Cravats (and other things that happened today)

Cravats, eh? Not quite a topic that one usually writes about in the early 21st century. Well, here's how that came about: the majority of my work gear is from op shops--Goodwill, other thrift stores, second hand places in cities I go to, online thrifting, and so on. It's environmentally more sustainable and, more importantly, cheaper. 

The reason I bring this up is because today (Wednesday) is a day I don't teach. I usually end up doing some writing, contemplating cleaning my place (contemplation doesn't often turn into action), and doing chores. Today, I bagged up a bunch of clothes, shoes, etc and took them to the local Goodwill. 

While there, this happened: 

Me: Oh, I'm going to drop off a big bag of stuff and not actually browse.
Also me: There's a shirt that comes with its own cravat. For $1.90. Come home with me, my precious!

[I'm wearing it to class at the next cool (temperature-wise, not otherwise) day as it's a full-sleeved shirt.
I may be more excited about the opportunity to tie my own cravat than is seemly.
*filed under: academia has its issues but being able to wander into work in 19th century (earlier?) gear is definitely a plus]

It was also a day during which the NYT claims the President placed Chad on the travel ban list against the advice from the State Department and DoD; The president himself gave an unfathomable (Is that the accurate term here?) response when asked why Sudan was dropped from the list; aid remains slow to reach Puerto Rico; next year, the US will accept the lowest number of refugees in almost 30 years; som kind of law means we'll never find out what happened to the policeman who mistakenly arrested James Blake (and slammed him to the ground) and, for work, I came across this "Visualising violence" special issue of Global Discourse that I've bookmarked to read over the weekend.

National Security class tomorrow at 8am. The topic is non-violence so let's see how *that* goes.