Around the World in Six Days
Back Home, Back to Work, Back to Normal (Sort Of)
I am home, safe, and well. As is mom. That’s the topline for today’s email.
The last two weeks were a whirlwind and today is the first time since May 8 that I haven’t been either on a plane or felt deeply jet lagged.
I got the news about mom’s infection and hospitalization that Thursday morning before school and was on a plane home by 2am. Since then, I’ve had two separate 24-plus-hour travel days, spent long stretches in a recliner beside my mom’s hospital bed, and helped transition her back home for recovery. While I was away, we resumed in-person school in the Gulf. Somewhere along the way, I got ill myself and am now nearly recovered from that.
Upside: While I was back in Tacoma, I mastered the art of babysitting a six year-old while half awake.
But now I’m back on this side of the planet.
On Monday, Senior grades were due and my students took their AP Comparative Government & Politics Exam.
My Juniors took their AP US Government & Politics exams Tuesday.
My World History students are in the midst of a historical Model United Nations debate about the global community’s response to the Hungarian Revolution and Suez Crisis.
We have one and a half days of school until we go on break for Eid al Adha, which marks the end of Hajj.
For the break, in theory, Hope and I are going to Sri Lanka, but I am quietly dreading the idea of getting back on a plane. I am also anxious because the US President seems to enjoy (re)starting wars during Islamic holidays. The last thing I want is to be stranded in Sri Lanka if airspace closes in the region and be stuck teaching remotely from God knows where.
Everything is normal and everything is crazy. These are bougie problems, but they’re my problems none-the-less.
Subscribe nowI was going to forgo a newsletter this week but since so many of you replied to the last edition inquiring about mom and wishing her well, I wanted to let you know she is okay. In lieu of the normal Takes, I want to leave you with two things to read and one to listen to:
I. A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper, was published on April 28. I finished reading it on the flight to the US. It’s honestly tremendous and if you’re even remotely interested in crime or noir, you’re a fool not to check it out. Take it from Take & Typo-er, Z.G.C. “Just finished reading this after your recommendation from the newsletter. Holy shit what a ride.”
I think what Harper is doing in the couplet formed by A Violent Masterpiece and its prequel Everybody Knows is just special.
II. Scrapping the Standards. In the early run of my podcast, two of the episodes I am most proud of were looking into the Northwest Detention Center, a private immigration concentration camp (that language choice is deliberate) located in the Port of Tacoma that began operating in 2004;
The detention center is a blight on the city and the serial cowardice shown by local government regarding the facility and its parent corporation Geo Group is an ongoing act of civic malpractice.
Earlier this month, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights published a report detailing ongoing abuse allegations at the detention center, including claims of sexual assault, medical neglect, and the misuse of solitary confinement. The report also describes how the operators of the NWDC allegedly exploited detainees while obstructing government agencies attempting to inspect the facility.
The report is worth your time, especially if you call Tacoma home.
III. The Most Shameless World Cup. While I was in the US, I ducked into the Moon Yard Studios, home of Channel 253, to record a conversation with soccer writer Charlie Boehm.
The upcoming World Cup is the first time the US will host the men's tournament since 1994 and is an absolute boondoggle. Ticket prices are astronomical, in some instances more than 15 times the prices for the commensurate seat at the last World Cup in Qatar. Mind you that's not on the resale market — that's buying a ticket directly from FIFA.
The State Department has been belligerent around visas for traveling fans: long delays, astronomical fees, and in some cases demands for large deposits as a condition of entry. That’s on top of the police-state feel of entering the country.
Thousands of seats for rapidly approaching matches remain unsold.
It's a perfect storm of ascendant American authoritarianism and FIFA’s embrace of our exploitative late-stage capitalist ethos.
I want to close by thanking those of you who reached out over the last couple of weeks. One subscriber, L.W., who served with my mom in the Army Reserves, read about her hospitalization in the newsletter and went to visit her. She hadn’t seen me since I was probably ten years old. Today, the mother of a former student stopped me just to ask how my mom was doing.
Mom is recovering, and moments like those have been a reminder of how much kindness still exists in the world.