Ban banning

The road to immigrating to the United States is a process, a world I am familiar with. There is paperwork, money that has to be paid, photocopying of documents, waiting, vetting, more paperwork, more money and waiting. If you do not check the right box, your process is delayed. You wait more, and this happened with a country we have a special relationship with. It is more difficult from a country that we are not on friendly relations with. So when legal immigrants, any legal immigrants are detained at the border - it's wrong. Full stop. The executive order is wrong. The walls this administration are building inside and out are wrong.

I want to fly away

Give me your tired, your poor, your hungry I'll piss on 'em. That's what the statue of bigotry says

The events that are occurring.

We have a Vichy congress who are content with watching Kristallnaact happen by pen.

I feel like dancing on my own. Where no one knows me, and where I can cause offence just by the way I look

You can't stop fascism with kindness and trust. And definitely not with thoughts and prayers.

Belle & Sebastian - There's Too Much Love from Rafael Lage on Vimeo.

Here we are though. We're not alone.

Write it down!

Been going in on Ancestry the past couple of weeks. Got over 300 names in the tree and there are still more to go. At the point where I'm scanning some photos and putting them in individual profiles.



This could be Jennie, Mable, Evelyn or Mary. I'm not certain. Why? Because there is no indication anywhere on the picture who it is, and anyone who can identify here is probably dead. If I were to guess it's either Evelyn or Mary, but I cannot be 100 percent right.

Pro tip. Write something on the back of the damn picture!

Sergio's developing a real bad cough

One of my favorite Cookie Monster Songs.

Sure, call me an idealist

Piggybacking on one of Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign planks for his ill-fated presidential run, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed making two and four year state college tuition free for state residents with a family income of less that $125,000. This impacts tens of thousands of students. Now, there has not been an explanation of how this will be paid for, but this is a major policy that is being discussed.

While I no longer think everyone should go to college, I'm seeing a lot of people struggle with the costs of college education. I graduated college thirty years ago and had a debt of about $10,000. Total. And it was hard to pay off. Students now are graduating with a debt many times what I had and it would be great for them to have that type of debt relief.

There were comments of people wanting their student loans reimbursed now that this may happen. Why? Because someone is getting something you did not? I thought as a society we were supposed to progress, not punch down or regress when others have any form of success. I always thought we were supposed to leave the room a bit nicer looking than when we left it, and this policy could certainly accomplish that. We worked hard. Now others do not have to. Is that a horrible achievement? Or are people going to be mad because they did not get theirs?

Selfishness is not something people learned at my college, SUNY Fredonia, whose motto is, "To learn, to search, to serve." It must have been in them all along.