First Professional Historical Conference

Had my first professional historical conference today at the Southern Conference of British Studies in Dallas Houston. Pretty great experience, confidence-builder and inspired me to keep working on my historical work while doing creative writing. Plus, it was an excuse for me to put on a suit and act like an adult.

The paper I presented was a paper comparing women munitions workers (munitionettes) in Glasgow and Paris during WWI and the far-left-wing agitators' inability to court them to their cause. For time constraints I had to cut out the most interesting parts, like when women in Glasgow would beat up cops with rolling pins, and in Paris women strikers could only be stopped by armed battalions on horseback. Oh well. The boring stuff is for the conferences and my fellow historians; the interesting stuff will be for the broader public.

Update on the Gator Infestation

Remember the gator in my friend's sister's yard? Here it is enjoying some dog food.

Hurricane Harvey Houston

Some pics my friend took while we were exploring just south of Downtown, by Rice University.

Alligators on the Loose in Houston

My friend's sister has a gator in her yard. For those outside Houston, keep in mind, gators live maybe 100 miles away, so our current gator infestation would be like if LA got hit by a typhoon, the rivers flooded and great white sharks swam down major thoroughfares. This is not normal, this is biblical.

My First Hurricane

Hurricane Harvey is set to hit southern Texas. While Houston isn't getting the worst of it we are supposed to get some extreme storms and flooding. I am excited. I am in a second-story apartment. Going to relax and watch the craziness. Hopefully I won't lose power, because if I do I fear I will get bored very quickly...

A Line Too Far

I usually avoid political posts because people post them ad nauseam and often they are either re-posts or preaching to the choir, but I thought this was too important not to say my piece, given some important conversations I recently had with people I care about who voted for Trump in 2016: Yesterday, President Trump defended a Neo-Nazi/KKK rally by saying there were "many good people" just marching to protect their history, even after one of them killed 3 people and then the North Carolina official KKK chapter condoned the terrorist killings. (And yes, this is officially terrorism, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said it will be investigated as such).

Could you imagine a gathering of extremist Muslims waving ISIS and Al-Qaeda flags marching down an American street calling for the deaths of non-Muslims and the implementation of harsh Shari'a law, and when counter-protesters arrived one of the extremists killed 3 of them? And then the terrorist groups who organized the protests officially condoned the killings? Now imagine if Obama defended those protesters as "good people," using the excuse that 99% of them weren't involved in terrorism, they were just expressing their culture.

This is Trump's relation to the Neo-Nazi/KKK/white supremacist movement. And it is because of this that I have to say, I honestly think if you can still support Trump after this, I think you are a morally compromised person. Normally I think one can separate politics and morality; people support who they support for complex reasons and there are good people on nearly all sides of debate. But defending a group of people who call for the extermination of non-whites, literally right after they commit a terrorist attack, and then blaming the victims of that terrorism is a step too far. As much as I try to be open and willing to accept all people as my friends and hold them in high esteem regardless of their ideological or political leanings, if you can support Trump after he has defended the Neo-Nazi movement, I think you are an evil, or at least a confused individual. Honestly, I don't think I am in the wrong on this; since he first ran for President, Trump has been lapping himself for how horrible a human being he can be. Bragging about being able to sexually assault women, cheating disabled veterans out of $5 million dollars. As much as I detested him, I had long conversations with people who voted for him, and I understood and didn't think less of them.

But after Charlottesville, if you still support President Trump, I can only think less of you. If you can still support someone who shifts blame from genocidal terrorists who kill Americans to their victims for any reason, then there is something horrendously wrong with you, and as much as I try not to let politics divide us, I honestly don't know if I could maintain a friendship with someone who supported Trump after this. There has to be a line where if they cross it, then you refuse to support them. For me, the line was miles behind covering for Neo-Nazi terrorists; but for everyone, that should be a line too far.

Feel the (Feminist) Power

A few snapshots from the Women's March on Houston