Tag Archives: exodus

What Does Democracy Look Like? Not likely the Old Testament Thank You

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I attended Occupy Denver’s forum “What Does Democracy Look Like?” this weekend to hear activist scholars of considerable repute throw in their two cents. The first day was a splendid gathering, except where a curated discussion of intentional community lapsed into theology. Yes, a distillation of mostly white reform literature (Fanon was dismissed as wayward) yielded three steps for The Way Forward: Egypt, Exodus and the Promised Land. Yep.

By which he meant: 1) Recognize your enslavement, 2) have the courage to leave all for an uncertain fate in the desert, and 3) seek/develop/discover your own promised land.

Even as metaphor it’s embarassing. Enlightened salvation from Old Testament mythology? No thank you, and for that matter, up yours! Unfortunately the language I used was less restrained, but his religious offensiveness had been compounding. He’d begun his presentation admonishing listeners that transformation begins with the self and so he’d already unmasked himself as spiritual. Worse, a monotheist.

Egypt: I’ll come back to “systems of oppression” in a moment.

The Exodus: a myth, it didn’t happen, even Hebrew scholars now agree with the historical and archeological records.

As to the Promised Land: that was a real estate scheme to backdate a deed, offered as divinely conceived proof of landlordship. The same title is being waived around to dispossess Palestinians today.

But really, isn’t the exodus-to-promised-land malarkey at the very foundation of Western Civilization’s expansion problem?! Are we really all entitled to virgin land? As if earth hasn’t been continuously and fully inhabited since before agrarian civilization, before monotheism was conceived to impose inequity, and justify slave-wages, interest and rent. The craddle of exploitation, that was Egypt.

But can we run from Egypt? The remedy staring us in the face, from which common men are deliberatly destracted, conspiring to emancipate Egypt, is to rid ourselves of the oppressor sociopaths. In practical terms understood more clearly by the better educated before us, we must strangle Egypt’s kings with the entrails of its priests.

I don’t care how academic your garb, when you tell your flock to reapply themselves to the sacred, and your “sacred” is biblical, supposing to transcend nature, you’re a priest.

Thank you WDDLL organizers but I do not go to church and I resent when devious means are employed to bring it to me. Actually those priests are the worst, they’re missionaries! If we’ve learned one thing as we discuss mankind’s break from his mille millenia of sustainable existance, resist the colonizer. Conquored peoples ourselves, we can only wish that indigenous peoples could have given Western missionaries the reception they deserved, and it’s no less true today: fire.

Alas as a result I heard a number of attendees today praise their faith. To each his own, but unhelpful. If you have to evangelize you’re a liability because nonsense is infectuous, especially as education levels recede. Can others entrust you with the battleplan while you commune with the adversary?

There’s a wonderful scene in AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD, Werner Herzog’s dramatic depiction of conquistadors wreaking havoc in the Amazon. Following a coup among the greedy Spaniards, the wife of the abruptly deposed leader appeals to the mission’s priest, as her last resort to restore order. The priest, her ally only moments before, turns on her thus: “Her ladyship must know that the church always stands on the side of the strong.”

Today’s Tom Sawyer

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It’s 4am here and this occurred to me strongly enough just now to have me say it just now. For Vic, Ken and the rest of my Christian friends, as well as Michele, Kathryn, and others who get twitchy when I bring up the Bible.
 
I had breakfast with my friend Vic a little while ago and we had some of this conversation–I mean this conversation. The one we’ve been having if you’ve read any of this stuff around here, or if you’ve been to see me at my Facebook, or on the sidewalk or whatever. Vic is a Christian, and about as solid a practitioner as I’ve ever met. He “works” as a prayer director for one of the internationally influential untaxed Christian pseudo-businesses one might easily enough find scattered around town here in Colorado Springs. Years ago I lived in Lindale, Texas and I used to say Lindale was the buckle of the Bible Belt. Now that some of the big organizations down in Lindale have disappeared due to fraud and embezzlement and the like and some of the people I knew down in East Texas have moved to this very town I sometimes say America’s waistline has risen with age and the buckle has found a home in Colorado Springs.

Anyhow, Vic is an affable guy and a good friend and we had a good time over our platesful of arterial lubrication such as we Americans like to do at breakfast. He said he had read some here on these e-pages–I aaalmost cringed because of a certain propensity of mine. Then I remembered one of the axiomatic rules I’ve taught my kids since they started picking up English: “There’s no such thing as a bad word, only bad timing.” It’s time for this.

Vic said he found some of the thoughts he’d come across here, “interesting,” and mused that I had a bone to pick with “organized religion,” which is true, but hasn’t really come up at hipgnosis just yet, I don’t think. I cringed a bit at having utilized terms like “motherfuckah” while discussing a Bible tidbit known as the Beatitudes from a longer passage known as the Sermon on the Mount. It’s one of those axiomatic rules for lots of Christians, and for many who’ve never set foot in a Christian edifice as well. One finds the passage, (from the book of Matthew, chapter 5, in the Bible, if you’re interested), hanging on wooden plaques and the like in people’s living rooms and over their toilets and chapel entrances all over the world, and I suppose in every tongue still in print. I felt a twinge of embarrassment at the time that I get now and then from writing strongly about such grand subject matter knowing well that I’m no saint myself. So I brushed my way by that one at the time, and we went on with breakfast, and with other portions of the Conversation. That’s why this is for Vic at the top of the page, not ’cause I mean to point him out as a prime exemplar or anything.

I have lots of Christian friends, and I often claim that very appellation amongst them, (though not so often amongst the “Romans”); some of them may now think of me as shooting my own foot as I continue. I also have friends that are occultist dope fiends. They’ll find this bit rather more amusing, I expect, but I’ll implicate myself with them too, when I get a round tuit. This is not about organized religion–it’s personal, you see, and directed at people I know, among others including myself where it applies, by which I mean, “where it applies.” Not, “where it applies unless it’s uncomfortable to apply it there like Mercurochrome or something.”

Christians are full of shit as a defining point–the idea of Christian full-of-shitness is all over the New Testament. Many if not most of them have not the merest clue about their own doctrine and those that do spend hours and hours at intricately complex and totally reducible discussions about irreducible complexity and such while ignoring the business of Love so central to their own foundations. (Recall my comments about pseudo-statements now, if you will). One of the so-called Ten Commandments reads, “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain,” in that poetic old Frank Bacon English I love so much, (Exodus 20:7, if you give a damn). I’m not gonna dig out a Hebrew lexicon to make this point, and some translations say “misuse” or something instead of “take…in vain”. Whatever. You Christians quit tapdancing and think about this.

Just about any Christian will get at least a little uncomfortable if you say, “God damn it.” There are injunctions in their doctrine warning them away from curses, as well as oaths, unpiloted tongues, and “coarse language”. They don’t so often know the difference and figure this sort of thing for “taking the LORD’s name in vain.” Think about this: When a woman marries a man in most contemporary societies, she takes his name, though this is no longer so mandatory as it had been given the slow and incremental abandonment of the notion of women as property in vogue these days. If a woman, say, marries some patriarchal dude and then goes to work for some pimp on the side, she’s taken Dude’s name in vain. So when Christians do their little tapdancing around points in their own bedrock supposedly established by Gawd Himself and endorsed by His Only Begotten where they’ve not-quite-deliberately, (that’s a dance move called an NQD in the studios, BTW), failed even to drill for pylons, they join the Golden Calf Party, and according to their own lore will be consumed in the fires as they fall through the very fissure in that bedrock I describe here now.

This is the same sort of thing going on when a guy zips up his fly after reading about turning the other cheek and steps out to shoot his quota of Afghans for the day. Or votes a “hawk” into office at his 8-year-old’s school assembly room. Or works up a smokin’ hot head of steam about the crackhead that broke into his garage to feed a real live demon that lives in any crackhead’s pocket and gets real hungry and cranky, (snicker), when its belly is empty. And practicing the sort of bullshit Christianity that allows for this sort of Gene Kelly move is like sailing down the mighty Mississip’ on a flat Tom Sawyer raft made of the concrete that you ought to have been using to build your foundation instead. You’re already at the bottom of the river and the Water of Life is flowing right by your drowned bones.

I’ll be danged…the Sun is coming up over a fine Colorado Sunday morning and I’ve just come to wrapping up a genuine sermon, complete with brimstone. Who’da thunk it?

Pay attention Christian: The World doesn’t hate you because you bring Jesus up all the time. It hates you because you sully a beautiful thing. It hates you because you’re an abject hypocrite, the worst variety of an asshole! And they can smell it, even if they can’t articulate the thought. And none of this is wrong; the fact that it’s coarse is a separate matter. I may have blown my disguise for some…it’s ok, I’m still pretty clear with my own notion of where I stand, and this is for you at least as much as it’s for my own amusement. To paraphrase Gandhi, “I’d be a Christian if it weren’t for the God damn Christians.” That nor any of the above has nothing at all to do with whether I’m actually a Christian or not, nor does it have to do with “religion”, organized or otherwise. It’s about that personal relationship you guys keep talking about. It’s dysfunctional, Yo, and it’s up to you to straighten yours out while I worry about my own.

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

Colorado Misremembers Nine Eleven w/ help of Zionist GWOT propagandists

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Colorado Remembers 9/11 sponsored by Counter-Terrorism Education Learning LabWell looky who’s the primary sponsor of Denver’s 9/11 misremembrance: our scaremonger friends at THE C.E.L.L., the Zionist funded terror indoctrination center where you can subject yourself and your kids to the psychological trauma of a bomb attack, because the only fear they have to peddle is fear itself. We’ve covered the odious CELL from its start, whose billboards helpfully warn Denver that terror can happen to anyone, any time, any place. Formerly the “Center for Empowered Learning and Living”, now they’ve dubbed themselves the “Counter-Terrorism Education Learning Lab.” Redundant much? It’s obvious that the GWOT drummers would make a last ditch effort on 9/11’s final hurrah. When’s the next big anniversary? 2026? They’ll be the Crow-Eating Liverspotted Lepers by then. Besides trying to keep Americans motivated to kill Muslims to preempt terror at home, The CELL has another motive to spread fear. Israelis are beginning to bail from Zionism, in particular from the Judification of Jerusalem, because the constant fear of violence is wearing on them. One strategy to stanch the exodus is to make fear of terrorism universal, especially in core Jewish population centers like Denver, Chicago, NYC and LA.

Viva Palestina convoy to arrive in Rafah NPR fails to name it, or mention the Gaza Freedom March

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Viva Palestina convoy to arrive in Rafah NPR fails to name it, or mention the Gaza Freedom March

viva palestina route el arishAfter endless impediment, not the least of which was a sudden Israeli naval exercise to block its path, the Viva Palestina aid convoy appears finally about to reach Gaza. Permission to enter has been granted, although last week Egypt reneged on the okay it had given to the 1,400 strong Gaza Freedom March. NPR had a reporter at the Rafah border crossing, but didn’t mention the aid convoy until 1/3 into the report, and then not by name, and never mentioned the New Year’s Eve march at all. As well, NPR referred to the besieged prison state as an “enclave” whose borders were forcibly closed, “understandably,” when Hamas “took over.”

Here’s the opening of this morning’s report. My favorite part? Two. First the interminable sportscast-lke intro, a beautiful day in Fenway Park, etc. Then, hesitation as the reporter explains that the border is opened to let Palestinians out, and um, sometimes back in.

Steve Inskeep: “This is a rare day in a Palestinian enclave known as the Gaza Strip. A border crossing opened today, which is rare because Gaza is surrounded by Israel and Egypt and both have kept the crossings closed for weeks at a time over the last couple years. Today people and supplies have been allowed to move and NPR’s Peter Kenyon is at the border crossing of Rafah on the Egyptian side, Hi Peter.”

Peter Kenyon: “Hi Steve, how are you?”

SI: “Okay thanks. What have you seen?”

PK: “Well it’s a beautiful sunny day here, a little bit windy but a bright blue sky, and I’m at the actual crossing point. The black iron gates are slowly swinging open and closed from time to time, letting Palestinians out into Egypt or uh, sometimes back in, people who need to get home. Now this is a very limited opening, not any kind of a max exodus.”

SI: “Is this an opportunity to move supplies in addition to people?”

PK: “It is. In fact there is an aid convoy that has endured quite a few setbacks that has now finally arrived in the port of El-Arish. That’s about twenty-five miles away and that is expected to come as early as today, possibly tonight, there’s some last minute logistical difficulties. It’s a British convoy led by the outspoken member of parliament George Galloway. And they have finally arrived and they do hope to get in.”

And that’s the extent of the coverage of the aid convoy that has been winding its way toward Gaza for the last month. No mention of “Viva Palestina” or organizations behind the effort, or even what their difficulties have been. The final “logistical difficulties” to which the reporter alludes concern Egypt’s sudden stipulation that aid consist only of medical supplies. Check with York to Gaza, the Reading Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, the Sitch, among others, for the final updates.

Meanwhile the BBC has pictures of conditions in Gaza.

While the Gaza Freedom March was kept contained in Cairo, Egypt was simultaneously stopping the Viva Palestina aid convoy from entering through Aqaba. Ultimately the convoy was forced to circle Israel and return to Syria, where it had to ferry its vehicles on the Ulusoy-6 from Lattakia to the Egyptian Port of El-Arish to reach the Rafah border crossing into Gaza.

Little East district of Colorado Springs

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Bijou Street Asian district between Tejon and Cascade Avenue
I’m already months late in mentioning a new addition to downtown’s ethnic fare. It’s an Afghan restaurant called RUMI’S KABOB, in the location of the old Persian Grill. Rumi’s joins the Everest Nepal Restaurant, the Taste of Jerusalem Cafe, the Pita Pit, Everest Tibet Imports, and the Hookah King, to define Bijou Street’s LITTLE EAST.

Rumi’s lunch buffet offers your best introduction to Afghan cuisine. Here are the fundamentals: Challau, a boiled rice baked with cumin seeds; Daal, lentils; Sabzi, sauteed spinach; Banjan, pan-fried eggplant; Kadu, baked banana squash; and Sheer Birenj, rice pudding seasoned with cardamom. For a crack at deciphering an Afghan menu, two chief curries are Kourma and Lawang. Personal recommendations: for starters Aushak, the Mantu entree, and Jalabi for dessert.

These words would seem as strange to us as items on a Vietnamese menu, another land from which Americans returned without any real sense of the language.

Without probably even meaning to, the block of Bijou between Tejon and Cascade Ave is becoming the city’s vibrant center. Besides Starbucks, it boasts thoroughly functional stops like Gertrude’s House of Hair, now expanded to a spa, Bargain Comics and Bijou Tattoo, and downtown’s only convenience store, the Bijou Minimart. And what is any SW city street without Mexican food at 3 Hermanos? On floors above you can Jazzercise, or attend the region’s smokiest AA meetings. All this, and still a half dozen retail spaces are vacant, awaiting investment in Colorado Springs’ cultural mecca.

I nearly forgot to mention the alley between the Saks and Majestic buildings, off of which lie the Rubbish Gallery, the Modbo, and the eternal speakeasy, 15C.

As the exodus gateway to the Bijou Bridge and Interstate 25, the block offers weekday commuters a briefest taste of urban gridlock. What an additional metro thrill if the city erected an archway, like Chinatown’s famous gate, to distinguish the attraction. What a metropolis we would seem to become, if there was a distinct ethnic identity inside and apart from Colorado Springs that wasn’t Anglo.

Israel has always been genocidal

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Israeli and Palestinian sides
Zionist puppet Hillary Clinton declares she will NOT talk to Hamas. So why the Hell is she going to be Secretary of State, again?
 
UN President Accuses Israel of Genocide.

Neo-Nazi Israel planning to demolish hospitals in Gaza.

Nazi troops have already massacred over 1,000 people in Gaza.

More Jewish protests against ZioNazi war crimes in Gaza.

Israel preparing to nuke Iran before Bush leaves office next week?

The Bible is a handbook of genocide. After the exodus, God told the Jews to go into the land and drive the natives out, and to kill every man, woman and child who remained. This is beyond dispute, it is right there in the text. So, one must come to one of two conclusions, either God is a genocidal maniac, or the book is a lie written by genocidal maniacs, to excuse their crimes. Either way, Judaism exists because of genocide, and what Israel is doing in Gaza is just a modern recurrence of what the evil they brought to the region over 3,000 years ago. They believe that they are the only people on the planet who matter, and anything they want belongs to them. No wonder the world keeps driving the Jews out.

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.

Enough. It’s time for a boycott. By Naomi Klein

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Jan 14 notes, thomasmc.com.

i have no tribe dot com slash lineage

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iHaveNoTribe.com is a stateside effort for ex-pat Kenyans to renounce their tribal ties, or give it the old college try, to set an example for their friends and family (and tribe!) back home. The new refrain being: I am a Kenyan. Valiant, but what does it mean? At NMT we know something about tribe.

It sounds good, doesn’t it? To cast off old-fashioned family ties, vestiges of biology, the roots certainly of bigotry and xenophobia. But blood ties are the only bonds we can know without being taught them. Familial bonds are part of our inherent biological imperative, to procreate, to protect the prospects of our progeny, their interests being synonymous with ours. It goes without saying, doesn’t it? We look after our own.

As our bloodlines spread over greater numbers, we have to be reminded who to consider our own. Higher ideals, often religion, would have us see all of mankind as our own. Subsets of race feed our need to recognize ourselves in others. Further subsets collect nationalities. National feelings of fraternity become patriotism. But is that natural at all?

Where we are led to believe to think about others as ourselves, usually requiring sacrifice of the individual, is for the collective good. A collection of someone’s.

In the case of Kenya, the subjugation of tribes would benefit the larger group, the collected population of the state. It’s become civilized tradition, precursor to globalization, to put country before traditional division. But what is a country? In Africa in particular it’s a colonial apportionment of land based on what territories the western explorers were able to conquer and hold together. Or it can be the subsequent holdings of whoever was the last ambitious chieftain. In either case, they are combinations of majority peoples interwoven with minorities, tribes on the rise landlording over those on the wane.

The directive to ignore tribal differences would seem to serve mainly dominant bloodlines. Having reached beyond its own dominions, an expanding tribe needs to fold the minority neighbors into its ranks to populate and work the extended lands. The common good being as a matter of fact the leadership’s prosperity.

Tribes were the original sustainable paradigm for land stewardship before societies needed a system of ownership to support non-productive hierarchies. Tribal claim to land was determined by who could hold it, usually directly related to how much of its resources you needed. Native Americans tribes protected their territories based on their number. Civilizations brought the fat cats who drew more than their share. These included the priests, and thus the need to explain that the administrators of peoples were your extended tribe.

Scotland used to be divided into clans, large extended families which inhabited the moors and highlands. Land wasn’t owned, clans grew or shrank based on the aptitudes of their chiefs, and borders adjusted accordingly. When the English invaded, they divided the lands and introduced ownership. Clans were rendered obsolete when the English landlords discovered they didn’t need farming labor. They discovered that raising sheep netted a bigger profit than farming, with fewer workers to feed, prompting the exodus to the industrialized cities.

Tribes that might have stood up for their indigenous rights to land and heritage folded for the greater good of Scotland, owned by people who were not by any measure of their tribe.

How far should man relinquish his nature? I have no tribe is a repudiation of lineage and ancestry. Will I have no mother be next?

Why not divide Kenya into states based on tribal boundaries? Redraw Africa into tribal regions instead of the remnants of colonies. The difficulty comes from convincing the tribes at present accustomed to living off the fat, with few remaining ties to real land. Elsewhere these are like the Sunni of Iraq, and the Tutsi of Rwanda.

Bump Clubs

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This one is good for when Others start chanting about how united the people were in World War 2, and everybody did his part for the War Effort, Bravely and Nobly, sacrificing all without complaint For The Duration.

In Detroit, where there were suddenly lots of jobs because of two factors: the men were getting drafted and the Military were buying up supplies, machines were the focus in MoTown at the hour.

People often wonder, (and this comes in to the thread of thought a little later) if things were so very bad in the South for blacks, why didn’t they just leave? The promised land up Nawth wasn’t as bad as the Southroners now was it?

The answer: no really available jobs. Escaping the Jim Crow south was not really an option, because what do you do when you get there? Starve?

But with the war, things changed on one front, there were suddenly not enough people to fill the jobs.
So an exodus of sorts, to the factories and foundries of the Promised Land.

Funny thing about a war, the government has to maintain xenophobia at a fever pitch, in order to keep the people hating the Enemy (wish I could write sound effects like crashing thunder, and a basso reverberation on the end of the Enemyeeeeee……) they had to be made to hate anybody different. Which isn’t so hard to do.

There is a distinct shade of Katrina in all of this.

The Government put up posters, everywhere, Why We Fight, Know The Enemy, Loose Lips Sink Ships, Lucky Strikes Green has Gone To War! (the last was kind of a stupid advertising exaggeration. The red dye they used in making the little target on the front of a pack of Lucky’s was strangely, a chemical which was used in making Olive Drab green paint. So the Army hogged the supply, Lucky Strikes parent corporation changed the color For The Duration, and the cigarette manufactures also hogged in with giving away in every box of C and K rations, a box of five cigarettes. Which they had lost their Far East and European market for anyway. Capitalism at it’s best)

There were posters the writers of which cynically called Know Your Gooks, telling the differences in facial structure and speech patterns between Chinese (good Gook) and dirty filthy sinister Japanese. MIND YOU the phrases in the past sentence WERE NOT MINE.

So, naturally, assisted much by the unnatural provocation of warmongering, there was resentment amongst the Good People of Detroit, directed against these people coming up with a strange accent, almost a different language, a radically different appearance, strange customs and who had a trained distrust of Whites.

And a lot of Southern Whites, who had shared the poverty of the south with the Blacks, just on the other side of the tracks. Sharing in a separate Apartheid kind of way.
And many had been told all their lives that the blacks were the reason for the poverty of the South.
Like so many now tell the story that Mexicans are the reason for the economy being so poor nowadays.

Which culminated in Race Riots. When people speak of the Detroit Ghetto Riots they usually mean the ones in the sixties. These were like 20 years earlier.

One of the myths spread around was that Blacks were deliberately and in an organized manner provoking whites by bumping them. You know, like when you get on a bus or train or trolley, and actually physically contact another human. You get 50 people jammed onto a bus made for 30 and somebody is going to be touching.
There were even whispers that the Blacks had formed Bump Clubs, and were keeping score on how many whiteys they bumped.

Kind of like now when you ride the bus and a couple of Spanish people will be talking to each other IN SPANISH and somebody will glare at them and say “They’re talking about us, you know they are”.
If you try to speak logically to this, by saying “Oh, you speak spanish, then, What exactly are they saying?”

“well, I don’t have to learn Spanish, they need to learn English, they come up here and live free and refuse to learn the language”

And it was that type of thing, the creation of the rumor of Bump Clubs, which was a spark to ignite a smoking smoldering pit of hatred.

So much for the myth of Unity. Shot down by the Myth of The Bump Club.

So when somebody mourns for the Everybody Rally Round the Flag days of world war 2, look him straight in his beady little eyes and say “Bump Clubs”.

It might not serve to educate him, but it will keep you from losing your mind. Sometimes it helps to focus.

CSAP.com

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Stamp out CSAPYay! The CSAP scores were published last week and we the public are able to assess how our educators are doing. I am exceedingly glad that we have a single test that tells us everything we need to know about our children. Really takes the monkey off my back.

In my district, every one of our elementary schools achieved one of the top two marks: (1) Excellent or (2) High. This should be a cause for celebration. But it isn’t. My children are at a school achieving the embarrassing High mark. This has happened for the past few years and has caused a mass exodus from our school to the Excellent schools. Children are receiving a much better education there, no doubt. In return, we receive many out-of-district children which, like it or not, causes a further slide in our scores.

The funny thing is that my children were in the Excellent school for 8 years and I felt that they were receiving an inferior education there. Lots of control. No enrichment. No affirmation or fun or freedom. I forget. Where on the CSAPs do they measure musical talent? Artistic genius? Creativity? Vision? A high EQ, Emotional Quotient, which psychologists recognize as the true measure of future success? Oh, that’s right. Nowhere. Monkeys, take your number 2 pencils and fill in the circles.

The CSAPs remind me of Match.com. Newly divorced, my friends convinced me that Match.com was a great way to meet cool guys. Reluctantly I put together a rather sarcastic profile, no picture because I felt that a response would indicate a certain level of bravery, and waited for my dream guy to find me. After a few weeks, I started corresponding with someone who seemed super groovy on paper. Athletic, outdoorsy, humorous, intelligent, financially secure. Eureka!

Against my better judgment I agreed to meet for dinner. Oh boy. I could tell within 2 minutes of walking in the door that a paper representation of this man had given me an incomplete picture of his true personality, to say the least. By the end of the night, I was holding his head in my lap, stroking his hair as he sobbed his way through stories of his schizophrenic sister and his abusive father. With my free hand I searched my purse for a razor blade or a hallucinogenic mushroom or a flask of Jack Daniels or anything else that might comfort me, but to no avail. I am happy to report, however, that he finished up the date not with a kiss, thank God in heaven, but by giving me a Scottish tam with fake fur hair attached. A downpayment on a future date he said.

Do I have a point here? I think I do. It’s that nothing real or complicated or meaningful can be reduced to paper. To a score. CSAPs don’t measure true genius, family relationships, athletic ability, talent, the condition of the mind or heart. They don’t measure the capacity to learn. They don’t measure the brilliance or compassion of the teacher. They measure nothing except a child’s ability to regurgitate a head stuffed full of useless information. They tell us nothing more than a rat walking through a maze tells us. Nothing more than a carefully-worded Match.com profile tells us. Both should be taken with a very large grain of salt.

In case you were wondering, I still have the tam.