The Last Barrier to Racial Integration

The city of St Louis, Missouri integrated its public swimming pools in June, 1949. The experiment was short-lived. When I was five, my grandfather waded into a creek I was playing in and yanked me out. Some black kids my age had followed me into the water. “You’ll catch a disease,” he explained. This was in my home town […]

Thursday Bag o’ DGAS

My give-a-shit meter is close to zero. I’m in a rage slump, kind of like a manic-depressive on the down cycle. Something will set me off again, probably sooner than later, and I’ll be back to normal, ranting and raving about injustice, racism, and stupidity. Ooh, did I just feel a rage twinge there? So how ’bout them Duggars? […]

Two-Wheeled Trutherism (& a Doggie Update)

If you read my motorcycle posts you know I’m a biker truther. That’s what they’re calling members of the motorcycling community who are beginning to question police and media accounts of what happened in Waco, Texas last Sunday, when nine bikers were killed by gunfire and another eighteen injured during an alleged shootout between rival gang […]

Tuesday Bag o’ Sutures

Following up on yesterday’s post: the vet said Schatzi was back on her feet and ready to go home, so I picked her up from the animal hospital. She walked from the hospital door to the car, but she’s still wobbly on her hind legs and had to sit down a couple of times. When […]

Thursday Bag o’ Triggers

This, from an article in the Columbia Daily Spectator: “During the week spent on Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses,’ the class was instructed to read the myths of Persephone and Daphne, both of which include vivid depictions of rape and sexual assault. As a survivor of sexual assault, the student described being triggered while reading such detailed accounts […]

Drawing Muhammad

I did a stupid thing yesterday (so what else is new?) and commented on a Facebook thread about Pamela Geller’s Muhammad-drawing event in Garland, Texas. The thread was started by a fellow progressive who (I thought at first) feels as I do, that freedom of speech must be protected in this country even when we deplore how […]

Tuesday Bag o’ Flag

Polly’s home with her boyfriend in Ajo and Angie’s back in Tampa. I should be rushing to catch up with bloggage and book reviews, but my thoughts are random and disorganized. I’m leaving on a five-day motorcycle trip Thursday; maybe I’ll get back in the groove once I get some miles under my belt. Anent the motorcycle trip, […]

Who You Gonna Call?

Do even white people trust the police any more? What should I do if a cop wants me to pull over? Try to keep rolling until I can stop in an area where there are witnesses, hoping someone will take a cell phone video in case things go sideways? Is the cop going to tase me if I don’t bow and scrape? Do I have […]