Incoherent Mishmas

Okay, so I know that the subjects I've been writing about this week have been really single-minded but that is a reflection of what is happening in our town and our state. Honestly nothing is business as usual right now. The campus is dead. Schools have been closed for the last 3 days. Everybody is at the capitol. I feel sorry for the job candidate the dept. had on campus today. I don't think her job talk was very well attended, and who would want to take a job right now in a situation in which it's clear there is a war on state employees?

Every day I have been combining political activities with work activities, and then working every night, then falling exhausted into bed and not sleeping enough. The work I've done has been busywork, catching up on reading students' proposals, grading, service stuff, because I am way too mentally spent to do any substantive writing at the moment.

Of course, I can't afford that, so I'm looking forward to a Sunday sequestered away in my office getting some decent writing done.

I'm not sure what to make of anything, specifically and broadly (like where our country is going and what things are going to be like for our kids). I'm worried. Like in a global way. And obviously I'm not being very articulate here. My voice is hoarse and so is my internal voice.

Today was a moving day. Professors walked in solidarity with the TA unions, and undergrads came too. I stood and watched the firefighters march by us, supporting this effort even though their union was specifically exempted from the bill (along with police), and it sent chills down my spine. I stood shoulder to shoulder with my graduate students. Later I walked back to our nearly-empty building to meet with my colleague and plan next week's class together. He looked haggard and depressed.

Jesse Jackson came to speak at 5. I actually saw him sitting in the window of a restaurant called the Old Fashioned. By 5 I had to be on my way back home to put the kids to bed. Imagine this, slightly whiny children tired of being at dinner. Milo asks, hopefully, "Can we do math after dinner?" Nora chimes in, "Yeah, math! I want to do math!" And they are begging me to do math.

(It's my plan. Math consists of fun games with blocks and Mommy being very enthusiastic, which they love. Therefore they're always begging me to do math.)

I don't feel like I should post pictures I took here, because a lot of individual people I know are in them. So instead here is a video that my neighbor made.

The People: a living letter to Scott Walker from pawl made this, inc on Vimeo.