A Guide to the Corporations Defunding Public Schools and Opposing Striking Teachers

Published May 15, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Glad Ohio isn’t listed.

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLE YOU WILL READ TODAY. SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR SCHOOL BOARD, YOUR LOCAL MEDIA, YOUR ELECTEDS. TWEET IT. POST IT ON FACEBOOK.

In the states where teachers have engaged in walkouts and strikes, public education has been systematically starved of funding. Typically, corporate taxes have been cut so that funding for education has also been cut. The corporations benefit while the children and their teachers are put on a starvation diet.

Who are the corporations and individuals behind the efforts to shrink funding for public schools and promote privatization?

This article makes it clear.

It begins like this, then details a state-by-state list of corporations and billionaires backing the cycle of austerity and school privatization.

“The ongoing wave of teacher strikes across the US is changing the conversation about public education in this country. From West Virginia to Arizona, Kentucky to Oklahoma, Colorado…

View original post 453 more words

Non-Binary — a poem

Published May 14, 2018 by Nan Mykel

NON BINARY

What is your status quo?

This or that, yes or no?

Cisgender’s binary,

But on the contrary

how would it seem

if you fell in between,

not male or female;

but beyond the pale?

An archetype, that’s what.

Half man half woman but

how to think of yourself

dressed in power and pelf

like a queen or a king?

But yet… but yet… which?

Be the son or the bitch?

And really be neither,

a free-to-believer!

Now shut both of your eyes,

try to visualize

YOU! Choose neither one!

And not just for fun!

So don’t ask what I be

I be me! And free!

And non binary!

Skewed Liberty (This Country for Sale) – A re-blog

Published May 14, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Telling it like it is….

lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Skewed Liberty

Everything is tilted. Slightly unaligned.
The constitution set askew. Liberty maligned.
Some of the well-heeled citizens think that this is fine.
They cannot see that everything is slightly out of line.
All the pretty Philistines queue up at their tees
while their flunky lawyers determine what to seize.
Contracts with the Russians. Schemes to sell off national land.
Cronies helping cronies. Off-shore drilling by demand.

Rivers being sullied and oceans compromised
while insuring rights to bear arms are exercised.
Certain pious preachers line up behind the svelte,
proclaiming to the masses that they know what Jesus felt.
Indeed, the smallest sparrow no longer matters much
so long as all the mighty increase their greedy clutch––
all the moneychangers, corrupt to the core,
filling all their pockets with the money of the poor.

Surely it is clear that at ruling they’re inept,
and if he was watching, surely Jesus…

View original post 71 more words

The Good Times

Published May 13, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Discovering there was one word for the day after today and another for the day before today

When my mother ran across the tomato patch in high heels in response to my screams due to getting my foot trapped in a lumber stack at my grandfather’s lumber yard.

Realizing that my experience can never join with someone else’s

Sleeping with my grandmother on the farm in North Carolina, listening to the coal settle in the grate of the woodstove and watching the lights of passing cars reflected all across the walls, silently.

Connecting with the red clay under the clothesline on the farm.

Taking naps on the farm in the attic with the rain tapping the metal roof over my head.

Watching an ant parade on the farm and believing that they had left me a metal belt buckle, beside the parade route.

Winning a dictionary for my home room in a sixth grade poster contest with my friend Janet Rich.

Miss Arveson giving me two A+’s on my written Western Civilization assignment in the ninth grade.

Going to bed at night and holding my arm straight up until I felt it move as though by God, in Chevy Chase.

Finding my first flint spear point on top of the ground and under a big tree in North Carolina, and feeling a connection over time with when it came to be there.

Getting out of the tub in Gainesville, Florida, and receiving a revelation that in our dreams we’re all together, united.

My first taste of a Milky Way Bar after World War Two.

The first sight of my beautiful first born daughter.

On the way home, holding her up in my arms to see the world.

In Miami, my eleventh grade teacher mis-counting by one an answer on the semester test so that I didn’t have to repeat the entire semester after moving from South Carolina.

After telling my grandfather in Chevy Chase that Bob Swilling asked me out on a date, his response was not negative but “Do you want to go?” (I didn’t).

My sister bursting into tears when I told her my last born was mongoloid.

My therapist telling me I had good protoplasm.

Graduate school, where everyone was on the same wavelength.

My son calling to say Happy Mother’s Day today.

I Think I Can, I Think I Can…

Published May 12, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Interesting Thought from Salon:

Published May 12, 2018 by Nan Mykel

“When one is accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression,” and today more and more white men in America (and Europe) feel as if they are being oppressed by egalitarian forces like feminism, multiculturalism, gay rights and the like.

absfreepic.com

Old in More Ways — Aargh!

Published May 10, 2018 by Nan Mykel

There goes my mind! Catch it!

Aargh! I just tried to post a poem to d’Verse tonight (Thursday, May 10) and I may have been successful because I got at least one response, but I don’t see anything myself when I click on my name. I had trouble posting about 2 years ago but can’t now–at least not so I can see. Maybe the problem is that the name of my poem is the same as the prompt? So I changed the name to “My Bridge.” Interestingly the one response I got on my site then changed to a heading that said he was responding to “My Bridge.”

Also, there’s the question that if I click on my permalink address I’m asked if I want to:

Open link in new tab

Open link in new window

Open link in incognito window

Save link as

Copy link address

Copy https://nanmykel.com//201805/10/where’sthatconfoundedbridge

___________________________

When I tried to post with “My Bridge” I am told that “Blenza says that Link url must begin with ‘http://’…. (NO! That’s NOT what it said: It said & # 39 ; http : // & # 39 ; )

I’ll bet you think I’m making this up, don’t you? You didn’t miss much.

Thanks for the comment anyway, Frank!

My Bridge – for d’Verse

Published May 10, 2018 by Nan Mykel

image pixabay

The bridge I have to cross goes

straight from keyboard to published.

Age has sucked out my best words

in a malevolent move

to eject me from my groove.

Cusswords seem to linger long

aft’ pearls tend to come out wrong.

Hell, if you’re not happy with me

you should stay young with glee

and hope you’ll ne’er turn into

a damn wordless old shrew.

Genderqueer Student Murdered and Burnt in Rio Favela

Published May 9, 2018 by Nan Mykel

The killing of Matheus Passareli, who went by the name “Theusa” and refused to be categorized as either male or female, plunged Rio’s LGBTQI community into mourning on Brazil’s social network feeds.

Theusa, a bohemian figure studying at the Rio de Janeiro State University, was well-known in the community, which encompasses lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and intersex people born with any of several variations in sex characteristics.

On Monday, Theusa’s brother Gabriel Passareli, who also identified as genderless, said in a Facebook message that police had notified the family that Theusa’s body “was burned and there is little chance of finding solid evidence” of who carried out the murder.

“I am sorry to have chosen to be so carefree in the face of so much cruelty that my sister and myself… were exposed to,” wrote the sibling, who goes by the name Gabe. The post added that the family had retreated to their hometown in rural Rio de Janeiro state for their grieving.

Theusa’s murder came less than two months after the slaying of Marielle Franco, a black city councillor in Rio and a lesbian who fought against racism and lobbied for rights for the LGBTQI community and favela residents.

Although the LGBTQI community is relatively tolerated in big urban centers in Brazil, the country has one of the highest murder rates of homosexuals in the world.

In 2016, 343 people were killed in crimes linked to their sexual or gender orientations, according to the Bahia Gay Group, an association active in promoting the community’s rights.