This is a bad time.
President-elect Donald Trump, who did not realize he was going to have to staff the White House and come up with names for so many appointed positions, is busy finding the most ill-qualified and white-supremacist candidates available to supervise the executive branch of our government.
Controversy rages among our high school students, parents, teachers, and superintendent of schools about whether the constant student protests in the past week are worthy, permissible, or safe. The superintendent, after a few days, puts out this message.
My dry cleaner has to reassure me. "We will be okay," he says. "We will organize." I want to ask him: when? where? Is there a meeting in the back among the racks of shirts? He is there six days a week, twelve hours a day.
Lacking clear organization, I volunteer for everything at random. I go to the PTA meeting. I look up the date of my next city council meeting. I put my name on lists that other people are organizing. I write emails to the principal, other parents, the school superintendent. I sign myself and my kid up for a seminar training women to run for public office. I agree to sell tickets for my kid's school play. I volunteer to make dinner for 45 kids, to be served during dress rehearsal. I drive other teenagers home, give $2 (which is all the cash I have in my wallet) to the guy standing on the median, decide to buy a subscription to the New York Times.
I argue with white Facebook friends about racism. I argue with Bernie Sanders supporters about Hillary Clinton. I argue with a cook in my restaurant about whether Islam is an inherently terrorist religion.
Making pasta salad, as well as a green salad, for 45 people turns out to be a lot of work. It takes about 3 hours, given that I have to boil water for pasta four separate times, blanch broccoli in a giant pot, and do lots of chopping, slicing, and grating. Plus washing dishes. In the end, there were four foil trays of pasta and two big bowls of tossed salad. On the plus side, I managed to make all this food for about $75 in groceries, a good value compared to the catered or pizza dinners that other parents have brought. That is less than $2 per person, and the food is healthy, with lots of vegetables, a little cheese, pasta and a balsamic-and-olive-oil dressing (plus lemon-and-olive-oil for the green salad). My kid said that some students complained it was too healthy. Fortunately for them, due to our current spirit of volunteerism, another parent brought sandwiches as well.
President-elect Donald Trump, who did not realize he was going to have to staff the White House and come up with names for so many appointed positions, is busy finding the most ill-qualified and white-supremacist candidates available to supervise the executive branch of our government.
Controversy rages among our high school students, parents, teachers, and superintendent of schools about whether the constant student protests in the past week are worthy, permissible, or safe. The superintendent, after a few days, puts out this message.
My dry cleaner has to reassure me. "We will be okay," he says. "We will organize." I want to ask him: when? where? Is there a meeting in the back among the racks of shirts? He is there six days a week, twelve hours a day.
Lacking clear organization, I volunteer for everything at random. I go to the PTA meeting. I look up the date of my next city council meeting. I put my name on lists that other people are organizing. I write emails to the principal, other parents, the school superintendent. I sign myself and my kid up for a seminar training women to run for public office. I agree to sell tickets for my kid's school play. I volunteer to make dinner for 45 kids, to be served during dress rehearsal. I drive other teenagers home, give $2 (which is all the cash I have in my wallet) to the guy standing on the median, decide to buy a subscription to the New York Times.
I argue with white Facebook friends about racism. I argue with Bernie Sanders supporters about Hillary Clinton. I argue with a cook in my restaurant about whether Islam is an inherently terrorist religion.
Making pasta salad, as well as a green salad, for 45 people turns out to be a lot of work. It takes about 3 hours, given that I have to boil water for pasta four separate times, blanch broccoli in a giant pot, and do lots of chopping, slicing, and grating. Plus washing dishes. In the end, there were four foil trays of pasta and two big bowls of tossed salad. On the plus side, I managed to make all this food for about $75 in groceries, a good value compared to the catered or pizza dinners that other parents have brought. That is less than $2 per person, and the food is healthy, with lots of vegetables, a little cheese, pasta and a balsamic-and-olive-oil dressing (plus lemon-and-olive-oil for the green salad). My kid said that some students complained it was too healthy. Fortunately for them, due to our current spirit of volunteerism, another parent brought sandwiches as well.
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Vive la resistance.
