I want to wish you the merriest of Christmases, the happiest of Chanukahs, and the blessings of Kwanzaa.
Relax. Enjoy friends and family. Don’t get stressed out. Peace.
If only there were peace in the world. And joy.
Let’s drink to that!
Diane
PS: I won’t post anything else today. But I have great stuff in store for you tomorrow and in the days ahead.
I have gone through nearly three years of COVID without getting it. One of my sons called me a unicorn.
Unicorn no more! Thursday morning I was feeling washed out, tired, sniffles, etc., took a home test, and it was positive.
I felt sick on Thursday. Rested and drank water. Had a small fever.
The second day, no fever. Feeling better.
Today, I’m still resting but on the mend.
My illness will mess up plans for Christmas, but I don’t want to infect anyone. It is what it is.
I have taken all the recommended shots and boosters. It’s clear by now that I have a very mild case, and for that I thank the vaccines.
I truly don’t understand the people opposed to being vaccinated during a pandemic. Do they also oppose vaccines for smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, chickenpox, etc.?
I’m glad I got all my shots. Everyone should.
I started this blog in April 2012. At the time, I wanted to spread the word about the dangers that were looming via a coordinated, well-funded attack on public schools and the teaching profession. The blog was my medium for awakening the public and educators.
Each time, I reached one million page views, I would announce it. Page views are recorded each time someone opens the site. Some people log in more than once a day.
I just checked and discovered that the blog has been opened 40.1 million times.
Quite a lot of journalists read it regularly. I am guessing that most readers are educators.
I select articles that interest me and try to keep the site lively. On a few occasions, I have featured local stories shared by readers or by my daily reading of many newspapers and magazines, then discovered that those stories got national attention.
A note to readers: I read every comment.
Thank you for your attention, your time, and your participation.
Here is a message to you and all my friends!
Be happy!
Be kind to people of different religions as well as those who have no religious beliefs!
Welcome the stranger!
Open your hearts!
Banish cruelty, hatred, and bigotry!
Save some time to laugh every day, even to laugh at yourself!
Happy New Year!
In 2013, I visited Cuba with my partner and two old friends. It was legal. It is still legal.
We had a spectacular trip arranged by a Cuban-born travel agent. Her name is Myriam Castillo. You can contact her here:
mcastillo@bespoke-cct.com
She is thorough, efficient, and thoughtful.
We stayed in a beautiful hotel in Havana. We visited excellent restaurants. We had tour guides wherever we went. We visited museums, artists’ homes, and historical sites.
We flew nonstop from Miami. I understand there are nonstop flights now from other cities.
The most exciting moment of the trip for me was when I got the ticket stub that said “Miami-Havana.” After 63 years of non-contact, it was thrilling.
The food was wonderful. The people were welcoming. The sight of 1950s American automobiles, in perfect condition, with leather seats, all in vibrant colors, was fabulous.
Myriam had an agent waiting for us at Jose Marti Airport. The agent helped us check into the hotel. An SUV drove us to places outside Havana.
If you want the thrill of a lifetime, this is the vacation to plan.
As you read this, I am boarding a flight from Mexico City to New York City. I have been here for a week with my partner and our 15-year-old grandson. Two years ago, we planned to take the same trip in mid-March 2020. It was our gift for his bar mitzvah. But the week we were supposed to fly to Mexico City, COVID shut down everything, including our flight and hotel.
We stayed in a centrally located hotel, from which we could walk to several museums. Our first day we went to the National Anthropolical Museum, where we learned about the Mayans, the Olmec, and the Aztecs. We saw numerous examples of their art, which was breathtaking.
Over the course of the week, we visited Frida Kahlo’s house, Diego Rivera’s home and studio, saw the breathtaking Rivera murals on the walls of the National Secretariat of Education. Because of my interest in history, I was especially eager to visit the home of Leon Trotsky, where he was brutally assassinated by a Stalin secret agent. Trotsky was always on the run because Stalin wanted him dead. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo had offered Trotsky refuge, but after his death, gave their allegiance to Stalin.
We toured the home of the great Mexican architect Luis Barrigan. I think my favorite place was the National Museum of Belles Artes, which displays magnificent murals in an elegant Art Moderne space. The building itself is a work of art.
And we visited much much more. Every night we had wonderful meals.
One interesting fact: Mexico City has a strict mask mandate. Most people wear masks outside as well as indoors. When you enter any public space, a guard checks your temperature (your head or neck or wrist).
I leave with a sense of the deep and abiding cultural pride of the Mexican people. They are connected to their past. They have a beautiful culture. The parks are magnificent and carefully tended. The public places are stunning. My grandson had the best bar mitzvah gift ever. An unforgettable experience.
As regular readers know, I have received and posted several comments complaining that I don’t write posts showing “both sides” or “different sides” on Ukraine. They disapprove of my support for Ukraine and my criticism of Putin.
In some cases, the commenters have included links to articles or videos claiming that Putin had no choice but to invade Ukraine because…he felt encircled by NATO, or he needed to protect Russians in Ukraine, or Ukraine is overrun by Nazis, or some policy analyst warned that NATO’s expansion would provoke Putin. Other commenters claim that I should not post anything sympathetic to Ukraine unless I post equally sympathetic commentaries about places where the U.S. brutalized the local population or where other nations are suffering.
Let me explain. This is my blog. It is not CNN, FOX, MSNBC, or a network station. The articles I post are my choice.
My choice is to demand that Putin stop the war that he launched against Ukraine. Stop the killing of Ukrainians and Russians. Stop the targeting of civilians. Stop the bombing of civilian shelters and hospitals and evacuation routes.
I oppose this unprovoked war. Those who excuse and rationalize it are, wittingly or unwittingly, supporting the war. And they are supporting Putin. One comment, which I chose not to publish, claimed that the war was “provoked” by Ukraine. Rubbish. Another said that Ukraine is run by Nazis. Rubbish. Another said the war was created by Russophobes. More rubbish. NATO accepted ex-Soviet satellite nations because they asked to be admitted. NATO didn’t pressure them to apply. They wanted protection from Russia. Ukraine requested membership in NATO but the request was tabled, probably to avoid antagonizing Putin.
The nations of the world should have the right to choose their own government and not to be ruled by a puppet regime. Russia took a sharp turn away from democracy when Boris Yeltsin chose Putin as his successor. He has a long history of killing or imprisoning his critics and competitors. Now he has none, and he engineered passage of a law that keeps him in power until 2036. That’s almost half a century of one man rule. The usual words for such regimes are “dictatorship,” “authoritarian,” “totalitarian.”
For thirty years, the West has encouraged ties with Russia. The goal of the West was to integrate Russia into the global economy and promote healthy relations between Russia and the West. By his invasion of Ukraine, Putin severed the past thirty years of steady efforts to build ties with the West and to turn Russia into a normal nation that does not threaten its neighbors or threaten the world with nuclear war.
I will not post defenses of Putin. If you want to defend his actions, write a letter to the New York Times or the Washington Post. Or follow the tweets of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorne, and the other members of the GOP’s Putin caucus.
One man surrounded the borders of Ukraine with nearly 200,000 troops. One man lied and said he had “no intention” of invading Ukraine. One man ordered the troops and jets and warships to attack Ukraine. One man gave the order to reduce Ukrainian cities to rubble and trap civilians who had no water, no heat, no food.
Putin.
In my view, he is a megalomaniac, an imperialist, a man without a heart or a soul. He is Stalin reborn.
I will no longer post comments defending Putin’s cruel and unprovoked war. I will no longer give space to those who say he was afraid of being “encircled” by NATO. This gives him permission to invade Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, even Poland and Hungary.
I have no obligation to post “both sides.” I don’t post both sides of the campaign to privatize public schools. I don’t post both sides on issues of racism or book banning or other issues that, in my view, are clear cut.
We can debate lots of issues. But I will no longer tolerate defenses of Putin and his war of choice. Please don’t waste your time or mine by posting comments justifying Putin’s war. I will delete them, and you will go into moderation where I can delete them before they appear.
On Saturday, I went to a matinee of “The Music Man” on Broadway. Before entering, every person had to prove that they were fully vaccinated. Everyone in the audience wore masks.
We are used to that now.
What we are not used to yet is seeing a full Broadway musical, in all its glory, with a huge and very talented cast, wonderful sets and staging, and a large orchestra.
Sutton Foster as Marian the Librarian was excellent, as was Hugh Jackman as Professor Harold Hill.
The audience was ecstatic, applauding everything and everybody, every dance number and song.
Make plans to visit NYC in the spring or summer and book tickets well in advance. I promise you a delightful event.
Broadway is the beating heart of New York City, and Broadway is back!
Have a happy, HEALTHY New Year!
Get vaccinated if you haven’t already, although I can’t believe that any reader of this blog would not be double vaccinated and boosted by now. Wear an N95 or KN95 mask. (Here is advice from the New York Times about how to buy high-quality N95 masks online.) My friends tell me that this is the N95 mask used by nurses at Mt.Sinai Hospital in New York City.
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has boasted that she is unvaccinated, but news came out last week that she owns stock in three of the four major vaccine manufacturers. At least we can be assured that she’s not fighting vaccines for her own financial benefit. Greene has repeatedly defied rules requiring masking when in the House of Representatives, and she’s so far racked up $80,000 in fines deducted from her salary for failing to wear a mask. She says the federal public health rules are “tyrannical,” “communist,” “authoritarian,” and “unconstitutional.”
This is the kind of ideological insanity that’s fueling the longevity of the pandemic. If you know people like her, avoid them until the danger is past.
Be careful.
You can’t be happy unless you are healthy.
Be healthy. Be happy.
I want you all with me in 2022.
Happy New Year!
Diane
It being New Year’s Eve, it is not a time for serious thinking.
Thus, I take this opportunity to offer my suggestions for good things to watch on television. Or, to put it another way, things that I really liked watching.
My favorite was the Belgian crime series called “Professor T.” on PBS. Do not mistakenly watch the British version. Professor T. is a highly intelligent, neurotic criminologist who solves difficult crimes. The series is urbane, witty, provocative, and sometimes zany. I enjoyed watching Professor T. think, and I liked his taste in music (mostly Bach.)
The best film I have seen lately is Don’t Look Up. It is a terrifying, sometimes hilarious metaphor for our times. It has a star-filled cast (Merryl Streep as a Trump-like President), Leonardo DiCaprio as a scientist at Michigan State, Jennifer Lawrence as a graduate student at MSU). And many more big names (Tyler Perry, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Ariana Grande).
The story, in brief, is that a grad student observes a giant comet headed directly for earth. A direct hit will extinguish all life on earth in a bit more than six months. She tells her professor and they contact federal authorities,who bring them to D.C. to meet with officials at NASA, the military, and the White House. The White House decides the story should be buried because it might have a negative effect on the midterm elections. They go to the media. The nation’s biggest talk show treats them as less important than a story about a singing star breaking up with her boyfriend. They get low ratings, and the news media decides their story is not interesting; it won’t sell papers. Basically, their warnings are discredited, and no one takes them seriously.
But the President calls them back, says their calculations have been verified by the scientific community, and she deploys plans to destroy the comet with massive strikes of nuclear missiles.
Then the plot changes as a tech genius convinces the President that the comet can be stopped without destroying it, and its minerals are worth trillions. The profit motive brings a sharp change of plans. I won’t tell you how it ends. You should see it. It captures the essence of our celebrity-driven, superficial mass culture, where power and greed outweigh common sense and integrity.
What are your favorites?
Diane Ravitch's blog 