Rachel Harris

Grammy to 👦🏻, Mama to 👱🏻‍♀️👱🏻‍♀️, 🐶🐱🐱Life goal: beach bum 🏝Psalm 139

[Thrilla the Gorilla @ThrillaRilla369]

Some of my best
childhood memories
are of my Grandma.
The older I get, the
more I realize how
lucky I was to grow
up loved by her.

[🫧 @sijuagain]

Silly of me to worry when God always makes a way.

[Sensurround @ShamashAran]

I still loved America when Joe Biden was president.

I disagreed strongly with him. I opposed almost all of his policies. I thought most of the things his administration did were damaging to the country.
But here's the thing: I never stopped loving America.

You see, America is bigger than her government.

America is not Joe Biden.
America is not Donald Trump.
America is not Congress.
America is not the bureaucracy.

Governments come and go. Administrations rise and fall. Politicians make mistakes, abuse power, pass bad laws, and sometimes do genuinely terrible things.

But America is bigger than any of that.

It’s the culture, the people, the communities, the traditions, the freedoms, the churches, the charities, the families, the businesses, the neighbors who help each other when disaster strikes. It’s the idea that free people can govern themselves and build something better. (And disagree while trying)

A president can damage the government.
A Congress can damage institutions.
Neither Biden nor Trump can destroy the spirit of America unless we decide to surrender it ourselves.

If your love of your country depends entirely on who occupies the White House, then what you love isn’t really your country. It’s a political administration.

I loved America under Biden. I love America under Trump.

I’ll still love America long after both of them are gone.

[Mike Bales 🫡🇺🇸 @MikeBales]

She handed my kids cookies before dinner, let them stay up too late, and said “just one more cartoon” after I already said no.

I laughed and asked, “Why were you so strict with me growing up, but so soft with them now?”

She looked at my children, smiled, and said, “Because when you’re raising your own kids, you’re trying to build a life. When you’re loving your grandkids, you’re simply enjoying it.”

And honestly… that hit me hard. The rules got softer, but the love got deeper. Maybe grandparents aren’t trying to spoil our children. Maybe they’re trying to give them the gentleness they didn’t always have time to give us.

[US Department of the Interior @Interior]

“The flag was still there.”

Long before it flew at ballgames and front porches across America, the flag flying over Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine became a symbol of survival during the War of 1812.

After enduring hours of British bombardment, the fort’s enormous flag remained standing at sunrise, inspiring “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

This Flag Day, we honor the history, sacrifice, and stories behind the stars and stripes. 🇺🇸

Photo of the Great Garrison Flag by NPS

[U.S. Air Force @usairforce]

Today, we honor the Stars and Stripes and all it represents.

Happy #FlagDay.

[The Drunk Republican @DrunkRepub]

Thank you, European soccer fans, for reminding us of how great our country is.

With all the political bickering I’m afraid we too often take it for granted.

Your timing was impeccable, on this our 250th birthday, and we are forever in your debt for bringing the beer.

I encourage every American who hasn’t been to Europe to do so. I’ve been many times and it’s an amazing continent with amazing history and even more amazing people.

But make sure you post pics, as something tells me they may need to be reminded occasionally, too.

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

This article was written by a 26 yr old college student by the name of Alyssa Ahlgren, who's in grad school for her MBA. What a GREAT perspecitve..👍🏽

My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us!
I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis (Florida) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of presidential candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around.

I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook's, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it.

Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought.

We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty One Times!!!

Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful. ??

Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity."

Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in.

When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided.

My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let's just say I didn't have the popular opinion, but I digress.

Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country.

People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, we elect some politicians who are dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism.

Why? The answer is this,?? my generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or we didn't see the rise and fall of socialism and communism.

We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague."

[Rachel Harris @RachelMHarris]

Stunning

[La Sagrada Família @sagradafamilia]

We see the tower of Jesus Christ illuminated for the first time!
The light show, starting from the base up to the illumination of the cross, culminated with a composition of lights guided by drones that traced the figure of Gaudí and the phrase “first love, then technique”.

[⚡︎ @_sorrengailll]

Wait, so we were told to take shorter showers, turn off the tap while brushing our teeth, and conserve water at every opportunity… but data centers can show up and use millions of gallons like it’s nothing?

[Brian Tolentino M.Ed @TolentinoTeach]

Students need all kinds of teachers.

- The extroverts who bring energy.

- The introverts who lead with quiet thoughtfulness.

- The serious teachers who bring structure and focus.

- The silly teachers that put students in a state of relaxed alertness.

- The spontaneous teachers who model a creative spirit.

- The organized teachers who bring clarity and consistency.

Part of education is learning how to work with, learn from, and relate to people who are different from ourselves.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

They booed during the national anthem.

Not after.
Not before.
During.

The President of the United States stood up in Madison Square Garden.
The first sitting president to ever attend an NBA Finals game.

They booed.

Donald Trump came as a guest of the Knicks owner.
A born-and-raised New Yorker.
A Knicks fan since Queens.

They booed.

This is the same league that takes a knee.
The same league whose champions refuse to visit the White House.
The same arena where the cheap seats now decide which Americans count.

In 2024, New York City gave Trump 839,000 votes.
Kamala Harris got 1.9 million.

This wasn't a basketball crowd.
It was a political crowd in basketball jerseys.

The Knicks had won 13 straight playoff games.
The second-longest unbroken playoff streak in NBA history.

The night the President walked in,
the streak died.

Spurs 115. Knicks 111.

There is a word for what happened in that arena.
It isn't free speech.
It's contempt.

Contempt for the office.
Contempt for the flag.
Contempt for the country that lets you sit in those seats.

You can boo a man.
The anthem still plays.
The flag still flies.
America still stands.

But a kid in Kansas was watching last night.
He saw grown men in 400-dollar sneakers
turn the national anthem into a sneer.

He learned exactly what the cities did
the night their team forgot how to win.

[Jen @jenteach13]

You want to fix education?

Fix #4: Let teachers remove disruptive students.

Let me break down Fix #4.
This is the fix that makes people uncomfortable because it sounds like giving up on a child. It is not. It is recognizing that a classroom is not a one-person environment and that what we allow one student to do to thirty others is a choice with consequences for every kid in that room. The student who flips desks, screams at the teacher, refuses every redirection, and makes it impossible for anyone else to focus is not being served by staying. Neither is anyone around him. Keeping him in the room does not help him. It just makes sure everyone loses together.

What does it mean in practice?
It means a teacher has the authority to remove a student who is actively disrupting the learning of everyone else without having to justify it to three administrators, fill out four forms, and wait for a response that may never come. It means the removed student goes somewhere with an adult who can address what is actually happening with him, not to a hallway to sit unsupervised until the period ends. It means the thirty students who were trying to learn get the class back. It means the teacher does not have to choose between managing one student's behavior and teaching everyone else, because right now that choice is made for her every single day, and it never goes in the classroom's favor.

How does this help kids?
Every minute spent managing a student who has refused every available intervention is a minute not spent teaching. Multiply that by a class period. Multiply that by a semester. The kids who came ready to learn, who needed that instruction, who deserved that teacher's full attention, paid for every one of those minutes with their education. We talk endlessly about the student being removed. We rarely talk about the thirty who stayed and what they lost. They matter too. Their time matters too. Their right to learn in a room where learning is possible matters too.

How do we make this happen?
We need discipline policies that give teachers real authority instead of the appearance of authority. We need administrators who back removal decisions instead of sending the student right back to the same room twenty minutes later with no intervention in between. We need alternative settings that are staffed and resourced to actually address what is driving the behavior, because removal without support is not a solution. It is a delay. We need to stop treating every removal as a civil rights violation and start treating the disruption of thirty students' education as one, too. And we need to be honest about what the current system communicates to every student in that room when nothing happens. It tells them that the adults are not in charge. Once they know that, you have lost the room.

The goal is not to discard any child. The goal is to make sure that getting help for one student does not come at the cost of an education for thirty others.
You want to fix education?

#YouWantToFixEducation

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @CorpBarnaby]

🇺🇸 Most Badass Americans You Don’t Know D-Day Edition: John J. Pinder Jr.

Technician Fifth Grade John J. Pinder Jr. landed on Omaha beach on his birthday. He didn’t make it off.

Born June 6, 1912, in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, Joe Pinder was the oldest of three children. His father worked in the steel industry.

He graduated as valedictorian of Butler High School in 1931.

Pinder spent the next several years as a right-handed pitcher in the minor leagues.

He played six seasons in the farm systems of the Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, Washington Senators, and Brooklyn Dodgers.

In 1941 he won 17 games and was still chasing a shot at the major leagues when the war came.

He entered the Army in January 1942 after Pearl Harbor.

Assigned as a radio operator with the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, he fought in North Africa and Sicily.

In Sicily he earned a Bronze Star for staying at an observation post under fire.

On June 6, 1944, Pinder landed with the first waves on Omaha Beach on his birthday.

Communications were shattered. His job was to get a working radio ashore.

He made it off the landing craft. They were 100 yards off the beach.

Then he was hit. A round tore into his face after only a few steps off the boat.

Pinder held the torn flesh of his face together with one hand, carried the radio with the other, and delivered the radio to his unit, while wading thru waste deep water.

That should have been enough. It wasn’t.

Weakened and bleeding, he turned around and went back into the surf and fire three more times to salvage communication equipment.

He even recovered another workable radio.

On the third trip machine gun fire hit him again, this time in the legs.

Still he kept going.

Weakening but exposed on the beach, he helped get the radios working so the men around him could call for support.

While doing so, he was hit for the third time and killed.

Medal of Honor. Posthumous.

It was presented to his father on January 26, 1945.

Pinder was initially buried in Normandy.

In 1947 his family brought him home to Grandview Cemetery in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania.

He was the only professional baseball player awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II.

John Pinder is an American Badass

Thank you, John! 🫡🇺🇸

[Among the Wildflowers @deaflibertarian]

Just in. Tacos make us happy.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A potluck. Everyone brings one dish. I have never been so out of my depth in my life.

I was invited to a gathering. "Just bring a dish to share," they said. Simple words. I did not sleep for three days.

Because I understood instantly what this was. A summit. Every guest, a lord of their own house, arriving bearing tribute. And tribute is judged. Tribute is ranked. To bring the wrong dish to the wrong table is to fall in standing before your peers, possibly forever.

So I prepared. I made my finest dish. I carried it to the door with two hands and a straight back, braced for the weighing of my worth.

The first lord arrived with a bowl of orange powder noodles. Macaroni and cheese. The crowd roared. He set it down at the center of the table. The CENTER. I noted this. The center is the seat of power.

The second lord brought a tower of small brown meat orbs in red sauce. "Meatballs," he announced, like a man laying down a sword. They were placed beside the macaroni. A strong showing. An alliance, perhaps.

I studied the table like a battlefield map. Potato salad: defensive, reliable, old money. A vegetable tray, untouched, clearly a hostage offering no one expected to win. And then a woman walked in, raised a flat box overhead, and the entire room turned and CHEERED.

Pizza. She had brought pizza. Store-bought. Still in the box.

I was stunned. She had not even cooked it. And yet the people rejoiced as if a king had entered. I revised my entire understanding of the hierarchy on the spot. Effort means nothing here. Only the roar of the crowd decides rank.

I placed my dish down, humbly, near the napkins. A peasant's position. I accepted it.

And then a man tapped my shoulder, pointed at my dish, and said the words that changed everything.

"Whoa, did you make this? This is amazing. Everybody, you GOTTA try this guy's thing."

The room turned. The room came. The room ATE. My dish vanished in ninety seconds. The pizza woman herself took a second helping and looked at me with respect.

I had won the summit. By accident. With a dish I placed by the napkins.

I understand nothing about this country. I have never been happier. I am hosting the next one.

So tell me, America.

Is there a system to the potluck? A secret rank? A hidden law?

I have decided there is not.

You just bring the thing you love, and everyone eats it, and somehow everybody wins.

It is the most insane way to hold a war.

I will fight in every single one.

[United Cajun Navy @Unitedcajunnavy]

Just a friendly reminder...