“Patchy” turned 25 this month; he was a 35th birthday present to myself, born of a crisis of machismo.

While folks from the Encarnación side of the family tended away from body modification, male members of la familia Hachecristo had been inked from time immemorial.

Among my grandfather’s cohort, border-area back-room bar tattoos had faded to amorphous green blotches on leathery brown forearms. These were succeeded in the next generation by WWII- and Korea-era tats, especially the Eagle, Globe & Fouled Anchor of the Corps. My cousin, Jesus Hachecristo, is a gallery unto himself. But I resisted until my sister had two, and my machismo pitched a midlife crisis.

Patchy was inspired by Calico Jack Rackham’s flag, and a novelty Jolly Roger from a Wisconsin Dells gift shop. “No Quarter” is the equivalent cry of “No Mercy” or “Take No Prisoners! “No quarter asked! None Given!”

Kill the bloody bastards.

Machismo Intensifies! Crisis Averted!

The origin of the phrase is contested, but the word “quarter” was likely in reference to providing food and shelter for prisoners, much the same as the English government used to “quarter” troops on the American colonies.  The English, including the colonists, abhorred a standing army, considering it a threat to civil liberty. Rarely were soldiers quartered in anyone’s house, but the colonies were responsible for providing the facilities and the supplies to maintain the troops who were ostensibly there to protect them.

Quartered Troops Protect Bostonians

So abhorrent was this affront to every upstanding Englishman in America that they quit being Englishmen altogether. The Declaration specifically calls out the quartering of troops in its laundry list of King George’s tyrannical naughtiness. And the Third Amendment bans the practice of quartering troops. That’s 10% of the Bill of Rights!

Such was the civilian fear of professional soldiery in our nascent nation, that despite the English, Spanish and French actively in armed contention to steal the same dirt from the same original inhabitants as the US, we would not field a standing army.

Nope, we crowd-sourced our conquests. Hence, the Second Amendment.

“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The people kept the arms because that’s defense on the cheap. They occupied an ever-expanding militarized border zone, parading with their local militia bros after church because no one had invented softball yet.

This naive romanticized view of the citizen soldier, the Sunday Cincinnatus, reached its climax when 600,000 local militiamen killed one another ushering in the birth of the modern army in the Civil War.

The need for the Third Amendment never arose. It’s never been the cause or remedy of a single Supreme Court case. The need for the Second Amendment is also past, because we have a standing Army now, and a Navy and a Marine Corps and an Air Force and a Coast Guard and gawdelpme a Space Force, all with their own tattoos.

Both Amendments are overdue for retirement, as well as several other provisions in the Constitution.

But don’t you dare touch the power of Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal.  Because yes, I am a pirate…

Two hundred yadda yadda yadda

I’m sure she didn’t see that coming. Poor Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler. After years of voting pretty much the way her party wanted to, she crossed a line. I like to think she found her moral compass, but she probably just wanted to keep the Indy and D supporters happy by voting to impeach 45. After all, the rest of the gang would vote no, and give her cover, right? Hell hath no fury like Trumpers scorned. In a squeaker that dragged out over several days, because we have a most fabulous vote by mail process here in WA, she had to concede last night to Joe Kent, an America First anti-establishment former Green Beret endorsed by none other than TFG. The last few weeks before the primary were just awful for anyone watching regular old TV. The ads were absolutely disgusting. For a moment I thought I was back in Texas. The biggest evil music ads were those trying to prop up JHB by showing everyone in the area how deplorable Mr. Kent is. Even the ones tagged “I’m Jaime Herrera Beutler and I approve this message”. Sadly, we will be seeing a lot more of these between now and November.

The D’s got smart this time around and ran ONE candidate, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, auto shop co-owner with an economics degree and working class advocate. She walked away with the first place trophy in our top two dog fight primary. Now ‘all’ we need to do is raise a ton of $ (Kent has about 10 times as much on hand) and GOTV with all we’ve got. I hesitate to be optimistic. Our most excellent candidate the last 2 times around, who knocked on every damn door in the district, or close to it, and held hundreds of town halls IN PERSON (her opponent only musters phone in town halls and the occasional foray into very friendly territory), couldn’t fight the district demographics. I’ll miss her cheery newsletters highlighting fluff while she voted against just about anything that would really help her constituents (she had the nerve to vote against the infrastructure bill, then bragged about money coming to WA). We’ll see how many Rs hold their noses and vote for Kent, how many skip voting, and how many have any sense of country over party. The choice should be clear, but, you know…MAGA!

Oh Honey, Merrick Garland just called TFG’s bluff.  That sucker was cold as a snow cone in the Klondike.

It’s the OK Corrale and TFG blinked.  TFG doesn’t want his troops to see what was taken from his home.

And the good news is that TFG’s lawyers make Alex Jones’ lawyer look like a genius.

My last piece did not have concrete suggestions for how to improve education and how to make life better for teachers. So, I should go through my credentials first. This is my 25th total year in education. I have taught Social Studies and English in high schools and intermediate schools. I have taught in public and private high schools. I was also an elementary counselor for a few years. I’ve spent the last ten years as a special education teacher, support facilitator, and case manager. I haven’t done it all, but I’m close.

1. No more STAAR and any other state equivalent.

As George W. Bush once said, “is our children learning?” The idea behind standardized testing is okay in theory. We want to know if we are teaching the same stuff and if our students are learning that stuff. Using a company to complete that exam is wasteful spending (to tune of well over a billion per state). Not only that, but these tests take four and five hours. This is especially cruel at the elementary level. You aren’t measuring reading skills, writing skills, or math skills. You are measuring endurance.

Most districts have instructional coaches or what we call instructional specialists. They can write local exams for the district.  These tests would measure those same things but in far less time. If I can sit for a test for 30 minutes to an hour then the chances of me concentrating throughout that entire increase geometrically. What most citizens don’t get is how many days we lose to these exams. You have four different days lost to five STAAR exams. You have a mock exam for each one of those as well. That’s another four days. Then, each class has common assessments usually once a six weeks on average. There are six days right there in that particular class. Then, you get the SAT and PSAT. Seniors will take something called the TSIA. Last year we took a field test for the STAAR that lost us another couple of days. Look up and you are losing a month. That doesn’t even count the days where we specifically cover STAAR strategies.

2. Let Educators Write the Curriculum 

For a brief moment let’s ignore critical race theory and issues specifically related to social studies. Focusing on Texas for a second, we have stuff we call Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Each course has over 20 with some as many as 30. How in the hell does anyone expect to adequately address all of those thoroughly in a school year? Remember, we are losing a month to standardized testing. We miss more class time with lockdown drills, fire drills, shooter drills, and all of the other nonsense that normally occurs.

Teachers have been trained to identify those things which we would call “power standards.” In other words, they are non-negotiables that we want every kid to know. Each course will have between 6 and 12 of those a year. Focusing on those allows each kid to demonstrate mastery and people to grow up actually knowing and understanding things. Collectively we know a lot about how people learn. We know what they need to know and what is more trivial. We’ve been trained to do this. Let us do it. You don’t call a carpenter to fix your toilet. You don’t go to a podiatrist to remove your appendix. Politicians don’t know what we do. They may have reading skills, writing skills, and math skills but they don’t understand how you effectively teach this to children. Don’t tell us what to teach. Don’t tell us how to teach it unless you happen to be an expert.

3. Pay Veteran Teachers More

This will be an unpopular opinion, but rookie teachers are fairly compensated. I mentioned this yesterday, but I get less than 15,000 more than a rookie teacher 25 years in. I have a masters degree and a special education stipend that augments my salary. The “steps” between years end up being about 600 dollars a year. When I get to year 25 in most districts I no longer get steps. In short, the difference between me today and me when I was a rookie is night and day. I knew a lot about my content but I knew very little about how to get that knowledge to the students. Furthermore, there is a ton of accumulated wisdom that has nothing to do with teaching directly, but makes me far better at my job.

If a teacher gets a masters in their teaching field I would give them an extra 5000 a year instead of just one. I would double the gap between steps. Teachers normally bail before their fifth year. I’d give bonuses at five year intervals to reward teachers for staying. In short, you want wiser and more experienced teachers. Youth and enthusiasm is great, but we need teachers to stay. They will stay if you reward them with something more than jeans days and breakfast tacos in the lounge.

I know JJ was really disappointed when I left Bitchin’ Betty and the Sequined Backhoes without a marimba player way back in 2007 for the bluer pastures of the Pacific Northwest. But I put all those skills I learned to good use here, including joining an actual marimba band. We even hatched a plot to meet up at the 2012 Convention in Charlotte as delegates, and succeeded in our quest. Anyone who has attempted delegate status knows this is not easy! All my activism paid off in a (surprise to me) Governor’s appointment to the Columbia River Gorge Commission. The CRG is a National Scenic Area. I live smack in the middle of it. But for the next 8 years, I had to kind of back off on my political activities to be one of 13 Commissioners from 2 states, 6 counties and 1 federal agency driving policy and land use for the NSA. Being 2 term limited, I am now free to blab away as I wish. So from time to time I might just grab an open chair at the WMDBS and let y’all know what’s happening here in my neck of the woods, White Salmon (purple), Klickitat County (red), Washington State (blue, baby, blue). We have a few exciting things going on that have made national news, though your news back in Texas is much more interesting/disturbing. I can’t compete with that. So stay tuned for stories about a couple of CD races (I get redistricted back and forth between them) where the two incumbent Rs voted to impeach TFG and got primaried by outrageous cultists. Maybe a story about our problem ‘constitutional’ sheriff, who also likes the national spotlight and is up for reelection. And whatever else I can scare up, maybe even what the heck is the front office doing to my Red Sox? With that, I’m getting to work on the CD3 race, because the incumbent just conceded to a Trump backed crazy.

El Jefe took over the management of the beauty salon when getting out of bed was all I could do and, bless his heart, he continues to be The El Jefe around here.

I asked a few of my real life friends to join in the fun.  Today you met Half Empty, who I have known for many, many years.  He was Mark’s favorite political blogger so it’s great to have him back griping about stuff.

You will also meet Fenway Fran.  She and I go back to the Tom DeLay days when she would sneak into local Republican events and bring me back all the great gossip and stoopid Republican quotes I could use in the newspaper. Like Half Empty, she retired to the left in politics and living locations.

Da Chipster says he will come back and pitch in a hand.

Anna the Geek added a button at the top about Mark’s social schedule. We’ll only keep it up there for a month or so.  She added a comment box so go there so snark away.

It’s still hot as a Cadillac bumper on a Houston parking lot in hell around here.  We finally got some rain last night after two 10 weeks of not a drop. Of course it came with 60 MPH winds and enough thunder to wake up two cemeteries. It’ll be back to three digits next week so pray for us.

Think of it this way: I still plan on working here but I brought in some pole dancers to make it more fun.

Oh, one more thing: Anna the Geek will be updating the website so we may be offline for thirty minutes or so while she does it. If you can’t get on, wait some minutes and then try again.