Vinca coming in nicely.

A family member known to be mentally ill goes out of control and is desperately handed off by his father to his mother — WITH FOUR WEAPONS ON HIM INCLUDING AN AK47.

“[E]very country contains mentally ill and potentially violent people. Only America arms them,” writes Adam Gopnik. And man this story out of Maine makes that pretty graphic, don’t it. Son killed his mother in the car, then exited and took up a position along the road and starting shooting at passing vehicles. Killed one person and badly injured two before he decided it was time to kill himself. (With the AK47. That’s gotta hurt.)

Shades of Adam Lanza’s mother, who believed giving her violently insane son lots of guns would be therapeutic.

You kinda wonder under what conditions these people would call the police. Or an ambulance. If he had twelve guns on him? Body armor? IEDs?

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What is with these people? Gotta be a death wish.

And meanwhile, civilizationally, it’s really not a good look. “Not even the most primitive of societies can compete now with our new predictable savagery.”

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“This is something that you don’t see very often, even though we saw it in Bowdoin not too long ago,” said a police spokesperson. LOLOL.

… Wisconsin Public Radio. After all, the fact that this person chairs an English department is as much of a news story as the fact that he’s violent with students.

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UPDATE: Good call. For your upcoming search, focus on someone with basic literacy skills.

… the mourning dove takes a water break from its nest building.

The UW-Eau Claire College Republicans identified the faculty member [who pushed over their information table promoting a conservative candidate for the state Supreme Court] as English Department Chair José Felipe Alvergue.*

“The faculty member involved has been placed on administrative leave pending [an] investigation,” [said the provost].

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Tatiana Bobrowicz, chair of the UWEC College Republicans, told Newsweek in a written statement on Tuesday that the man came up to the table about 8:30 a.m. and asked why they were so close to the polls. She said she began to explain to him that the table had been approved by the university and was in compliance with requirements, when he said, “the time for this is over,” and flipped the table.

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He has a May 7 court date for disorderly conduct. Having read his web page, I pity the judge who tries to get one coherent sentence out of the dude.

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* My project is of knowing, and in knowing––or returning sentience to the decolonialized––engaging with the ongoing care work of the self in the era of its sublimation into the expansive, polluted power of supremacist monopoly capitalism.

Yes. Tennessee made it real easy.

… that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world.”

And beating him.

‘Oh fine ten million.‘

A New Republic writer condemns as unpatriotic cowards the three Yale professors leaving Trumpian America for Canada. “[T]hey have decided to check out of their own communities long before they face actual state violence… [There is a difference between a person] who chooses to face down oppressors and one who ignores or betrays the call for solidarity in the face of oppression.”

Yet the author himself is here only because his father betrayed India, his native country. Does he also condemn his father’s preference to live in a freer, less corrupt, less tyrannical country? My grandfather hadn’t yet faced state violence when he left Cherkasy for the US. Should he have girded his loins and stayed?

Is the writer familiar with the excellent book, excellently titled Exit, Voice, and Loyalty? “In 1989, in the GDR it was the escalating dynamic of out-migration that led those who wanted to stay to take to the streets to demand change. Exit triggered voice, and both worked in tandem.” Many variants of exit and voice exist, and it’s quite possible that a powerful rejection by powerful intellectuals like the Yale Three will turn out to be far more galvanizing among protesters than their staying home.

The writer also overlooks the positive gesture toward Canada that their resettlement represents. Humiliated by the territorial rhetoric and economic targeting coming from the Trump administration, our far more democratic (at the moment) neighbor deserves as much support as we can give it, and few gestures of support are as powerful as actually going there and contributing, in this case, your prestige and institutional strength to a legitimate democracy under threat.

So the basic narrative, as I sit watching the garden from my bed, is this: One dove bobs pecks and pokes among the stalks I’ve been cutting off to make room for spring growth. Sometimes he finds one that’s too big, gets it almost to the nest, drops it. Mainly he finds the right length, and I follow him with my eyes as he flies ten feet up into a tree bordering the garden and with mucho flutter hands it off to the architect.

While it’s fun to watch the gathering and building and then of course the babies, it’s also true that for a few weeks we will deal with paranoid dive-bombers coming at us whenever we’re anywhere near the nest.

… everything.

[B]anning candidates from running for office due to financial crimes is highly dubious. The damaging effect on the democratic choice seems out of proportion to the crime in question, and (even coupled with a €2 million fine) is ineffective in punishing the party… [T]he idea that the party is being stifled by politically motivated “lawfare” — a claim likely amplified from the heights of the White House and Twitter/X — seems well-designed to galvanize its base… [T]he Rassemblement National can, even now, be beaten. But not like this.

Its greatest fame is the 2012 theater shooting; but in smaller ways it keeps its hand in the gun massacre game, as in the mother who puts a loaded weapon in her elementary school-aged child’s backpack.

[T]he child was showing the gun to classmates when another student notified an adult… Aurora officials announced the 39-year-old mother of the student, later identified as Zoe Cherelle Cantrelle, was issued a summons for child abuse and failing to safely secure a firearm. Both are misdemeanors.