Not a lot of online time...
Glyphosate Awareness
It's not only glyphosate. In this California study, the "pesticides" found at the most dangerous levels in killed butterflies were "pyrethrins," insecticides that people sometimes try to claim are "organic" because they can be derived from plants. In plants, these chemicals occur at levels that discourage most animals from eating the plants, but don't usually kill those who nibble enough to notice that they don't want any more. In concentrated spray forms they can become deadly. We know there's no way these butterflies were glyphosate-free when they died, and we know that glyphosate would have aggravated the effects of the pyrethrins, but...gardeners and farmers must not listen to anyone peddling pyrethrins.
Language, the Case for Cleaning Up Your
Once again someone cited this 2021 incident. This time a comment occurred to me:
How old is he? Generation X, I'd guess, like my sisters. In which case he grew up with the following unofficial rule about what the rest of humankind called people of African descent: When talking about someone you like, there's no need to mention the person's "race" unless someone else was trying to make something out of it. When talking about someone you don't know well but respect, or don't know of any reason not to respect, "race" may be ignored but, if mentioned, the person is either "Black" or "African-American." When talking about someone you don't like, don't respect, and don't wish well, that is what the N-word means. The rest of the words surrounding it generally formed a curse or a death threat. That was why we all agreed that it was a Very Bad Word.
Older people might have learned different rules. In Virginia there used to be some perception that the N-word was the way lazy-mouthed cotton pickers in the Deep South mispronounced "Negro," which was considered the proper word in the mid-twentieth century. Regardless of your feelings about the person the N-word was "incorrect," like "brung" for "brought" or "worsh" for "wash." Using the N-word as it is constantly used by today's rappers was an indication of a person's utter lack of Background. The only situation in which a White gentleman would ever use the N-word was if he wanted a pretext to become violent, in which case he might say it, quietly, while staring at a Black man, possibly with a sneering expression on his face. The Black man would then feel obligated to throw a punch, and the White man could then give him the full Scott Sherwin treatment--if able. Many a White man who had no hope of ever being mistaken for a gentleman avoided using the N-word, anyway, because he knew he was likely to receive the Scott Sherwin treatment.
Anyway. Here's this full-grown man, the school basketball coach, which is practically a teacher for pity's sake, not liking that another team of half-grown girls are kneeling on the gym floor. The majority of the girls look White. And this coach was caught in front of a live microphone growling, "F'g n's."
No gentleman ever says that in front of any female. Nor does a lady ever say it in front of any male.
No teacher ever says it in front of any student.
He's supposed to be giving these children a good example of how to talk, and how to think before the big game. He could have jeered, "Oh, see them all kneeling like Kaepernick. What an ignorant, unpatriotic lot they are. Go and beat the pants off them." That would have had a locker-room sound, but it's something a coach might be excused for saying.
But no. "F'g n's."
So then he whines in public that he has diabetes, and his blood sugar was spiking.
"Diabetes does not cause racism," people sneered at him. Not unreasonably.
"But I'm not a racist," he whined, presumably meaning that, like a typical late Boomer or Generation Xer, he does like and respect some Black people, especially his students, he loves his students as if they were his nieces, but those little Kaepernickazoids, on the other hand....
So that happens to be the truly hateful way to use the N-word. Stupid Man may not be a racist in the sense of disliking and disrespecting all Black people merely because they are Black, but he is certainly a race baiter, a person who's willing to bring people's race into it when he wants to pick a fight. Right. With half-grown girls.
Trashy. Utterly trashy. Schools are supposed to keep people like that away from our children.
Why did he do it? He might have hated coaching. He might have wanted to make it so that he would never be asked to coach again so that he could go back to that other job his wife hated his doing. But that's unusual and I'm inclined to believe the diabetes excuse. Diabetes, and medications and other things that go wrong with the body, don't cause racism but they can cause people to blurt out things they would normally know better than to say.
Stupid Man's problem was that he let himself think, and talk among his friends, in words teachers don't say in front of students. So when his illness flared, his guard dropped, and there he was, letting his students hear words that he was legally responsible for protecting them from having to hear.
If he had formed the habit of thinking in more "stilted, oldfashioned" language, even at the risk of not fitting in with his friends, his students might have heard him muttering "Unpatriotic Kaepernickazoids," which would not have been a valid reason for all schools to make sure he never had an opportunity to speak to a student ever again.
Music
Michael Jackson..."Thriller." You have been warned.
Nat "King" Cole.
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