I have rediscovered my previous blog theme, or something close enough to it that it doesn’t matter, and I welcome you to Lovecraft II: The Lovecraftening, only with different colors and I’m probably going to spend some more time this weekend continuing to tweak things until I’m fully satisfied. I was looking for something earth-toned and everything is coming out too saturated, along with other bits of fiddling I want to do, so we’re not quite there yet. I also don’t like how this theme handles Featured Photos, which I never used before, so I need to go back through my last several posts and turn all of those off if I’m going to keep with a recolored Lovecraft.

The funny thing is that if I’d been able to figure out how to make that “trending” section at the bottom of the previous theme into something that was actually highlighting popular posts, I’d probably have ended up keeping it.

So, yeah, the other thing, and if you’re thinking about telling me that the previous two paragraphs don’t count as an anecdote you are both 1) right and 2) in need of shutting up. One way or another I’m using it as a lead-in to two things that happened this week: one, that there was a SWAT action in the town I teach in now where the cops stormed a house, filling it with tear gas and doing a ton of damage in the process, killing the owner of the house in the process.

The owner? Grandfather of one of my students, who was in the house at the time and has not been seen at school since. He may have to change schools now, since Grandpa’s house is no longer suitable for habitation and Mom does not live in our district.

Second, I have reached the absolute shit worst of milestones as an urban public school teacher, as I found out yesterday that yet another former student was murdered earlier this year– I have to be up to double digits for dead former students this year– and that, for the first time, it was another former student who murdered him. I have a handful of convicted murderers among my former students, and more who have died to gun violence, but this was the first incident where both the victim and the murderer were former students, and while my memory doesn’t retain this level of detail it’s entirely possible that they were in the same class.

Great week.