“It was in Poland that Einsatzgruppen were to fulfill their mission as ‘ideological soldiers’ by eliminating the educated classes of a defeated enemy. (They were in some sense killing their peers: fifteen of the twenty-five Einsatzgruppe and Einsatzkommando commanders had doctorates.) In Operation Tannenberg, Heydrich wanted the Einsatzgruppen to render ‘the upper levels of society’ harmless by murdering sixty-one thousand Polish citizens. As Hitler put it, ‘only a nation whose upper levels are destroyed can be pushed into the ranks of slavery.’ The ultimate goal of this decapitation project was to ‘destroy Poland’ as a functioning society. By killing the most accomplished Poles, the Einsatzgruppen were to make Poland resemble the German racist-fantasy of the country, and leave the society incapable of resisting German rule.”
— Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
“‘Asked whether she believes other professors might be encouraged to leave the United States, Shore wrote that she believes many of her colleagues will consider relocating due to the current political climate, which she deemed an ‘American descent into fascism.’
“‘I don’t feel confident that American universities will manage to mobilize to protect either their students or their faculty,’ Shore said.”
An extensive study of police body cam video reels posted to Facebook during the summer of 2025 has yielded the following about traffic stops:
You know you are in trouble when the officer asks you to step out of the vehicle. This request an be made in a number of different ways, from a friendly appeal to a barked order, but it turns out to be nonnegotiable. You can exit willingly or not. If you select the not option, they will be pulling your body from the car like a sweet little shucked oyster, and down on your belly you’ll go, face pressed to the sidewalk, with your arms pinned behind your back.
You should not have been drinking, or have expired tags, or have lately sideswiped several cars in the Target parking lot and gaily driven away. Likewise, do not have a suspended license or priors of any kind. You should also not have just ridden up over your neighbor’s lawn and taken out his porch with your front end.
A word on field sobriety tests. There are several. Stand with your feet together, arms by your sides. Please follow the tip of this pen with your eyes without moving your head. Next, walk nine heel-to-toe steps forward, then turn around and walk nine back. You’ll also be standing on one foot and counting aloud one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand until I tell you to stop. Realize that if the officer asks you to agree to do these tests, he or she believes you are going to fail them.
When you fail them, they will impound your car, and while the tow truck is coming they will “take an inventory” of its interior. No, they do not need a warrant to do this. Because you are already in cuffs, sitting in the back seat of the cruiser, you will have no say in the matter. Please do not have any material in the car that will incriminate you further, such as multiple half-full bottles of vodka, or a box of hypodermic needles, or miscellaneous pill containers rattling around in your purse, or a locked pouch stuffed suspiciously under the passenger seat that is discovered to contain a semi-automatic handgun and a loaded magazine.
These people wearing badges are dealing with daily human craziness you have never imagined. They have seen it all. Assume their behavior is influenced by good law-enforcement training, delusions of messianic power, and vast unresolved personal trauma, unevenly distributed. Many of them are just trying to stay alive. Don’t argue. Give them your ID and proof of insurance. Do not make jokes. All the evidence indicates that it is not their job to be your friend.
Other tips:
Do not be female or male or any other gender.
Do not have brown skin or an accent.
Do not be hysterical or surly or say “I am afraid to get out of the car.”
Do not be living in your car, for heaven’s sake.
Do not be a single parent with a baby in the back in a carseat.
Do not ask “What did I do?”
Do not roll up the window, shift your car into drive, and flee at high speed. They will chase you, and everything will get much worse. They are much better drivers than you are.
Do not say “Wait, I have to call my mother.”
Do not say “Really, bro?”
Do not say “I know my rights.” No, you don’t. At the moment, you have no rights except the right to remain silent.
I’ve been a little short lately. Just found this random Bolivian peso note my brother handed me after coming home from his job as a chef on the cruise line. I googled it. The Bolivian boliviano is called the BOB. The figure pictured here is Juana Azurduy de Padilla (1780-1862), highly regarded in Bolivia and Argentina as a guerrilla independence hero. As a result of her rambunctious girlhood, she was sent to a Peruvian nunnery, where she styled herself after Joan of Arc. After the nuns had enough of this and tossed her out, she got involved with indigenous revolts against the Spanish silver mines. She could shoot and ride. Along with her husband, she joined the revolution as a military leader and fought for years against the colonial occupation. She was a gifted recruiter, even assembling a battle-hardened force of female fighters she called her Amazonas. Generals gave her their swords in tribute. Meanwhile, she bore five children. After her husband was captured and beheaded by the Spanish royalists, she rose to the rank of commander, directing a force of 6,000 men. Simon Bolivar remarked that the country should be named after her instead. Turns out, one mil pesos bolivianos is worth around $145 U.S. dollars. That would help my bottom line these days, but no one would exchange the bill. My bank said, “We don’t do business with Bolivia.”
Left to right, from top: blackeyed susan, catalpa, orange cosmos, marigold, milkweed, partridge pea, trailing bean, wild carrot, wisteria. Click image for full size.
If we are to flourish as a species, an erosion of belief will be necessary, that says we are not the center of the universe but a dynamic part of an expanding and contracting future that celebrates and collaborates with uncertainty. … We are a species known as Homo sapiens, often paralyzed by despair, having forgotten who we are together in our adamant claims of difference. Fortunately, we live among other species, many unknown to us, who show us how to enter the home of another and offer the gift of attention and presence, which is an exercise in vulnerability.”
— Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion: Essays of Undoing, 248-250
This rad stuff is regular old hard-ass silica, tiny tetrahedra permanently locked up, but before that it’s a hot, high-pressure broth shooting through deep rock, hunting for cracks, fissures, and cavities where it can pool and cool and grow. Millions of years pass in a flash. Meanwhile, layers of the ancient dead lying all around, aka organic matter, liquify into natural petroleum, which also leaks in. Bubbles of water and petroleum get trapped while the lattice assembles itself and the rock does its squeeze box concertina thing for more millions of years. Veins of quartz fill up with little golden blobs of fossil fuel. Eventually people start digging and find it, most recently in Madagascar. There’s not much you can do with petroleum quartz other than string it on necklaces or set it at the center of a gold band and slip it onto your beloved’s finger. They say it’s known for centering and grounding energy, so it could solve that problem with your chakras. Oh, and as you can see, petroleum luminesces under blacklight, which is why it reminds people of fireflies.
“It did not take long for reports on the deportations to reach America. At the end of August, Eleanor Roosevelt received a letter from Varian Fry describing the frantic attempts of the Vichy government to satisfy German demands. “Men, women and children are being arrested in the streets of Marseille, Toulouse, Lyon and other population centers to make up the quota. In the unoccupied zone children over five years of age are being deported with their parents, in the occupied zone some children of two years and more.”
— Michael Dobbs, The Unwanted, page 249
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been intensifying efforts in recent weeks to deliver on Republican President Donald Trump’s promise of record-level deportations.
“The White House has demanded the agency sharply increase arrests of migrants in the U.S. illegally, sources have told Reuters. That has meant changing tactics to achieve higher quotas of 3,000 arrests per day, far above the earlier target of 1,000 per day. …
“ICE’s operations appeared to intensify after Stephen Miller, a top White House official and the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, excoriated senior ICE officials in a late May meeting over what he said were insufficient arrests.
“During the meeting, Miller said ICE should pick up any immigration offenders and not worry about targeted operations that focus on criminals or other priorities for deportation, three people familiar with the matter said, requesting anonymity to share the details.”
karen donovan | poetry 