I write publicly on Words' End, which posts around here as w0rds3nd. I write here too, but almost exclusively under lock and key. If you want to read my stuff here, please leave a comment and say hi! This is postdated so it'll always be on top, and comments are screened.

I finally caught up on email enough to read the insulting piece of rhetoric that Somerville’s schools superintendent sent to parents about the then-impending walkout. She wrote some platitudes about how proud we are of our students, then generously said kids wouldn’t be marked absent if they only did the 17m walkout, but that they WOULD be if they went to the state house. She also said that if any students in the other schools walked out without being signed out to an authorized adult, their parents would be called into the principal’s office. I sent this response to her, my school principal, the PTA, and a families list for my school. I feel a little like I’m trolling her, but also, grrrrr.

Dear Superintendent Skipper,

I regret only having read your missive now; I would've responded to it sooner. I am disappointed in your stance, and urge you to act differently in the future. There are two reasons for this, which align with your themes of education and safety, though not in ways you may like.

EDUCATION

The students who demonstrated and advocated the State House despite the declared snow day displayed courage, integrity, and deep engagement with the society they'll be living with far longer (one hopes) than any of us will. More than that: their activity that day was formative and long-lasting education. I have no doubt that what they experienced that day will reinforce much of what they learn in their social studies classrooms, and enable them to rightly question other learning from an informed place.

In light of this, promising in advance to mark them absent from school for choosing to participate in civic life in this way was a petty and short-sighted declaration that sends the wrong message. They are smart and have huge hearts; they see through platitudes that are not backed up by real support of their lives and action.

SAFETY

Your primary concern should be not the safety but the education of our students. But safety is important. And yet... you must be kidding us all. I mean... right?

Your email below strongly implies, if it doesn't say so out right, that remaining in school makes the students more safe. I don't even know where to begin. Is it with Parkland? The three shootings in U.S. educational institutions in the last two and a half weeks? The eleven this calendar year? Is it the 295 times the phrase "high school" occurs in the Wikipedia list of school shootings in the United States?

They aren't safe. Some of them are less safe than others, whether because of skin color or because they're queer or women or of unexpected genders, or for other reasons. Legislators have been useless; the kids are collectively doing something about it. To imply that going to the State House, where police presence is hopefully far heavier than it is at the SHS, makes them less safe is, to put it kindly, disingenuous.

AND SO

Stand with them. Do better. As you have them make promises to this country every morning with their hands over their hearts, actively support them in the ways they choose to keep these promises.

I dearly hope that by the time my kindergartener* is old enough to want to participate in this sort of civic action, it will not be necessary. But I'm not a fool; it probably will be — and when it is, and he chooses to participate, I hope you or your successor will provide real support.

-Vika Zafrin, an Argenziano parent

Somehow, in transferring my iPhone to sync with another computer's library, I lost all my contact records. Did I have your info? Would you like me to? If yes to either or both, please leave a screened comment here.

This should be fun!

Please feel free to link awesome people to this post.

Something Something, being a two-family house with folks who know and like each other, are seeking housemates.

Applicable to the entire house: queer, trans, POC, poly and kink friendly. The driveway parking is currently full-up, but there's always plenty of street-permit parking. The financial terms of the rooms will vary based on when the room is filled, and who-all is living in the whole house but would never (unless the rent is increased from the landlord) be higher than $660 and never be lower than $412. That is before utilities. But in good news on utilities, we share one internet connection across the two households. Men/women/both/neither are welcome.

( Details! )

There's a room opening up on August 1st in the other apartment in my house. barodar and dimers would be your apartment-mates.

( Details! )

If you or someone you know might be interested, please leave a comment here. Or contact them directly, even.

[relurk]

Another rare post: besides the feed for my personal journal, words_end, there's now a feed for another blog mindlace and I are running together: okno_feed. The actual blog site is here; and here is the first post, which explains its purpose.

If you decide to comment, remember to do that on the original site and not on LJ. That is: to comment, clicky on the link at the beginning of the post, that leads out of LJ, as opposed to the "post a comment" link.

If you are reading Words' End through its syndicated feed on Livejournal and want to comment, please comment through the link to Words' End, not through LiveJournal. This involves clicking on the link at the beginning of each post, and not the "comment on this" link.

If you do comment through LiveJournal, there's a good chance I won't see it; as there doesn't seem to be a way for me to get automatically notified of comments on a syn.