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The Satanic Panic - Dungeons and Dragons

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The Satanic Panic - Dungeons and Dragons

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As you may know, in the 1970's and 80's there was something going on in America called the Satanic Panic. It revolved around a number of factors like several highly publicized and very gruesome murderers, and several other factors that had made the public generally much more wary of things that seemed unfamiliar. It just so happened that D&D presented that in many ways to the very socially isolated people of the US from region to region I could give a reason as to why each could be convinced by the arguments of those against D&D. What happened was that people read the writings and saw the news appearances of the leaders of the movement and with the broad base appealing tactics they were using they convinced a lot of people that D&D was not worth the risk of your child playing it if it was just some game you could tell them not to play which would save them from things like possession or witchcraft.

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New York has a Thanksgiving day parade every year. Except nobody calls it the New York Thanksgiving parade. No, it is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It is hosted by the store Macy's and has been for nearly 100 years. Undoubtedly one must immediately see the fact that Macy's has become more than just a store in many ways and this is the main thrust of that. It is a cultural icon now, that persists in minds even as its momentary popularity has waned in some way, no it will now always have a presence, corporeal in the form of stores or not you will not fade because while the Macy's Day parade is built around using the Macy's employees as volunteers for the parade each year and likely wouldn't continue in the same way if Macy's went under it would still be remembered and thus maintain the memory of Macy's itself. The roots that being a cultural icon gives Macy's though allow it to stay around so long.

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A few years ago I purchased a book simply titled 'Limerick' which was filled with simply hundreds of different limericks from throughout history that were popular on a wide spectrum of topics. What were some of these topics you might ask? Well just to name a few there was 'zoophily', 'excrement', 'virginity' and much much more. And reading deeper into it further reveals just how obscene the people of the past loved to be. Just like we do today. See, there is this tendency to associate deviancy, sexualization, and 'general degenerate society' with how we live today, but throughout history normal people, everyday people, have always sworn, spoken ill of their bosses, made dirty jokes, insulted people, etc. Don't forget that the history we are often provided is not only whitewashed or male-centric, but it has also had the contributions of poor people wiped from it and either just forget those who did it or reassign the contribution to a wealthier and more presentable creator. This is something that is done sometimes just by individual wealthy people who want to have these huge, bombastic, public images and so they'll buy companies and patents and silence to build their own reputation. It can also be done by the state or the group at large if they are looking to suppress a group, a person, or a movement, for whatever reason. As items made obscene they are hugely restricted in society and so they are often left out of historical record, or even if they are used there is justification to censor it in writing and on audio recordings. Thus, if not otherwise recognized by the people continuously the item(s) can be easily forgotten as they naturally fall out of use easily as the society inclines people against even more.

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I'm not a scientist or neurologist so I cannot and will not speak to the physical or neurological effects of epilepsy and seizures, but I can speak about their psychological effect on the person experiencing them both short-term and long-term. I was diagnosed with epilepsy back around 2017 when I had 3 seizures in 5 weeks.

Recovering from a seizure is a unique experience. Firstly, you feel as if you've been doing a full body workout for like ten hours so you're already feeling extremely worn down. On top of that though, when you first come back to consciousness and coherence you won't actually remember anything at first. You wake up, confused because you were just doing something else or you were asleep to start and are more tired than when you started somehow. It is the job of the EMT's to check if you are still all good in the head or if you are not acting normally, and when someone asks you to tell them your name and you reach to say it but you can't quite find it, that feeling is scary, and you want to get so angry because you know you know your own name but you can't say it. Finally, you remember your name and spit it out like you were coughing up a golf ball, and this goes on until they are satisfied that your memory is coming back and your brain is working well. They'll ask basic arithmetic or ask you where you are, and what you are doing. Sometimes they'll ask your family members or close friends if you are behaving normally because it is possible for your behavior to be different for some reason.

My epilepsy is mostly controlled now, and my medicine has worked pretty well, but since my diagnosis, I still have had on-and-off seizures. However, my outlook on life has changed, and I think I as a person am quieter, more cautious, and anxious, and that has deeply affected my language, from being more cynical or sarcastic, to literally speaking more quietly in my standard voice. I also feel like I am in a small group of people my age who have a real regular worry about death.

One of the side effects of my meds along with the JME is that my hands shake quite regularly in an almost uncontrollable manner, which means most pictures I take are just slightly shaky, I have to carry liquids carefully, soup is hard to eat, and it just doesn't feel good to constantly have shaky hands at 20. Only recently though have I felt like I have found something that works with my meds and won't increase my risk of having a seizure but allows me to relax more and be less anxious as well as make my hands shake significantly less. It was kinda a sudden realization that I partially had in class today and that is why I asked if you didn't mind me writing about my medical history in a way. It has just been such a huge part of the way I interact with people because for example today I was in a state of jubilation with this realization I've had, but on other days I'm almost in a state of depression because of what happens from it.

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Lyrics to the song: https://genius.com/Wu-tang-clan-cream-lyrics
Listen to the song: https://youtu.be/ecRs1sWZIL4
You don't have to listen to the song but I think it is great music that also beautifully tells the story of the life and experiences of poor black people in the NYC area.

If you are unaware, Wu-Tang Clan is a rap group and their debut album Enter the Wu-Tang 36 Chambers (1993) had a song on it called C.R.E.A.M. or simply read as the word cream. It stands for 'Cash Rules Everything Around Me' and is a song where two members of the group paint a picture of what life was like for them and how seriously they took this phrase.

In the first verse Raekwon first talks of his home life, he grew up in a very violent housing project that was frequently making headlines for the crime, so much so in the first line he calls it the "New York Times side" and which also seems partially ironic as it is immediately following him saying "I grew up on the crime side" and so he makes clear what he means, this isn't the New York Times side as in where they are or the class they represent, but rather the spectacle they talk about constantly, that is his life. He goes on to talk about how when he was young he and his mom moved to 'Shaolin land' now if you listen to Wu-Tang for any period of time you will hear tons of different slang, from 5-percenter and Nation of Islam terms popular at the time, to the unique kung-fu movie slang that Wu-Tang themselves created, in this case it refers to Staten Island, there is plenty more use, reference to and sampling of kung-fu movies from the time. He then talks about his early experience with drug addiction and selling drugs.

The other verse by Inspectah Deck uses more language popular by 5-percenters at the time and also of course as they both did. He describes the world more, cold and connecting that to potential death and incarceration. At first they do the wrong thing, trying to succeed in life selling drugs, and then he says "But I'm still depressed, and I ask: what's it worth? Ready to give up so I seek the old Earth" this is where he talks about being unhappy in his life, but if you didn't know who old Earth is this line suddenly got real confusing. It is a 5-percenter term for your mom, and the next line he says that his mom told him that working hard can help him overcome the heartache and pain. Interesting conversation there about the integration of the protestant work ethic into the African American community is certainly there, but today i just want to say that it is there and it is the point of the song that they all had these lives which beat into them the idea that they have to work hard.
The chorus reinforces this idea by repeating "Cash rules everything around me, C.R.E.A.M., get the money, dollar dollar bill y'all" at the start, in between verses and then to close the song out.

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Do not go gentle into that good night - by Dylan Thomas
First published in 1951 this hauntingly energetic poem reflects on life as death draws near. The poem has, in my mind, three main layers that create the meaning behind it. First, it is a son speaking to their father who is soon to be dead, the son is stuck as the child who sees his father as a hero and as a man who sees him as everyone else, a man, and it breaks his heart to see that image of his father broken, especially in this way, he probably always seemed immutably strong until whatever ailed him was breaking him and that was when he had to recognize reality, so he is wishing him a peaceful passing while also wishing he could stay. Secondly, this is where the rest of the world comes in, the world was fresh out of WW2 when this was written and Thomas and his family were quite poor. In fact he, and several family members would die just a few years later. This reality they were in was in some ways the mood of a lot of people at the time, just trying to rebuild was quite hard, and so the poem is haunted by the idea of death (because it isn't said that a person is dying technically, but that is on purpose, it in and of itself has the same emotional themes of the general population of the time). Finally comes the most subtle part of the poem, its optimism. It takes all the positions and sentiments of the time, and instead of cracking under that pressure the narrator wants to keep going, and though Thomas was not long for the world after this was published he impressed upon this poem that with every second you have got until the dying of the light you need to work hard. I think this is a sentiment that became common post-war, especially once industrial production was up and running again, even if you were still poor people wanted to quickly get back to as normal a life as they could. This poem is about the shifting mood of a post-war culture at the tail end of the industrial revolution and the start of many more technological and scientific advancements. Its popularity is based on the linguistic timelessness of this description.

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Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1952, 1953 Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1937, 1945, 1955, 1962, 1966, 1967 the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1938, 1939, 1943, 1946, 1971 New Directions Publishing Corp. Used with permission.

About Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas, born October 27, 1914, in South Wales, was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination

About Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Because I could not stop for Death-
He kindly stopped for me-
The Carriage held but just Ourselves-
And Immortality.

We slowly drove-He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility-

It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintery sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughtér,
To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds,
That ope in the month of May.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Do not go gentle into that good night - Discover the meaning of Dylan Thomas's famous villanelle about death, with an audio recording of the poet reading his classic poem. This poem was featured in the 2014 movie Interstellar.

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One of the fastest changes of the recent years is the perception of and usage of marijuana. In Virginia for example, we have recently made marijuana legal (first medically and now recreationally legal). Because of this, we can see a massive shift in what language is used around the drug. Now, it is almost entirely either clinical for the medical sense, or in the hyper-capitalist language of a product to be sold by big corporations. We totally skipped the part where there is already established culture linguistically around marijuana, and it is, because of the war on drugs and long time placement as a class 1 drug it was heavily racialized. First we should recognize where the language around it comes from and try to from there empower and uplift the creators of the language around it. As it is, the language is either not being used in the new public eye of the drug or is being used by those not involved in or knowledgeable of the language they're using. This is also seen in the culture in these new dispensaries, essentially whitewashed to a clinical extent, or to the standard smoke shop level that you see in a place where you would buy a hookah or cigars or other smoking paraphernalia. The language I see that does reference the previously established culture is that which is often used to subdue and belittle it in the eyes of the growing number of marijuana users. This will help maintain the racial divide that was there when the drug was illegal, as people will openly talk about their use of it but they won't be as likely to interact with those who use the different terms and such (and this goes both ways racially).

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So, this movie is fascinating in a few dimensions. A dark comedy about the death and fallout of one of the world's most feared men is... an odd choice to say the least. It though, in my mind, does something that a standard film about such an event wouldn't be able to do, it manages to be just as soberingly dark while making you acknowledge the entire time that these are all real people. From a film perspective the choice to not have anyone do a Russian accent, it simultaneously allowed the actors to focus on their fantastic character development and not take the balance of comedy away from the reality, plus it subtly shows off how diverse the USSR was, covering many different countries, *languages*, *dialects*, accents, that were all naturally within it, so the actors all using their native accent actually helped show that. Another interesting angle about this film is that was the reception of it in Russia when it was released. The government openly called it "ideological warfare" and that view was shared by some amongst the public as well. However, there were plenty of people saying that the film should be allowed to be seen as blocking it is censorship (which some argued was exactly part of the point the film was trying to make). There was a movie theatre in Russia that screened the film when it came out (against the ban order of the government) and interestingly those who saw it mostly enjoyed it. "The Russian government said the movie mocks the country's past, but Dina Voronova and Ella Katz - schoolgirls when Joseph Stalin died in 1953 - said they applauded when the credits rolled at the end of the screening in Moscow.
“I liked the film. I never expected to see our former government leaders depicted like that,” said Voronova, 80, a former pre-school head teacher who remembers seeing Stalin's body in an open casket at the funeral." - https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/russia-death-of-stalin-ban-cinema-armando-iannucci-vladimir-putin-soviet-history-ussr-steve-buscemi-jeffrey-tambor-a8178961.html

The film itself can act as a barometer towards how freely a country's people can talk about and even criticize their own government and society. In fact, I would argue that acceptance of political satire of this kind or similar Iannucci-esque political satirizations shows healthy free speech because the first speech to go is that which challenges those in positions of authority. I think seeing that Russia banned this film is indicative of the fact that political speech is not free their despite what their legal code ensures and their government says.

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Page in Tintin and the Blue Lotus in which the process of propaganda to justify military action is shown by the Japanese gov here, model real of actions pre WW2

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Tintin and the Blue Lotus: The Machine of Propaganda

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Tintin and the Blue Lotus: The Machine of Propaganda

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So, this is an almost frame-by-frame recreation of the second Sino-Japanese War. Instead of the minor dispute being over a bridge it is over a train track instead otherwise it is essentially how Japan made the first move of the war and took a big chunk of China. The specific page from the comic book Tintin and the Blue Lotus is of the Japanese government spreading the false news of what happened as pretext for a defensive first strike (whatever that means) and also for "the good of China herself" as the Japanese official says in the bottom-middle frame. Clearly a mask for imperialism this comic page was a clear stance when it came out then, and is still now, a reporter is uncovering these wrong acts by countries and we need to hold them accountable no matter how powerful they are. Herge consistently makes the message to question authority, and how what we've been told is most often a lie. On page 43 when Tintin rescues Chang, Chang is confused because Tintin is European and he thought all white people were bad because of a previous war (The Boxer Rebellion to Tintin or the War of Righteous and Harmonious Fists to Chang, another interesting distinction of perspectives Herge shows us). Further though, Herge has Tintin explain that the beliefs Chang has of white people and the views of Asian people a lot of white people had were largely if not totally wrong. They were in fact based on false foundations and were just lies to begin with, Herge is one of the most prolific comic artists of the 20th century, but rarely do I see it acknowledged just how deeply political most if not all of the Tintin comics are in their messaging.

If you're interested, Herge was such a fascinating and kind man
https://youtu.be/CCIZ_jROYh4
and I find this video about the Tintin movie to be such an interesting look into the author, the impact of the comics, and it all just makes the movie that much more impressive an adaptation of Tintin to the silver screen. In the way that Herge used his comics as a way to examine the meta-languages used by authoritarians to sneak their beliefs into everyday politics (which often led to the war and suffering of the 20th century) I think this youtube video describes the man Herge, and the process that went into making this movie that allows a completion in some way of the notion of a definitive Tintin and Herge being shown on screen.

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The First Place I Learned of US WW2 Internment Camps

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The First Place I Learned of US WW2 Internment Camps

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This is a... tough song to listen to, Kenji is the song of a man who lives in LA in the 1940's just before World War 2 broke out. He lives a normal life, and suddenly it changes, because Japanese planes bomb a military base in Hawaii on December 7th, 1941. Because of that, he, his wife and kids, all of the Japanese people in fact, are rounded up and sent to internment camp. At this same time, thousands of miles away, another group of people, in fact several different minority groups, were being sent to camps. As the song says, in American internment camps you were allowed to bring only what you could carry. If you were as much as 1/16th Japanese you were taken, including children, elderly, and disabled people. To be clear, they were prisoners. Assembly Centers frequently had food shortages and poor sanitation. There were jobs but residents couldn't be paid more than an Army private no matter the job. There were also 10 "towns" set up on Native Reservations (to the protest of the tribes for sure). They were larger and had buildings like schools, post offices, and other facilities. They also had farmland, and some places had factories to manufacture items for them and other prison camps. Because, don't forget they were all prisoners and these towns were all surrounded by barbed wire fences with sentry towers monitoring them and willing to shoot those they even think are trying escape or fight back. I learned a lot on concentration camps and how horrible they were all through my early years of school, but it wasn't until this song that I learned that we were two steps behind the Nazis.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation#:~:text=Japanese%20internment%20camps%20were%20established,be%20incarcerated%20in%20isolated%20camps.
What did Foucault tell us to be especially cautious of? Manipulation of education, because if someone changes what is taught, they can change the truth for whole generations of people. For me, this song brought something to my eyes that I hadn't ever really seen before, a somewhat modern example of something I'd call morally bad. It was the first time I consumed something that didn't tell me America was good, and growing as a kid in post-9/11 America that was very uncommon, so it really got the ball rolling for me in terms of critically examining what I'm taught about the good and bad sides of history.

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The logo of the hockey team the New York Rangers

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So, I'm a hockey fan, specifically a fan of the team the New York Rangers. The whole family roots for them, and they as an organization have a logo and a tradition that is very patriotic, so then what's with the name? I mean, sure New York Yankees, makes sense, the Patriots, makes sense. Rangers? Isn't that like a cowboy or something? Yeah, the name is actually because the first owner of the team was named Tex Rickard, and so an article headline dubbed them "the team was given its name by the New York press, which nicknamed it “Tex’s Rangers” (a play on the phrase “Texas Rangers”)" https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-York-Rangers
So, where did this patriotic image of the team come from? I mean, historically their colors are red, white, and blue, they've had a logo with the Statue of Liberty on it, less than a month after 9/11
https://www.nhl.com/news/messier-donning-fallen-firefighters-helmet-indelible-image-from-911/c-326113192
a huge star on the Rangers was given the helmet of a fallen firefighter of 9/11 from one of his closest friends because he was such a big Rangers fan and to honor the loss that he, the firefighters at large, and the city were all reeling from at the time. I think the mark the team has made on the city and country has made it indelibly connected to some patriotic sentiment.
So, while the name of the team might be in any other situation in reference to a cowboy or something similar, it gets overridden by the huge amount of infrastructure making the team come off as patriotic instead of say Wild West or Cowboy themed. An interesting linguistic split we are able to accept with enough evidence for a certain not just alternative, but very different definition.

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Ohio Senate debate and Metalanguage used by candidates.

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Ohio Senate debate and Metalanguage used by candidates.

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For instance, the first policy topic the article brings up is that of abortion. Here we see that both politicians carefully toe some sort of line and leave their policy prescriptions without true definitions as taking a clear stance right now is likely not going to help them politically. So by being vague enough they don't lose some people who they might be able to win with other things they say. Second, Tim Ryan continues to distance himself from the Democratic party as well as build himself a tougher character by parlaying a disagreement he has with the VP to a critique he made of JD Vance. This thinly layered language was pretty consistent in the quotes in the article.

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Four takeaways from Ohio's US Senate debate | CNN Politics

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The debate between Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican J.D. Vance in Ohio's closer-than-expected Senate contest began with a testy exchange on the economy and quickly devolved from there into a contentious -- and at times personal -- clash.

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My two biggest skills are probably around politics and marketing. I've already done a lot of marketing as design editor for my high school's yearbook and as an intern with a news startup. Politics is the main interest I have academically and is where I seem to excel theoretically. What I think is particularly useful is that the circles of journalism, marketing, and politics all overlap with each other in the way of a three way venn diagram. What do politicians, marketers, and journalists all want to do? Sell you what they are saying. They want you to trust them, to go to them first, and to spread their message. For politicians its to believe their platforms and to vote for them, for journalists its to read them more and to believe what they say, and for marketers its to buy the product and spread the message. The ideal version of any of these is a combination of skills drawn from all of them, as the marketer must have the charm of the politician, the reliability of the journalist, but their own drive to sell the product. So must I try to balance my skills to find my best career path.

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I remember one thing about growing up, my mom is a fantastic cook. In fact, I would always have the best meals for dinner and then get to take them as lunch to school the next day, it was great. A part of me though, always really wanted to try Totino's pizza rolls, and I got to and they were great too, but I still never got to have them at home. I only ever really had them at friends houses. Something I didn't know at the time too was that what was normal for me was not just abnormal for the other kids but unfeasible for their parents. This is fine, but it meant that for me, what was otherwise a dish that was normally "below" my palate was exciting because as a kid I didn't know that and it was tasty so I wanted it. Because where some kids are taught to value that "refinement" that I already had, I was always told that that is not what matters and so I didn't have a class based view of the food I would eat. So I get just as excited for chicken livers as I do chicken nuggets. Interesting how the class effect and placement that food is supposed to have never got to me the same way because of how I was raised.

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Modern Racial Segregation shown through Music

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Modern Racial Segregation shown through Music

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You see - I was raised in a rather protected manner, still exposed to other kinds of people and ways of life - but largely unaware of the bad side of life. Music has been my connection to other lives I haven't lived, as the musical expression of Rap is actually a Post-Structuralist solution to the proposed problem of needing a metalanguage. Rappers create individual meta-languages for each song as well as for albums on the whole. This enables the listener to experience the world as the Post-Structuralist suggests would give the optimal view of the world - a perspective above and beyond the realm of the story being told itself. The album art here is quite literally a depiction of that, the artist has posed numerous different people on the cover to depict the entirety of the story he will tell through the music. Then, inside each song, the production, delivery, backup vocals, and more all work together to make the meta language for the rap itself which sometimes also utilizes metaphors or the like to make the mental picture all the more clear. The Forever Story by JID presents a full and vivid picture of how his life developed as a poor black man from a large Atlanta family. This is just not something I've ever experienced and so being able to listen to the music which presents both the language and meta-language for me to fully understand even when the specifics elude me is something that few do as well as this album.

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Me wearing my Polish Eagle necklace my grandmother gave me as a high school graduation gift

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I think it is important to know all three of my names because it is the coming together of three families into me, and even more little branches of the family into one person. First, we'll start with my last name, Kubicki. My paternal family is the side from where this name comes from, my father's parents grew up in post-WW2 Poland, his mother was born in a Displaced Persons Camp before leaving for a new life in America, and his father believed his own father had died because the Soviet Union had cut off all communication from the outside to their newly controlled land in Poland. When my grandmother left the Displaced Persons Camp with her mother it was on a boat to Brazil, of course, they wanted to go to America as everyone did, but there was no direct passage available. But they were not deterred, they would go to Brazil, then Canada, and from there they would have a much easier time as they had contacts near the border who would help them. That plan never came about though as the ship broke down halfway on its journey, stranded, and with nowhere else to go another boat came along and offered to tug them to their destination instead. That boat was heading for America, and because of that my grandmother's family was able to get to America much sooner and much more easily than expected. My grandfather's father had joined the American side of the war at some point and even moved to America, and he tried to send money or letters when he could but nothing was going through either from the war or the Soviet Union. For a long time, my grandfather grew up thinking his father was dead until suddenly the communication barrier fell and they got a wave of letters from him saying he was working in America and wanted to try and bring the family over, soon my grandfather was able to come over as well. My other two names come from the maternal side of my family. Joseph from my Sicilian great-grandfather and Sargent from my mother's father whose name is Sargent Russell. Grandpa Joe came over as a young man knowing he wasn't going to inherit much back in Italy as he wasn't the oldest son, but they were prosperous enough to have a good life in America. The Russells' have been in America for a long time, at least since around the Revolution. Inside me are even more stories, like that of Grammie Ilsa a Jewish woman who escaped a lot, or the woes of addiction that followed other family members. What I mean to say is that my family is a microcosm of the American populous, diverse in background and skill, wealth and intelligence, and everything else. From my earliest days, I remember the teachings of my family being about inclusion, equality, fairness, and even almost anti-authoritarian (which was not always the easiest to follow as a little kid because those conversations got complex). Then on top of that, I moved around a lot because my dad was in the military, so my experience in life has presented me with one truth that it is never a good idea to have just one point of view or else you will become stale and brittle, unable to adapt to new situations. The book of my family is a wildly branching tree and that should be celebrated because it is the pleasure of good people to do things for which they will never reap the benefits of, to plant a tree whose shade you will never sit under but you know many will. My family taught me that before any school did.