Since the Nanny Project fell through, I immediately started implementing another action plan. I deal with everything through making plans. As long as there is a plan in place, I feel like I’m in control and have no time to waste on bemoaning anything.

Plan #2 is looking into local day cares. Klara and I already visited one today and we are going on a tour of another one tomorrow. This Day Care #1 has in its favor the fact that a friend’s granddaughter has been attending it since she was 12 weeks old, and she loves it. She is the cutest, brightest, happiest 3-year-old girl I know in this town, so that’s a plus.

When I ask the girl’s mother about this day care, she always tells me that, “It’s the most expensive one. Expensive! It’s expensive!” And yes, at $309 per week, this is expensive not only in our region but pretty much everywhere. They don’t do part-time care but said they don’t mind me bringing Klara in only twice a week, as long as I pay. They also don’t mind me coming in during the day to play with Klara.

I have no idea what the explanation for the high price is and I don’t much care. They were telling me something about their educational program but I tuned out. I’m a walking educational program myself, so what do I care about their educational programs? I mean, it’s good they have it but whatever.

One thing I didn’t like was the food. Of course, food is not that relevant to Klara now, but what they feed the toddlers is way too American for my liking. And I wouldn’t mortify my kid by giving her special meals that would make her feel different. (Unless she asked me to do that, of course.) But hey, crappy food for lunch twice a week is not that big of a deal.

We don’t know anybody at Day care #2 that we are visiting tomorrow but it’s located in a really beautiful wooded area away from the highway.

⚀ White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg 

⚁The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry by Ned and Constance Sublette

⚂Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer by Arthur Lubow

⚃Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives by Karin Wieland

⚄Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First by Frank Trentmann

It would be weird if I only criticized other people’s plans without wondering what an alternative could look like. So of course I have a really good plan that leaves the harmful plans by Bernie and Hillary in the dust. 

My plan’s don’ts:

– don’t rely upon the goodwill of state administrations;

– don’t micromanage professors. 

My plan’s dos:

– “give people free money.” Bypass the state government altogether and simply give the money you were going to give to the state in the form of grants to students.

A student gets a tuition bill from a public university, sends it to a federal agency, the bill gets paid in full. This will improve enrollments at public universities because people will choose to go here if tuition is paid. Money will go straight to colleges and won’t be hijacked by Rauner and Co on the way there. 

If the middleman often acts in bad faith, simply bypass him. Why is that so hard to figure out? Drop the infuriating phrase “provided that the state government cooperates”, and establish direct contact with the people you want to help. And don’t micromanage professors.

Now tell me if this plan isn’t better than the other two. 

I texted my husband, “Please buy alcohol” and he immediately called back to ask, “Oh God, what happened? What’s wrong??”

When did I become this person?

P.S. He did buy the alcohol but I keep forgetting to drink it. It’s like I’m not even me anymore.

Hillary’s college plan is not as bad as Bernie’s- because it’s hard to come up with anything quite as harmful as Bernie’s scary fantasy – but it still spells devastation to universities such as mine.

The plan will work great for states that are guaranteed to have Dem governors forever and ever. If there is the slightest chance of a Republican governor getting elected, Hillary’s  (and Bernie’s even more so) plan will lead to universities like mine (ULMs) closing their doors.

At this point, the only thing that keeps us alive is our right to charge tuition. Once that right is gone, any Republican governor of Rauner’s or Brownback’s ilk will easily kill all of the ULMs in the state. He’ll start negotiating with the federal government about the size of the state’s contribution vs the amount of federal grants and while the negotiation drags out, ULMs will have enough time to expire. It only takes a semester or two at most.

Right now we are caught in the battle between Democrats and Republicans and are only managing to keep our doors open thanks to tuition. Take away tuition, and any such “budget impasse” simply kills us. Then students will really pay no tuition because there will be more public universities to pay it to.

Other than that, Hillary’s plan is not as ridiculously dedicated to micromanaging professors as Bernie’s, but it also has some vague wording that makes it clear we’ll be pushed towards expanding the administrative bloat, introducing standardized testing, and multiplying online courses at the expense of real teaching.

The only good part of the plan has to do with helping people pay down students loans. That part makes sense. The rest is really horrible and I hope nobody actually tries to implement it because I don’t want ULMs to die just yet.

So to summarize, Hillary’s college plan means death to ULMs while Bernie’s plan means a humiliating painful death to ULMs. 

The great German philosopher📃 Ulrich Beck died before completing this book. His wife and colleagues had to finish it based on the author’s notes and conversations. As a result, the book ended up being very repetitive. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though. If I had to choose a book by Beck to introduce students to his thinking, I’d pick this one because its repetitiveness will help Beck’s ideas really to get across. 
Since the collapse of the nation-state model is inevitable, should we drag it out in order to soften the impact or should we accept the inevitable and move on? Ulrich Beck insists that we have no time to waste because the longer we hang on to the illusion that the nation-state is salvageable, the more time we waste instead of solving the problems of the new world order. The most pressing problems of today – climate change, for instance- will only begin to be addressed when we relinquish the nation-state illusions.

Ulrich Beck’s posthumously published volume is an impassioned plea for us to stop hiding from the erosion of the nation-state model behind right-wing fundamentalism, ultra nationalism or vapid fantasies about bringing back the good old times and to start creating structures of action and collaboration that will transcend the porous national borders just as easily as floods, hurricanes, radioactive clouds, viruses and terrorists do. We can’t allow the agents of our risk to travel faster and lighter than we do.

📃In Europe, Beck is known as a sociologist, just like Zygmunt Bauman. But a sociologist in Europe is nothing like the useless idiots who call themselves sociologists in the US. Beck and Bauman are the world’s leading thinkers, philosophers, theorists of the nation-state and not the kind of pseudo scholars you can find in American departments of social sciences.

I don’t know how anybody can think this is a spiral if the image very clearly shows circles.

What are you seeing? Circles or a spiral?

The nanny disappeared. On Friday, she loved the job, loved the baby, was super happy, everything was great. And today she didn’t show up. No phone call, no text message, nothing.

I’ve scheduled tours of local daycares, but this is making me very sad. I don’t want any comments because this is a sensitive subject and I’m honestly truly upset about this.

Question. Why is the taxpayers’ money being wasted on body cams if they are never on when shootings actually happen? Is the point of those cameras to exist in a switched off state or to record what is going on?

A group of over 500 women from Venezuela, desperate because of the food shortages in their country, broke through the border between Venezuela and Colombia. Colombian border guards tried to stop them but the hungry women rammed through the border controls.

After making purchases in a Colombian supermarket, the women returned to Venezuela. On their way back they were singing the national anthem.

This is the way we all are at the moment. We sweep away the obstacles that the nation-state puts in the way of our comfort and convenience, but as we do it, we keep expressing our nostalgia for the disappearing nation-state.