"Why is there no recognition that one person’s playful transgression is another’s traumatic nightmare?”@kathapolllitt speaks truth about Avital Ronell, power, and the vanities afflicting the humanities: thenation.com/article/power-… To speak of vanities and the humanities in the same breath is, according to some defenders of Ronell, evidence of one's secret conservatism. No subtle way to put this, so I won't try: such a notion is simultaneously banal and pretentious as fuck.

Reading Dorothy Day, I just learned of NYPD "diet squad," circa 1915, tasked w/ living on bare bones budget - & documenting it for daily papers - & as official rebuttal to those who complained about poverty. Reading Dorothy Day's The Long Loneliness because I recently had the honor of meeting her granddaughter, Martha Hennessy, currently facing possibility of serious prison time for her role in a Plowshares action against a nuclear submarine base: kingsbayplowshares7.org

A #Vermont thread: Lloyd tells me 3 ways to get to Morrisville. "Which," he adds, "you don't want to do that." He was born in "Morris," but now he lives in Jeffersonville, "Jeff." Lost his job at a sawmill--"ash, mostly," he says, "dries your hands, cracks 'em to the bone"... ...& then his job as a dishwasher, & the his home. Now he's sick. This fly-specked apt is where the county put him. There were farmers in his line, but not Lloyd. "I weren't," he says. "Don't speak French, neither." The two twinned in his mind, farming & French, Vermont-French.

Re: my thread about a troubled border crossing yesterday (threadreaderapp.com/thread/1023612…), some folks telling me I had the right to not give up my camera. Others telling me to get the pictures back. I appreciate the sentiments, but I don't share either... Seems to be a lot of gray on the legality of the border guard taking my phone, despite the "no phones" sign. Most recent court ruling seems to suggest they can't do an electronic search unless they suspect crime. I don't think they did a electronic search. They just took it.

What do you tell your kids about borders? Crossing into Canada a few days ago, I warned my 9-yr-old, Saira (not her real name), not to giggle. Crossing was a breeze. Coming back, I said, would take longer... Entering U.S. involved a lot more questions. The guard questioned Saira. Who is, as I said, nine. But she smiled a lot and all was ok; then he told us to turn off the car, & Saira gasped. Border patrol were surrounding car next to us, hands on their guns, shouting...

The National Prayer Breakfast's organizer, The Family, has a long history of serving as a backchannel for spies, long before #MariaButina. As I write in THE FAMILY, the very first was Manfred Zapp -- Nazi spy... Starting in 1938, Zapp posed as a German journalist in Manhattan, a glamorous figure who moved among the elite and even made Walter Winchell's gossip columns. But he had another agenda...

The Family - the group the organizes the National Prayer Breakfast, and which helped #MariaButina bring in Russian spies - believes Christianity wrongly focuses on "sheep." They believe God has called them to serve the "wolves." "The more invisible you can make your organization," boasted Doug Coe, longtime leader of The Family & #nationalprayerbreakfast, "the more influence it will have." #MariaButina agrees.

The #nationalprayerbreakfast is all over the affidavit for Russian spy Maria Butina. I wrote two books, THE FAMILY & C STREET, about its organizers, the most influential - & secretive - Christian conservative group in DC, known as The Fellowship & internally as The Family. Lobbyists & foreign nationals use the #nationalprayerbreakfast as "a way to gain entrée to all sorts of people,” the late Michael Cromartie, an evangelical Washington think tanker declared. “And entrée they do get.” #RussianPuppet