really good one, meaning 1. that I could solve it, and 2. that I could solve it in about twenty-four minutes. Some giveaways, some stumpish clues, some surprises and weirdness and fun. I started with a giveaway: 1-D, three letters, “It had 300+ campus chapters in ’69.” Only one possible answer, really, for that clue, even if the answer was a little before my time.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

5-D, five letters, “Hand-made props.” Stumpish.

8-D, four letters, “Talk follower or preceder.” Surprising.

24-A, seven letters, “Guys set for life.” I was thinking STATUES, though the clock is ticking, or has ticked, for so many of them — and rightly so.

26-A, four letters, “Chica, brevemente.” Maybe a giveaway, but the clue redeems the crosswordese.

27-D, four letters, “Either of two in the Bluetooth logo.” So that’s what they are! So much fun with shorter answers in this puzzle.

33-A, nine letters, “Swing shift?” I was thinking hours.

41-A, five letters, “Upsize, say.” I did not see this one coming.

One clue that made me wince: 45-A, three letters, “Pronoun in Hiroshima.” There’s a place name that should be off-limits for wordplay, I’d say.

And one clue that leaves me baffled: 32-A, four letters, “Suspended course.”

Huh? Wha? No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Newman speaks

[“A Message from Your Friendly Local Mail Carrier.” From PACRONYM.]

I’m not sure that it strikes just the right tone, but I can’t resist sharing it.

While I was sleeping

Earlier this morning, Orange Crate Art had its two millionth visitor, from Istanbul, visiting a post about the Mayflower Coffee Shop(pe). Yay.

I suspect that the visitor was seeking to clarify a reference in Frank O’Hara’s poem “Music.” Search for “mayflower coffee shoppe ” and “frank o’hara ” and my post should be the first result. Or at least one of the first results.

It was mid-afternoon in Istanbul when someone there found the post. The Internet, it’s a wonderful thing.