Cano

I sing the necessity of Program and Track
IDs of Instructor-Leds and why they are lack-
ing. See the attached and notice they’re empty
which causes a headache for those who’re attempting
to register students for what they’ll be learnin’
when they leave for Germany for “Film in Berlin”.

So please take a moment to enter those numbers
and let me know what it is that encumbers
your entering those values as soon as you know ’em
or else you’ll be getting a nastier poem.

A Server’s Lament

My hardware is old,
my software outdated,
and so I’ve been told
retirement is fated.

March Two I go cold
but don’t be frustrated.
Come Monday, behold!
A new server is slated.

Faster threefold
as some estimated,
she will take hold
of apps we created.

So now you’re foretold
an outage is dated.
As of noon, please withhold,
things server-related.

Peru, the Server

Let us now praise with tears and lamentation
Peru, the server, from the Bush administration.

Her hardware’s too old to weather an upgrade
So now she succumbs to the frailties of old age.

She once hosted FileMaker where her legacy remains
In the form of a ‘Home’ file I’ve taken great pains

To remove from each of our unit’s devices.
Fear not if I missed you, there’s no cause for crisis.

Can’t launch a database? It’s easy to fix
Remotely, in seconds, with just a few clicks.

Bully

A few years ago, for reasons I cannot fathom, my college bully friended me on Facebook. So I know she voted for Trump because she “decided that ‘more of the same’ with Clinton as President” was not what she wanted for our country.

In college, we were on the same team of junior counselors when she took to calling my name, prompting me to look up, at which point she flipped me off. It must have been great fun, disrupting me while I studied, talked to friends, or ate in the cafeteria. “Hey Soni! . . . 🖕” I get it, I was a dork. Thanks to my roommate, who never suffered fools and who put a stop to it, there was no lasting damage.

I cannot say the same about her vote for Trump.

Because of Facebook, I know I have lots of friends who voted for Trump. I sympathize with the job-insecure for whom the government seems unconcerned and paternalistic. I understand those who fear terrorism at Crossroads Mall when the government provides no discernment around being both welcoming and watchful. I can inhabit the minds of those who flinch as the civic order recalibrates in acknowledgement of our diverse community. I can even comprehend those whose feelings of hate found pleasure in Trump’s most repellent remarks.

But the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. And so I cannot abide the vague, unarticulated justification to vote Trump because he’s not “more of the same.”

First of all, I call bullshit on her rejection of ‘more of the same.’ The ‘same’ is precisely what she wants. The same hegemony that allows her to live in peace without having to consider that #blacklivesmatter; where she needn’t be challenged to account for other sensibilities; and where she’s not vexed by the disorder that accompanies societal change.

Supremely, I find her lack of engagement unforgivable. Her post goes on to hope that Trump surrounds himself with brilliant people…smarter than her, to solve our problems. This isn’t humility, it’s abdication. God gave her a brain, parents gave her an education, and prosperity affords her bandwidth to use both. To satisfy our contract with a society that granted us so much is to at least break a sweat contemplating what was at stake in this election. Because her vote wasn’t an urgent and palpable fear of unemployment, terrorism, or loss of power, she had a responsibility to be thoughtful and take a long view. Instead of weighing American ideals, she voted for torture. Instead of considering the historical and economic context of immigration, she voted for mass deportations. Instead of heeding data indicating we need to intensify efforts on climate change, she voted to abandon them.

By concluding with a plea for grace and a promise to delete comments that rekindle debate, she signals her forfeiture is complete. And while her feed fills with praise I might like it if all the people whose lives will be upended seek out her suburban redoubt and shatter the tranquility with a cry of “Hey Cory! . . . 🖕🏾🖕🏻🖕🏽