Turned on the news and saw the video of Walter Scott being murdered.

The fuck.

Can anybody send me Eagleton’s article in the Chronicle? I don’t mean the link but the actual article.

I promise a post on the article in return.

In case you have never had two-inch hail hammer on your head as you are running through ankle – deep puddles feeling your carefully done hair and tasteful makeup disintegrating, let me tell you: it’s not a whole lot of fun.

P.S. The title is a pun of my own making.

My friend from Ukraine, let’s call her Basia, is similar to me in many ways. We are both passionate pro-Ukranian agitators, we’ve had a very similar life trajectory, and both made the decision to emigrate at the age of 14. And now we are teaching at the same university and soon, hopefully, the same course. Basia says that one of her grandfathers survived the Holocaust and the other one survived Holodomor.

There is one thing, though, that sets us apart. Basia is as kind as I’m not. So when we got an email from a Russian guy we’ve never met asking us to come to his elderly mother’s birthday to give her the joy of speaking Russian on that single festive occasion, I came to work and announced to Basia, “Did you see the email from that Russian weirdo? The guy’s just the limit! Trying to offload his old mama on total strangers!”

“Don’t tell me you are not going!” Basia exclaimed. “I already agreed thinking that it would be a great thing to spend some time with you.”

So now I’m going to the Birthday of an old lady from Russia.

Basia and I worry that the family might turn out to be Putinoid. I’m thinking of wearing my Ukrainian patriotic scarf to make it clear what’s appropriate in my company. The only problem is that it’s a heavy knit scarf and I might look like an idiot wearing it in hot Illinois April weather.

I also need to bring a gift. Any ideas?

“She achieved great success in life,” a student writes about a character I’d call anything but successful, “because she moved a lot and lived in several different countries.”

While we fret about the erosion of the nation-state by the flows of the increasingly liquid world, the young people are embracing the new reality. We, the members of the older generations, see the nomadic lifestyles which require one to be endlessly on the move, chasing temporary employment as torture but the young shrug off our concerns and discard the concept of a career altogether. Success is uncoupled from professional fulfillment and the satisfaction of building a career is substituted with a search for new experiences. Precariousness of employment becomes an advantage.

And I just erased the conclusion to this post because I don’t want to be an ancient spoil sport.