Another Monday Morning Appeal

30 March 202030 March 2020 The Portly Politico3 Comments

This post is a shameless but sincere appeal for support. If you would like to support my work, consider subscribing to my SubscribeStar page. Your subscription of $1/month or more grants you access to exclusive content every Saturday, including annual #MAGAWeek posts during the July Fourth week. For just $5/month, you also get access to Sunday Doodles, my collection of bizarre, fun, and humorous doodles, as well as other surprise content.

If you’ve received any value from my scribblings, I would very much appreciate your support. Belts are tightening with the rise of The Virus, so independent creators need your support now more than ever. Thank you to those of you who are current subscribers. If you’ve enjoyed your subscription, please share this post or my SubscribeStar page with other interested readers.

A little over six months ago, I wrote a “Monday Morning Appeal,” asking readers to pitch in a buck or two to help with the site. As of this morning, I’m up to six subscribers to my SubscribeStar page, four at $1/month the level, and two at $5/month the level.

The blog is entering its sixty-fifth week of daily posts (I believe this morning’s appeal will mark the 456th consecutive daily entry). I’m hoping to continue to with that daily pace, and to increase the amount of exclusive content on my SubscribeStar page.

As my school has transitioned to distance learning, I’m churning out video lectures at an astonishing rate. I will soon begin uploading lectures of interest for $5/month subscribers. That will include my survey-style overview of the Second World War, which includes five lectures and nearly three hours of content. I also have two lectures on the New Deal.

The value of your subscription increases each week, as more content gets added. This transition has also forced me to figure out how to record video and audio more efficiently, so the long-planned, never-delivered Portly Podcast could be in the works soon.

We may be looking at tough times ahead, and every dollar counts. I appreciate every subscriber. For the price of a large pizza over the course of a year ($12), you can support my work with $1/month. Buy one fewer Cokes at the gas station each month, and you’re covered!

For the price of a synthetic oil change ($60), you can support the blog with $5/month. Drop one visit to the People’s Republic of Starbucks and every month, and you can support quality content from a true American patriot.

If you’re feeling really generous, you can subscribe at the $10/month level, or the truly ludicrous $50/month level. At this point, I’m still dreaming up perks for those levels, but if you’re just looking to be super generous, hey, I’ll take it.

Again, thank you to all of my readers, subscribers and non-subscribers alike, for your support. Your comments and feedback are always welcome. Keep sharing my stuff!

Happy Monday!

—TPP

SubscribeStar Saturday: Family Time

28 March 202028 March 2020 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

This weekend’s SubscribeStar Saturday is a bit delayed due to some increased family time, particularly the celebration of my nephew’s third birthday. One of the upsides to this disastrous coronavirus situation has been the sudden renewal of home life.

As we’ve reoriented our attitudes about and our relationships to work in such a dramatic way, the increased time at home and with loved ones has really highlighted how much happier our lives can be with the proper work-life balance. Indeed, I’ve been more energized in my work than I have been in years in part because of the greater flexibility this otherwise terrible plague has afforded.

I’m cautiously optimistic that this shift could be more enduring than a couple of months of social distancing. Indeed, “social distancing” may very well result in a renaissance of family togetherness.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Distance Learning Reflections, Week One Review

21 March 202021 March 2020 The Portly Politico8 Comments

The first week of distance learning is in the books. I wrote a bit earlier in the week about the transition to it, as well as some first day reflections.

While it’s beneficial for many students, especially younger ones, to have direct, hands-on instruction, it seems that students are adjusting fairly well to the transition. From an instruction perspective, it streamlines content delivery, and helps put it in a form that most of us consume anyway—via video.

With one week in the books, I thought it would be worthwhile to share some reflections about this hasty, sudden experiment in distance learning.

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Reflections on Distance Learning, Day One

17 March 202017 March 2020 The Portly Politico4 Comments

The first day of distance learning is officially in the books. I promise that this topic will not be the only one I write about for the next two weeks, but I am going to give updates periodically.

Being the first day, it was certainly the busiest. Yesterday students came to school in the morning to collect whatever materials they may need for the next two week, and teachers spent the day buzzing away at recorded lectures, digital lesson plans, etc., so we’d be ready to hit the ground running at eight o’clock this morning.

A great deal of teaching is staying one or two days ahead of the students, especially when you’re first starting out. I had a bit of that sensation—the first-year teacher drowning under a Herculean load of preps—yesterday and today, but where I’ve been lecturing on US History and Government for so long, I can riff almost effortlessly with just a few cues from my well-worn lecture slides.

Prepping for Music, ironically, has been the most difficult. We’re using Google Meet to livestream and record lessons, which makes it pretty easy to record audio while also sharing slides with students. With my two Music classes, though, I had to get a little creative.

SubscribeStar Saturday: Social Peace Requires Social Capital

14 March 202014 March 2020 The Portly Politico1 Comment

Yesterday I wrote (in essence) that this whole coronavirus fiasco is going to clarify a lot of things. For one, we’re seeing the lethal consequences of open borders thinking and political correctness. We’re not allowed to say that it’s China’s fault, even though we all know it is. Every prudent person knows that, for better or for worse, you should avoid Chinese people who are fresh from China. Similarly, people are going to realize that throwing open our borders to anyone is a bad idea.

What I most fear, though, is what will happen if things get really tight. Right now there’s a run on toilet paper. That’s ultimately more humorous than dangerous; there’s always Kleenex, paper, or—if it comes to it—leaves and a hot shower.

But what if people can’t get food? Or medicine? The latter is far likelier, given our dependence upon China for ingredients and raw materials necessary for many medicines (a degree of autarky isn’t such a bad idea after all). But the former could be a possibility if supply chains are seriously disrupted. Again, I don’t think it will come to that, but it makes sense to prepare for the worst.

In the past, communities could rely on high degrees of social capital to safeguard social peace in times of trouble.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Coronavirus Prepping

7 March 20207 March 2020 The Portly Politico8 Comments

Yesterday’s Phone it in Friday discussed the coronavirus. I mentioned some of the steps I’ve been taking to prepare (God forbid) a lengthy quarantine.

To be clear, I don’t think it will come to that. The virus is dangerous, to be sure, but it seems like a deadlier version of the flu. The United States enjoys the best medical system in the world, and I suspect the fallout won’t be nearly as devastating.

Nevertheless, it’s prudent to stock up, especially given our over-reliance on China for supplies. If anything, that’s my biggest concern: a shortage of medical supplies. So here are some small steps I’m taking to prepare for the worst, even though I think the worst is unlikely.

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(Belated) SubscribeStar Saturday: Universal Studios Trip

3 March 20203 March 2020 The Portly Politico3 Comments

Today is Super Tuesday, and the Democrats are circling the wagons around Biden in an attempt to stymie Sanders. Tonight will tell us a great deal: will Bernie prevail, as polling suggests, over Biden? Will—as I predict—Biden hang tough, scooping up the black vote and, by extension, the Southern States? Will Bloomberg’s untested strategy of just focusing on these fifteen jurisdictions pay off, or (as I also predict) he flame out spectacularly, effectively blowing those ad dollars (a la my good friend Tom Steyer)?

We’ll know more tonight. In the meantime, here is my account of my recent trip to the happiest place on Earth, Universal Studios.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Moral Outrage about Moral Outrage

22 February 202022 February 2020 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Teaching is a profession that attracts complainers. Teaching requires some risk-tasking, but it’s fundamentally a job for folks that want great degrees of stability. When that stability is disrupted, teachers, being creatures of habit and order, get ornery.

That might explain, in part, the high turnover in the teaching profession. We live in an increasingly disordered world, even in the classroom. Part of that disorder is the assumption that children are somehow wiser and more morally pure than their elders.

That’s a notion that goes back at least to the counterculture movement of the 1960s (not to blame, pedantically and predictably, all of our problems on that misguided, suicidal decade): the youth a moral vanguard, crusading against the long-established order and its absurdities. The outraged shrieking of a youngling carries with it, the culture suggests, greater weight than the elderly master with decades of experience and accumulated wisdom.

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Belated SubscribeStar Saturday: Oases of Tradition

17 February 202016 February 2020 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

This weekend was full of family time for yours portly (thus the delayed post). Celebrating my youngest nephew’s first birthday with generations of family members and like-minded friends reminded me not only of the importance of family, but also of how refreshing it is to be among people who share your basic beliefs.

I’ve written about this phenomenon a number of times in my vast archives of blog posts, but it’s a topic that could use a longer treatment. A major struggle facing conservatives and traditionalists today is a sense of social and cultural isolation that can be downright suffocating at times. But we should avoid the black-pilled mentality of nihilistic despair, not only because it’s what our enemies want, but because it’s simply not true.

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The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Category: SubscribeStar Saturday

Reflections on Distance Learning, Day One