Sign of a Thaw in RISD Board Room?

Every month, the Richardson ISD Board of Trustees holds a regular meeting, as well as a worksession, and sometimes a special called meeting. The public can attend. Agendas are published. Video is available. It's all very transparent. Except for those pesky agenda items labeled "Enter Closed Meeting." The Texas Open Meetings Act allows secret meetings on a narrow range of subjects. The board agenda only needs to state what the subject of a secret meeting is. No detail is required, no minutes, no video. That leads to a cottage industry of speculation of what's going on behind closed doors. This month's RISD board meeting was different in one significant way. It's time to speculate about what it means.

TIL: Who Deserves Rights is Evolving

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Source: Declaration of Independence.

All men? Self-evident? 246 years ago, those unalienable rights didn't extend to women and even less so to Blacks. Try to predict what will be considered "self-evident" rights 246 years from now. It's hard. The only thing I'm sure of is that the notions of "common sense" will appear much different to our descendants than they do to us today.

Ala Kachuu (2021)

IMDB

Ala Kachuu (2021): Oscar-nominated live-action short. Kyrgyz girl who dreams of higher education is kidnapped and forced to marry. A cultural practice there openly accepted as proper, we see as barbaric. Depressing. Well-acted. Beautiful cinematography. Best of 5 nominees. A-

 

 

 

 

 

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My ranking of the five nominees:

• Ala Kachuu - Take and Run (Switzerland/Kyrgyzstan): A-
• The Dress (Poland): Portrait of a lonely hotel maid with dwarfism. A-
• On My Mind (Denmark): Portrait of a man who uses karaoke to deal with loss. B+
• Please Hold (US): Man is unjustly incarcerated in an automated, robotic prison. B+
• The Long Goodbye (UK): Wedding in immigrant household is interrupted by a raid. B+

The Courier (2021)

Rotten Tomatoes

The Courier (2021): Cold War spy movie. Benedict Cumberbatch is a businessman recruited to smuggle secrets out of USSR. Game gets riskier as his friendship with a Russian spy grows. Not a James Bond action movie. Instead it's based on real life, meaning the stakes are real. B+

The King's Man (2021)

Rotten Tomatoes

The King's Man (2021): A prequel no one needed. WWI fan fiction. British aristocratic spy puts himself in the center of every important event of WWI. Really bad history. Over the top, but not in a knowing, wink-wink way. Probably baffling to many. A waste of time. C-