Kids banned from field day if they owe lunch money. School says there’s a $55,000 tab (nj.com) Inside the old Walmart where 1,500 undocumented immigrant kids are being held (Vice News) Every class I teach, I make a point of trying to hold class outside at least once during the term. This tends to be easier in some terms that others (it’s almost impossible to hold a summer term class outside, due to the heat), and I’ve had my fair share of outside classes get…
Adult Film Workers Call Rudy Giuliani’s Attack on Stormy Daniels’ Credibility ‘Dangerous and Dehumanizing’ (Time) One of the few times I’ve made money as a photographer was when I was helping a friend of mine document her performances at a weekly gathering of artists in Bowling Green, just south of Toledo. The pay was minimal, and under normal circumstances I would’ve happily done the photography for free, but I wasn’t doing any teaching work at that moment and I kind of needed the money. I’ve…
How Apple and Other Big Companies Are Really Using Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts (cheatsheet.com) Trump’s ‘tragic’ policies likely to make child poverty much worse, says UN (The Guardian via MSN) In my favourite anime/manga of all time, Oh My Goddess! (or Ah! My Goddess, if you prefer), there is a demon named Senbei whose modus operandi is to cause suffering and misfortune to others. Senbei does this because he believes that there is only a finite amount of happiness in the universe, and so the more pain he…
A little over a week ago, I received one of the best pieces of news I’ve gotten in several months. Kirkus Reviews, a very prominent book review magazine, posted an online review of my first novel, The Prostitutes of Lake Wiishkoban, that was highly complimentary of my work (to say the least). Quotes like “Shannon’s … fiction debut is an entertaining, provocative bildungsroman that successfully turns an unconventional premise into a thoughtful exploration of freedom and identity” are the kind of thing that authors like me dream…
Students required to smile at Pennsylvania school — or get sent to the office (New York Daily News) I was not in the target demographic for Bill Nye the Science Guy when it first started airing in 1993, and even if I had been, I still wasn’t in the mood to hear anything about science while I was in the middle of a string of science teachers who could most charitably be described as megalomaniacal assholes. More to the point, having grown up in that era of…