When I began my teaching career fifteen years ago, if I had told you that I was the kind of firebreathing lefty who wanted his country’s soil to be free, its star to fly alone, you would have laughed at me, and I would not have disagreed.

I—who under the dermatitis have just enough olive to my skin to suggest some degree of Mediterranean heritage—spent the first decade of my working life as the ultimate cultural assimilationist.

I listened to Bruce Springsteen and Florence + the Machine, not reggaetón.¹ I told everyone about the weird stuff that happened back home, like the time pro-independence activists stormed the Puerto Rican Capitol while I was in high school, without bothering to investigate that they were protesting the territorial legislature for honoring² a man accused of involvement in several murders and involved with a right-wing Cuban terrorist organization. Unless I spoke to a fellow boricua, my Spanish accent was much more affected and deliberate, with all the letters I had learned to drop.³

There is a weekly meeting at my workplace. It varies in subject matter, but it is always at the same time.

At the beginning of the year, one superior e-mails us the planned list of meeting topics. This list is easy to access. You can print it out, download it and keep it on your desktop, whatever you want.

One of my coworkers, despite having the same access to email we all do (and being fairly capable with technology) semi-routinely asks me what the meeting is this week. After the first time, trying to be helpful, I mentioned that we all have this list and where to find it. That hasn’t stopped the asking.

After putting out that monstrosity of a WBC postmortem, and before I move on to another bugbear of mine, I need a bit of a break.

Therefore, I’m putting together a list of stuff I’ve recently read from people I know, and whom I think are worth reading.

I wouldn’t hope for this to become a regular feature, because my normally-voracious appetite for reading usually hits the wall when things get stressful at work, and this year has outdone itself on that front.

One of these days I’ll get around to talking about things other than the way USians talk about sports and professional athletes.

Unfortunately, that would require them—both the athletes and the other USians—to be normal for a change, and I see no such prospect on the horizon.

Topics in this piece include: racism, US imperialism, suicide.

As I said in the first piece, I’ve made my peace with the fact that I’ll never make a living from my writing.

A few of you, however, apparently took that as a challenge, because I expected to be sitting on maybe a third of the paid subscriptions I do have.

What I’m trying to say is: you’re all the best, and because you’re the best, I had to hurry up figuring out what to provide in return.

Allow me to tack another entry on the unending list of intelligent decisions I make. After starting a brand-new online publication one day ago, I’m now going to go after everyone’s favorite feel-good baseball player on everyone’s favorite feel-good baseball team: Cal “Big Dumper” Raleigh, of the Seattle Mariners.

If you want a quick overview of the situation, you can read about it here, but basically: Raleigh, who is catching for the US baseball team, refused to shake his own teammate’s hand; that teammate, who is playing for Mexico, cussed him out fairly extensively and in two different languages to a number of reporters; and before the next US game, Raleigh addressed it in a fairly vague, boilerplate way, as Major League Baseball players usually do.

That’s not actually what I’m here to talk about. Raleigh claims he told Arozarena beforehand not to be overly friendly during the WBC, and it wouldn’t be the first time Arozarena gets bent out of shape in an emotionally charged situation. Even if I find Big Dumper’s answers on the incident rather evasive, I’m willing to give everyone involved some benefit of the doubt.

What I’m not willing to put up with is a ballplayer wearing this fucking thing while talking to the press:

As it happens, I got tired.

I cannot say, with a clear conscience, that I ever loved my workplace, or the craft I chose to ply. There were nonetheless times where I thought I had at least found some kind of contentment in where I was in life.

Maybe a week into this year, it became clear that there was no more solace to be had. By now, I’ve grown exhausted by how much grace and respect I’m expected to extend to people who do not generally regard me as a human being.

Consider this an initial FAQ for this little publication, which should prove easier to keep current than my other solo projects.