Visitors to our local McDonald's may have been confused in the past couple weeks. See, our store uses three windows for drive through service, and at the third window, the person handing out the order speaks virtually no English. Now, I'm not a xenophobe by any stretch of the imagination. And I do believe that certain public service jobns should require bilingual capabilities of the applicants, simply out of necessity. But I have watched over my four months of employment as new hires have com...
For those who had to start out on their own, without a whole lot of assistance from their families, do you remember your first year or two on your own? Living with makeshift furniture and secondhand castoffs so bad even the thrift stores don't want them? Making curtains from extra sheets and pinching every penny until it screams? Driving a car that was a few rusted bolts from becoming a pile of scrap metal? I do, and it was not anything I would begin to describe as "fun". I was reflecting ...
WARNING: I put this under "humor", and must warn readers that it's decidedly dark humour before they proceed. But I DO want all readers to understand that this is meant for satirical purposes only, and that if you have lost a loved one to violent crime, this is not meant to ridicule or minimize your grief. In an article ( Link ) that got too little attention for the subject matter, Locamama described a situation where a hanged woman was overlooked by passersby who thought it was a Halloween ...
WARNING: I put this under "humor", and must warn readers that it's decidedly dark humour before they proceed. But I DO want all readers to understand that this is meant for satirical purposes only, and that if you have lost a loved one to violent crime, this is not meant to ridicule or minimize your grief. In an article ( Link ) that got too little attention for the subject matter, Locamama described a situation where a hanged woman was overlooked by passersby who thought it was a Halloween ...
The aftermath of Hurricane Wilma has been an excellent case study in why federal spending has gotten out of hand. See, there was one thing rather remarkable about this hurricane season: it showed with regularity how much more precise weather forecasts have become. In not one, but THREE instances, NWS forecasts predicted with reasonable accuracy where the hurricanes would make landfall in the United States. And in the case of Hurricane Wilma, it was almost PINPOINT accuracy. Failing to heed...
Rosa Parks will embark on a flight tomorrow to make history for one last time. Her body will be displayed in the US Capitol rotunda, and she will be the first woman to be so honored. It is a fitting tribute to a remarkable woman who represents the ultimate paradox. You see, the most remarkable feature about Ms. Parks was how UNremarkable she was, in so many ways. In the 100 plus year struggle for equality for blacks in America, there was no shortage of leaders in the struggle. The escalati...
Well, "Reverend" Fred Phelps is 0 for 2 in the Texas Panhandle. See, he and his band of bigots from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, had planned to make the trip down to protest at the funerals of two area soldiers who were laid to rest, one in Amarillo, and the other in the small community of Dimmit. But his protestors did not make the trip, on Friday allegedly because of a conflict ("so many protests, so little time"), and on Saturday allegedly because of rain. Whether those are t...
This November in the state of Texas, we are preparing to vote on a state constitutional amendment that would ban homosexual marriages (or equivalent legal unions). That's the first of two clauses in the amendment, the second stating that Texas would not recognize marriage or an equivalent union performed in another state. I have a problem with the amendment, and am voting (HAVE voted, thanks to the recent developments that have made voting so accessible that the term "election day" has NO MEA...
Bakerstreet's article on the Gaede twins was appropriately timed, as I had just read about them for the first time. For those who don't know, the Gaede twins are blonde haired blue eyed singers from a white supremacist family whose views are expressed in their songs, which include a tribute to Rudolph Hess. The thing is, they're 13, and have basically been taught these views from birth by their parents. I'm not a fan of using children as tools for political expression in manners such as th...
A recent article by an educator referenced a letter to the editor where the parent shared what a "bargain" her child's education was, at the GROSSLY understated rate of $1.97 a day (referring to the district's taxation rate). I decided to evaluate the "value" of public education, and found it somewhat lacking. Finding the per student expenditure for any state is difficult...the only sources I found were downloadable files, and since I am at a library computer, I am unable to download. So I wi...
A little background for those who are unaware: Casa (Court Appointed Special Advocate) is a volunteer program in many states of advocates who interact with the children who are removed from their homes by Child Protective Services, and who act as "eyes and ears" for family court judges. Since they are highly endorsed by CPS, and since CPS claims that their goal is family reunification, I thought it pertinent to look over CASA's handbooks and evaluate whether they are, indeed, working to reunify ...
One of the most inevitable things I have to deal with as a homeschool activist is parents who consider homeschooling as a reaction to events that are going on around them. In the wake of Columbine, every board member of our homeschool group in Wisconsin received at least 20 calls from parents who wanted to know how to homeschool their children because they feared raising their children in a world where incidents such as Columbine were a reality. While it seemed to be a wonderful PR boon, ther...
Another blogger's article on not celebrating Halloween got me to thinking about a subject that has been enar and dear to us for years. We're holiday cheapskates. Sure, we celebrate, but in a very simple way. Our presents are not lavish tributes to our indebtedness, and we focus far more on togetherness than anything material. BUT...the fun begins in the days AFTER the "big holidays". See, as I have detailed regularly, I have a VERY staunch rule of never paying retail. The idea of paying fu...
Link ...and the beat goes on... Seems that some of the residents of the Florida Keys are "rethinking" their decision to stay put and ride out Hurricane Wilma. With streets flooded and their only artery to the mainland temporarily severed, they now question their decision to ride out the hurricane. Let's evaluate this decision, shall we? Several gulf coast cities nearly decimated over a few weeks' time by separate hurricanes, and a not entirely secretive rescue effort consist...
When my brother's daughter was learnign to speak, they made every effort to teach her the word "yes!" before the word "no!". They affirmed everything and phrased it in as positive, as gentle a manner as they could. While I shook my head at their efforts, I applauded their intent. But the word came out, and, like the evil spirits from Pandora's box, could not be contained once released. As every parent quickly learns, "No!" is the child's first acknowledgement of their own autonomy, of their a...