Clarissa's Blog

There is this Russian society-page journalist (a former journalist, actually, because she has been banned from everywhere including FB for being anti-Putin) who said that she can’t feel close to anybody who is indifferent to the Dreyfus Affair. It’s OK not to know about it but once you do and you aren’t overcome with outrage over the injustice done to Dreyfus, then she can’t be around you.

I feel like that, too, but not about Dreyfus (although I do agree that he was mistreated horribly) because it was a long time ago. I wish it were the Dreyfus Affair for me because that’s a conversation that’s easy to avoid.

Oh, so it’s the same Mueller who investigated Hatfill? The doggy-lover Mueller?

Took me forever to make the connection because I couldn’t have possibly guessed that anybody in their right mind would want to hire him to investigate anything ever again.

Is this really the same Mueller? There was a great episode on Law & Order: CI based on the Hatfill story. It was probably the show’s best episode of all. And it’s the same Mueller? Unbelievable.

The saddest thing about these “revelations” about the Women’s March is that all this drama, all this talk, all this ranting, all this grandiosity led to absolutely nothing whatsoever but a bunch of women wasting a couple of hours by walking around in weird hats. If instead of all this vapid bickering over nothing they had a bake sale and used the proceeds to buy art and gym supplies for the ten poorest schools in the DC area or knitted hats and scarves for the homeless, that would be something.

I know several women who went to the local march in STL and they kept asking why I wasn’t going. But it seemed so self-indulgent and pompous that I didn’t see the point. I liked the anti-war protests of 2003 but those had a clear goal. We were against war. What was the WM against? Dumb jokes about pussies? An electoral result we didn’t like? Made no sense to me.

But it’s no revelation that there is bigotry amongst all groups, including the super-duper progressives.

One thing I’m grateful for is that at least I don’t have to do any grading. All of the work I’m doing is research-related.

Tomorrow I have a workout, then fitness assessment, then a hair appointment, then A VERY IMPORTANT MEETING, and then I’m taking Klara to the dance lesson that’s far (as opposed to the one that’s close and that she’s in right now). All the work has to happen in between these events.

I’m not used to working a lot. I’m not sure that I like it. It’s weird. But that’s the price of doing no work for three weeks around Christmas / New Year’s.

I’m so bored by the second season of Making a Murderer that I Googled the Central Park jogger story, mostly because of the Trump angle. My mind is officially blown. I saw something like this on Law & Order but I didn’t know the details.

“Klara, we are going to the petting zoo. There will be a real camel there. Do you like camels?”

“Actually, I have never seen a real camel, Mommy, so I don’t know. But I would like to see one. I think we should go to the petting zoo. Definitely.”

I find it hilarious that she knows how to use Present Perfect. And “should.”

The downside of this is that at the end of the day I’m completely hoarse and my vocal cords are raw. I’m a teacher! I’ve done workshops on how to protect the vocal cords when you speak a lot! And it’s not enough. I speak all the time! I have to narrate everything that happens to us during the day in the form of a “once upon a time” story several times in a row.

The camel was great, by the way. There was also a llama and something called a zebu.