Pokemon Go

I'm already inclined, on my days off, to head out on long urban hikes or bike rides, and the advent of Pokemon Go is going to make me even more inclined. For those who don't know -- and I didn't know until about 48 hours ago -- this is a game you play via a free app on your smart phone. The idea is to go out into the world and walk around hunting for Pokemon creatures to collect. There's more to it, but for those details I'll direct you to your local Pokemon-besoted child. For my purposes, the intriguing thing was using technology to "find" imaginary things around my neighborhood that are hidden to the naked eye: I even caught one in my own living room. Viewed through your phone's camera it appears as if these animated creatures are existing in the real world. Another Pokemon I caught appeared to be sitting on an unaware stranger's shoulder.

I learned about this game from social media where Woodland Park parents were posting about how much fun their kids were having, many walking for miles in their collector's quest. There were reports of throngs of children racing around our north Seattle neighborhoods collecting Pokemons. If you're going to be playing electronic games, this certainly is the way to go, although it is very easy to get distracted. Already there are stories in the media about Pokemon Go related accidents and apparently some creative criminals are locating out of the way Pokemon hotspots then just waiting for their victims to come onto the scene. I myself almost stepped into the street at one point while attempting to capture a varmint that was being run over by cars.

Still, what a fun addition to a walk! I suspect it's the kind of thing that will wear thin quickly, but I got a kick out of the "PokeStops," places that include snapshots of local landmarks like decorative manhole covers, historic markers, and local businesses, some of which I'd never noticed before. I can imagine it will be fun to play the game in neighborhoods and cities with which I'm less familiar. At one level, the game causes me to focus on things I don't normally notice.

There are problems with the technology, of course, and at one point the servers went down just as I was arriving at Seattle Center, a place I figured would be rich in Pokemons. While waiting for the problem to be fixed, I found myself wandering around just looking at stuff the way I normally do. At the International Fountain where children were playing in the water as the 1812 Overture built to its crescendo, I noticed a clutch of EMTs around a man on the ground. I've seen the guy before, often heavily intoxicated. He appeared to be passed out. The EMTs were trying to talk with him, but he wasn't able to respond. That's when I noticed his face. Someone had drawn all over it with black marker; scribbles, a mustache, words. Of course, he might have done it to himself before blacking out, but more likely it was the work of some cruel pranksters who found him passed out on a bench and took advantage of his unprotected comatose state.

Another problem with the game is that it really eats up your battery, so I found myself turning it off as I hiked between areas I thought would be the most likely to serve up some Pokemons. One of those places I had the game turned off was as I crossed one of the I5 overpasses that connect downtown with Capitol Hill. As I looked over the railing toward the traffic below, I noticed that someone has pitched a tent atop a wall that divides the southbound lanes of the freeway from the Union Street off-ramp, right there in the shadow of the Washington State Convention Center: a hermit's hut on a desolate island amidst the rushing river of cars that flows through our city.

And the game can be glitchy: it kept freezing as I checked out Denny Park, a place notorious for its summer population of men and women (mostly men) who spend their days and nights living on the benches and lawns. At one point I was tracking down a PokeStop, when the map shifted and I lurched along with it, changing directions suddenly. When I did, one of the summer residents shouted at me, "You better turn away, 'cause we're filthy here." I snapped to attention, smiled, and said, "No, I'm playing a game on my phone. I didn't mean to insult you."

"We're filthy here," he replied. "And that ain't no game!" Then he laughed mirthlessly, still glowering, "You better go over there. We're filthy here."

About then my phone vibrated, indicating that there was a Pokemon nearby. I looked at the man who had spoken to me. He was still glaring in my direction so I checked my phone. There was an animated Pokemon there, flapping its wings, right where the real man was standing. On my screen it appeared as if it was in the space that separated us.

It's not just imaginary things that are hidden from the naked eye.

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"That Would Be Like Banning Their Freedom To Think"

A person's freedom of learning is part of his freedom of thought, even more basic than his freedom of speech. If we take from someone his right to decide what he will be curious about, we destroy his freedom of thought. We say, in effect, you must think not about what interests and concerns you, but about what interests and concerns us.  ~John Holt

The other night I was explaining what I do to an old friend who had no idea what I do. It boggled her mind. I explained how when children play they are asking and answering their own questions about the world. She asked, almost in disbelief, "But, then what does a teacher do?"

I wanted to reply, "Get out of the way," but in the interest of not sounding flippant I instead answered, "Mostly, we just provide a relatively safe environment in which children can come together to explore their world through their play with the things and people they find there."

"How is that different than what parents do?"

"There shouldn't be a difference, really. In general, adults need to understand that when children play they are, invariably, preparing themselves for their future." I gave her a couple of examples, which she pondered until I pushed one of her buttons when I said, "For instance, almost all little girls at some time or another dress up as princesses. They are playing with the obviously important concept of feminine beauty."

"What do you mean important? Beauty isn't important!"

I pointed out that she, a retired scientific researcher, was wearing flattering clothing, a particular hairstyle, cosmetics, jewelry. "You may not agree with traditional ideas of beauty, but every woman knows that she can't avoid dealing with societal standards of feminine beauty: you might chose to accept it or reject it or redefine it, but clearly it is important in our world. Children know this even if we try to deny it."

"But shouldn't we be teaching them that it's wrong? Isn't it the teacher's job to teach them that being beautiful doesn't matter?"

"I suppose I can offer them my opinion, but if I attempt to assert that notions of feminine beauty aren't important, the kids will know I'm wrong: the evidence is all around us. It's unavoidable. Every time we turn around we see a narrow concept of feminine beauty being celebrated. It's clearly important to our society. And at least part of why all those girls need to play princess is to explore what it means from the inside so that they can make their own decisions as they get older."

She hated that answer. "But it's not important at all. Women shouldn't be judged for their beauty. We need to teach that to little girls."

"I sure hope little girls learn that, but it won't happen because I lecture them. I expect they're most likely to learn it the way you did -- by experiencing it, experimenting with it, thinking about it, then making their own decisions. If I tried to somehow ban princess play, I would have a rebellion on my hands."

"Oh, I wouldn't want you to do that. Playing princess is fun. You can't ban princess play . . . That would be like banning their freedom to think."

And that's how we left the conversation because it was a school night and time for us to go home.

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Gathering Sun Rays

"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." ~Buckminster Fuller

There's a book I read to the children by the author Leo Leonni entitled Frederick. I'm sure many of my preschool teacher colleagues read this to their kids; Leonni is a popular, brilliant author and his paper collage illustrations are charming. In this story, Frederick the mouse avoids physical labor as the other mice prepare for winter, at first evocative of The Little Red Hen. When the others ask him, "reproachfully," why he isn't working, Frederick replies "I gather sun rays for the cold, dark winter days," "I gather colors, for winter is gray," and "I'm gathering words, for the winter days are long and many."

I've long on these pages bemoaned our society's habit of equating education with the acquisition of job skills. Indeed, I don't believe I've ever heard a political leader from any party speak of schools without directly linking them to the fantastical "jobs of tomorrow." The entire corporate eduction "reform" movement with it's emphasis on high stakes testing, standardized curricula, and privatization is largely a plan to finish the job of converting our public schools into institutions of vocational training. Right across the country, arts, music, physical education, social studies, drama, and civics are being dropped from our children's school days, and even such bedrock subjects as science, history, and the rest of the humanities have been minimized in order to make more room for math and literacy, the only things, apparently, that really matter.

What a sad thing that is. When guys like Bill Gates talk about "unleashing powerful market forces" on our schools, I envision them being unleashed upon our children and it strikes me, at best, as a narrowing of life, and at worst a harsh cruelty. Listen, I'm aware that we're all, at some level, economic beings, and that's not a bad thing, but that's certainly not all we are. What about unleashing powerful artistic forces on our schools? Or powerful civic forces? Or powerful physical or scientific or musical or historical or philosophical forces? Those aspects of a well-rounded life are at least as important as the drudgery that most of us ultimately face when compelled to expend the better part of our days, during the better part of our years, bringing home that damned bacon.

We're told that capitalism, and particularly the free market brand we've been experimenting with since 1980, is as good as it gets, warts and all, but talk about one hell of an inefficient system if it requires pretty much all of its able bodied citizens working most of their daylight hours in order to function properly, as if we exist to serve the economy instead of the other way around. Civilization must be about more than earning a greasy buck, but the economists are in charge and they're "reproachful" of the rest of us who understand that if it's going to be worth anything someone must gather sun rays.

I don't want to live in a world in which my existence is justified by how many dollars I can extract from it. What I do with my life is far more vital than that. I am a father, husband, son, brother, and friend. I am a teacher. I am a man of spirit and philosophy. I am an artist. I am a citizen. I am a politician. I am a writer. I am a cyclist. I am a community organizer. I play these and many more roles in the world, each at least as important as the other, and none of them can be measured on a standardized test like reading and ciphering. I think that's what blinders the corporate "reformers": if they can't reduce it to numbers, if they can't hold someone accountable, if it can't be standardized under shrink-wrapped packaging, it doesn't exist. And that describes most of what makes life worth living.

As a teacher I'm always torn between preparing children for the world as it is and the world of my ideals. I generally come down on the side of my ideals because I simply can't bring myself to prepare these young children for a meager make-work future of inspectors inspecting inspectors with their tools designed solely for inspecting. That's not why most of us are here: we're here to sing, to invent, to discover, to explore, and to gather sun rays for the cold dark winter days. That's the true business of people and trying to measure that is like trying to measure the height of love or the circumference of god.

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It's Working!

We've been trying to grow plants, and food plants in particular, since I started teaching at Woodland Park, but it was watching Jamie Oliver's 2010 TED talk (the video is there if you want to watch) in which he called on educators to take the lead in teaching children about food and nutrition that I began dreaming of a robust year-round gardening program. Not having ever been a gardener myself and with limited space, most of our efforts were of the one-off, everyone-share-a-single-radish variety, although by the time we moved to our current location in Fremont, we did have a small, tidy seasonal garden that doubled as a mud pit during the colder months.

So when our beautiful new green house was completed last June, with it's surrounding dedicated space for growing things, it felt like a dream had been realized. And then it began to dawn on me that I had no idea, really, what to do with it. It more or less sat fallow last summer, then as fall rolled around some of our parent gardeners began to experiment. All I could think of to do with the kids was to plant seeds and water plants so that's what we did, but I didn't feel like I had a handle on how to really step up to Oliver's challenge. As the days began to get longer, the parent-gardeners began to include me in their planning, asking me lots of questions about what and how, which I mostly turned back on them until one day I realized that if this was going to work, I was going to have to become an avid gardener myself.

So I began to spend more and more time out there, both before and after school, getting my hands dirty, experiencing the joy of seeing my little baby plants grow into big plants, blossom, then fruit. Occasionally, I would bring groups of children to the green house, which is separated from the rest of the school and only accessible to the kids as a kind of field trip. I found myself tense as I watched the children, quite by accident, trample my seedlings, drown them, uproot them, and generally love them to death. The budding gardener in me was aghast even as the teacher in me understood that this is how children need to explore things. I found myself doing what I hate to do, which is boss the kids around about the plants. Then one afternoon as I was re-planting a flat of lettuce seeds to make up for the one we'd lost earlier in the day to an eager "micro-green" eater, it hit me that the goal wasn't a gardening program as much as a farming program.

We've long had a small garden in the center of our playground, to which we've added a pair of good-sized planting boxes against the side of the building. For most of the year, very little of interest grows there. Then in the spring, the pea vines, berries and other things blossom, which iss exciting, although no matter how vigilant we adults are, most of the "fruit" is harvested by the children far before it is ripe. I can't tell you how often I've found our entire crop of strawberries clutched in a single busy hand as a bouquet. I don't think we've ever seen a red raspberry. It was clear the children were drawn to the things we were growing, but their need to explore made it almost impossible to actually produce any food. But now, I realized, with a small farm at our disposal, we could actually grow most of the food in more protected place, a sanctuary if you will, then, when it was ready to be harvested, we could transplant it into the playground garden where the kids could eat to their heart's content. And I could relax, knowing that there was more where that came from.

It might not sound like much, but it was an epiphany for me: it was a way to balance the instincts of a teacher with those of a gardener.

Yes, we still have some snap peas growing on the playground, but we have a lot more growing on the farm. There is some lettuce, kale, herbs, pole beans, nasturtiums and other things on the playground, but we have a lot more growing on the farm. We've discovered that we can grow cucumbers in pots, so each day I've been carrying one to the playground for the kids to harvest and share. Same goes for tomatoes. We're also hoping we'll find the same is true for our other nightshades like bell peppers and eggplant. The green house is our farm, with the playground garden serving as our metaphorical green grocer -- except now it's pick-it-yourself.

Right now we have an abundance of lettuce and kale and we need to clear the "shelves" to make room for more. The kids are grazing all day long, but they haven't made much of a dent one mouthful at a time, so yesterday we set up a "salad bar," providing bowls, forks, scissors and knives, along with a little apple juice to serve as dressing. A couple weeks ago I wrote about the popularity of our DIY ice cream social: well the salad bar was every bit as popular. It made my heart sing to watch two, three, four, five, and six-year-olds assembling, then devouring salads of their own creation, boasting about the flavor, sharing with their friends, even making salads for one another.

As Oliver said in the video, "If kids don't know what their food is, they won't eat it." Well these kids know their chives from their parsley, their lettuce from their kale, and their peas from their beans. And this is because they've been living with it, playing with it, and tending to it.

It's working! It's working! I'm giddy! And we're just getting started. My hope is that we can create such a bounty that it will carrying us through the fall and into winter. I'm prepared for a couple dead months, but not yet resigned to it: something will grow in that green house, and when spring rolls around we'll be ready for it. It's working!

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When I'm At My Best

"Teacher Tom, look what I made!"

"I'm looking at what you made."

I strive for Woodland Park to be a place where children are as free as possible to create, explore, study, and play with as little adult judgement as possible. I am not there to critique their work or to teach them tricks, but rather to be the resident expert on safety, schedules, and courtesy, while providing the time and space for children to ask and answer their own questions about their world.

When a child says, "Look what I made!" most adults respond as if it's a request for judgement and offer some sort of knee-jerk praise. "It's beautiful!" we might say, placing our benign stamp of approval on the child's work. I was taught that a more appropriate response is to instead focus on the effort (e.g., "You worked on that for a long time") or to simply stick with the facts before you (e.g., "You used red paint and some bits of string"). It's the difference between children learning to be motivated extrinsically versus intrinsically. Our constant critiques, even when offered as praise, teach children that their value is in the eyes of others, and in particular those with power, while our goal, I hope, is to teach them to judge their work for themselves, to be guided by their own internal light.

Even though most of us already know this, it remains challenging. It's hard to not want to praise children. And, especially as parents, it's even harder sometimes to avoid criticizing them, especially as they get older and we fear they are headed for pain and heartbreak or, if we are honest with ourselves, embarrassing us. I have been trying to train myself in the art of speaking with children for a couple decades now and it is still hard for me. I still catch myself making mistakes daily.

When I'm at my best, however, when I'm truly creating a place in which children can practice thinking for themselves, it's when I am unhurried enough to take a moment to collect myself before speaking. I've found this to be a key for me: that pause to make sure I am saying what I want to be saying. And I've noticed in recent years that even the words I'm saying, when I'm at my best, are even less intrusive that those comments about effort or a factual description of what I see before me.

When a child says, for instance, "Look what I made!" I find myself responding directly to her words and nothing more, "I'm looking at what you made."

"Teacher Tom, this is for you." . . . "This is for me."

"Teacher Tom, I fell down." . . . "You fell down."

"Teacher Tom, look what I can do." . . . "You can do that."

"Teacher Tom, I'm here." . . . "You're here."

It's as if I'm a mirror for the children, a surface upon which to reflect. Most of the time this is enough, the child just wants to know that he is heard, even though some children then proceed to tell me what they want me to know rather than having been directed into a channel dug by my adult assumptions. Perhaps they will then describe what it is they've made, or share that they were or weren't injured, or detail the process by which they achieved whatever it is they've achieved. Most often, however, they simply smile in recognition of having been heard, then go back about their business, turning away from the mirror of me, and returning to the inspiration coming from within.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Each Of Us And All Of Us

My personal Fourth of July tradition, at least since we moved to the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle six years ago, is to walk around the lake as our community gathers to watch the fireworks. It's about a six mile urban hike around this lake at the heart of our city. I'm not a big fan of the fireworks themselves, and in fact last night I was asleep before the explosions started, but I do love the spectacle of our community coming together to celebrate, well . . . anything.

I felt the same way last weekend when Pride events took over Capitol Hill and downtown and two weekends before that when we celebrated the summer solstice. I enjoy knowing that all across our nation, people were coming together last night in honor of us, we the people.

It's easy to be down on the United States. To be honest, it always has been. Like any human creation, we're a flawed, even dangerous mess, and while I'm fully aware of the many things we must learn to do better, there is still cause to celebrate. I often find myself feeling about my country the way I feel about our school. I tend to spend most of my day-to-day energy noodling over the things that are wrong, the things that could be better, the things that need to be fixed, the things that need to be done. The same could be said for my household or even my family: when I come home I notice the dust bunnies instead of the beautiful art we've hung or the view from the windows; I fret about our family's challenges rather than glowing about our wonders. Of course, we all do it to some extent, and that's because we feel responsible, which is a good thing.

I often imagine how freeing it would feel to throw up my hands, to make a break for it, to find some secluded, off-the-grid sort of place where I can stop being responsible, where the problems are not mine. I imagine that I could learn to awake each morning and be satisfied with what I already have, to accept the things that happen, to shrug at the difficulties and leave the challenges to someone else. I sometimes think I would love to never find myself lying in bed fretting over this or that, but when I walk around a lake named Union I come back proud of the part I play in all my communities both large and small, and indeed, that these communities are the reason I'm here.

A friend recently went on a rant about how he's afraid we're approaching "the end times." Maybe we are, for all I know, but he's not the first to express this fear. Indeed, his rant is part of a long tradition: to some extent every generation thinks they are living in the end times. And, honestly, they've always been right. Tomorrow will not be like today, some things will fade away and new things will come to take their place. Every moment is the end to something. We just hope it's not something we cherish.

As I walked around the lake, seeing families of all makes and models, spreading out their beach towels, setting up their lawn chairs, and grilling their hot dogs, I wondered what the founders would think could they walk among us 230 years later. I'm sure much of what we've accomplished would blow their minds. And likewise, they would be appalled, just as we will be astonished and appalled at the world outside our nursing home windows.

I found myself celebrating last night by loving my fellow citizens in all their imperfections. These are the people with whom I create reality day after day. And what is reality anyway if it isn't largely a product of the agreements we've made with one another? This is the reality of our days together at the Woodland Park Cooperative School. It's the reality of my family. It's the reality of my city and of my nation. And we together are responsible for all of it: each of us and all of us.

I can grumble about the government or the bankers or the propagandists as much as the next guy, but ultimately they are just part of this fitful dream I am having along with the rest of you. We get up each day and create this life together through what we do and what we don't do, through what we speak aloud and what we keep to ourselves, through what we fight and what we accept, through what we attend to and what we neglect. We are all responsible which is why it keeps us up at night.

Days like yesterday are for admiring our accomplishments. Today, we can go back to worrying about the dust bunnies. And now a question: how would you live if you knew that you would eventually wake up? How would you play in this dream we are dreaming together?

Thank you all for playing with me. I'm eager to see what we will do today.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Happy Interdependence Day!

This has become my traditional July 4 post. Have a happy day!

We must hang together gentlemen . . . else we shall most assuredly hang separately. ~Benjamin Franklin

Happy Independence Day! And “happy” is the appropriate greeting for today. The Declaration of Independence was the first historical instance of the word "happiness" appearing in the founding documents of any nation.

Today in 1776, 56 men signed their names to this radical document. As a result they were, without trial, proclaimed traitors by the government and sentenced to death. These were middle class people. John Hancock was the wealthiest among them and he was not even a millionaire by today's standards. The wealthy sided with the king. Most of the signers were working people -- farmers and tradesmen primarily. None of them left behind a family fortune, or a foundation, or any other kind of financial memorial of their lives. Our nation is their legacy.

Their average age was 33 (Thomas Jefferson's age at the time). The youngest was only 20-years-old. The oldest was Benjamin Franklin, who was 83.

As a result of having signed the Declaration of Independence, all 56 of the signers were forced to flee their homes. Twelve returned to find only rubble.

As a result of having signed the Declaration of Independence, 17 of them were wiped out financially by the British government.

As a result of having signed the Declaration of Independence, many of them were captured and tortured, or their families were imprisoned, or their children were taken from them. Nine of them died and 4 of them lost their children.

As I read the Declaration of Independence, as I do each July 4, I find myself in awe of their courage. They were all aware of the likely consequences, but they did what they knew must be done. Two centuries later, I still feel the outrage they must have felt as I read through the specific governmental abuses that lead them to that critical moment.

Even more than our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence is the beginning point for the United States of America. I find it both educational and inspirational to return to the source before heading out for fireworks.

When Franklin was asked what kind of nation they were forming, he answered, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

I worry at times that we won't be able to keep it, that, in fact, we've already lost it. I worry that too many of us have declared our independence not from tyrants, but from one another, not understanding that in creating a constitutional government of, by, and for we the people, we were also declaring our interdependence.

At the signing to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Franklin famously said, "We must hang together gentlemen . . . else we shall most assuredly hang separately." 

And while we come together today to commemorate our independence from tyranny, this is also a day for embracing our fellow countrymen, for celebrating our interdependence. In that direction lies happiness.

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Discussing Our World And The People We Find There

I was hanging out on one of our swings chewing the fat with some of the kids. I can't remember what we were talking about, but I'd just said, "I guess I forgot," when Roko earnestly replied, "You know, Teacher Tom, "When you get older you forget more stuff."

The following day, I was a sitting in a circle of children heatlessly arguing about Star Wars. Roko was there and when one of the other kids insisted I was wrong about some detail, I answered, "Well, I saw the first movie a long time ago, when I was a teenager. Roko told me that when you get older you forget more stuff so maybe I just forgot."

Roko nodded, "It's true."

Cecelia, who has just finished her first year of kindergarten, didn't agree, "No, the way it works is you go to another school and another school and every time you go to another school you get smarter and you remember more."

Paul had another thought, "If you see Star Wars when you're little and short, then you get tall and old you forget."

Roko's older brother, Matija, another kindergarten graduate said, "When you get to be like 70 years old you start to forget things. That's what's happening to my grandpa." Now I understood what Roko had originally been trying to warn me about.

Henry then insisted, "You get smarter when you watch TV."

I couldn't help myself, "Really?"

He clarified, "When you watch animal shows, then you get smarter . . . about animals."

Myla jumped in, "I'm a girl scout. We get badges when we learn new things."

Liam told us that he was going to be a boy scout.

One of the youngest boys said, "I'm going to be a girl scout when I get bigger." Some of the older kids jumped on that, telling him that he was a boy and that he would have to be a boy scout. He looked crushed so I tried to buck him up by siding with him, "When I get bigger, I'm going to be a girl scout too. I want to get some of those badges so I don't forget so much stuff." When the kids then turned to me to insist that 1) I wasn't a girl and 2) I was already too old, I role modeled standing up for myself. "If I want to be a girl scout I can be a girl scout."

Myla asked, "Are you like a girl inside of a man?"

"Maybe so."

"Does that mean you have a penis and a vagina?" She was joking, going for an absurdity.

Cecelia jumped in, "I know a girl with a penis."

Several of the older kids responded with some version of, "Really?" an invitation to tell them more, unlike my earlier "Really?" to Henry which had been, frankly, a good natured, but still judgmental expression of doubt.

"Yes, she has a penis and she wants to be called they."

I asked, "She wants to be called they instead of he or she?"

"Yeah, so I call her . . . I mean I call they they."

Myla asked, "So could they be a girl scout or boy scout?"

Cecelia shrugged, "I guess so. They can be anything they want."

Hanging around together, discussing the world and the people we find there, tossing out our thoughts and ideas, sharing without judgement, asking questions, learning new stuff, changing our minds: this is deep democracy.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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