Two years later...

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I haven't been writing here because I'm teaching a night class at Rutgers and we have a class blog that I write in a couple of times a week. It's called Diaries of Jane Err, which I thought was clever, but now it seems like the students must secretly be calling it the "Diarrhea of Jane Err," which is certainly what I would do if I were in their shoes. The class meets once a week from 4:30 to 7:30--really a good time for me because I don't have to miss work to teach, it's only once a week, and the class doesn't go late. My colleague teaches too, but her course meets from 6 to 9 p.m.

Most of the blog content includes suggestions for assignments, or embedded content I want to use in class, so it saves me the time of having to Google something in the middle of teaching. There's nothing really personal, and so I have been trying to write in my 750 words journal, but that's sporadic too. My new idea is to post here, so that the blog doesn't go totally dead.

Every day brings an opportunity for outrage about what's happening with our president, and I was thinking the other day that he's pretty much attempted to create policy against all of the things I care most about--social justice issues, gay/trans rights and protections, the DACA program, women's reproductive health, prison reform, health care for those who can't afford it, global warming, diplomacy with other countries, safety, freedom of speech and expression, human dignity and respect, rational thought.

I was trying to figure out what he could possibly disavow next that I care about. Possibly a mandate to change all no-kill shelters into kill shelters, which he may actually be doing via cutting funding for programs that support animal welfare. Free range, big game hunting?

Bill Moher had this bit on his show a couple of weeks ago that compared Trump to the city slicker who comes to a small town and convinces the country folk that he's going to make great changes that will make their lives better. Everyone knows how that story ends. He leaves town with his pockets full and the people poorer.  That's what's happening now.

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