| | September 27,
2008
Bill Moyers' Journal is always
intensely interesting, but I stayed up until 2:45 this morning watching a
fascinating conversation he had with Andrew J. Bacevich about the ideas in
Bacevish's book The
Limits of Power. You can watch this and other episodes of the Journal at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09262008/watch.html.
September 22,
2008
First, take 10 minutes from your
busy busy day to get a straightening out on the campaign and voting thing... click
here and WATCH THE WHOLE THING! Sheesh!
Now... FrontPage is messing with my
text again. I don't know why that happens, but it happens. So with that said,
I'm reposting Jan Howe's book again. (See the picture of the book jacket below?)
Jan's book, "Nothing Ever Happens Here: A Guide to Disaster Ministry,"
is now available. You can get a copy from the
pubisher or from the Third Congregational Church of Alstead (1-603-835-6358)
or the church clerk Dale Woodruff at 1-603-835-6630.
September 21,
2008
I'm at home this afternoon
watching the Pats lose, baking bread & scones, and printing articles  for
class. And ordering printer ink. The laundry's done. I finally have reading
glasses, and my Mensa results arrived. Yesterday I picked out the
floor tiles, sink, faucet, and granite for our new kitchen. I didn't choose a
light-fixture to put above the kitchen table... I'll let Jim do that. Jim's in
Ireland. He went to the All-Ireland today. Tyrone
won. Since Jim is from County Tyrone, I believe he was thrilled about the
win.
My printer is slow, so I get to do a myriad of things while I wait for it to print. I also have to write a literacy statement for one of my
classes which I'd like to complete today but with all this other stuff going on
I'm not sure I'll get to it. All 3 of
my classes are hybrids this semester. I know, I know... I swore I wouldn't do
any more hybrids. Little did I realize that hybrids are all they offer. That online
summer class was an anomoly. Doesn't it figure? That's okay. It's just going to
be a lot of work. I have to take 5 to
6 days off work this semester for classroom observation, too. I haven't
been this overwhelmed since Ni was a baby. =) Speaking of Baby Boy, there's no
news from him during the week. Ever. We have a standing appointment to receive a
phone call every Sunday night from him, so that's when we hear from him.
September 14,
2008
They can put a man on the
moon but they can't get their citizens to vote! If you're not registered to
vote, you should be, right? Right! Registration deadlines for the November 4th
presidential election are approaching. (Baby
Boy will be voting as an absentee -- I just sent him the form so that
our town will send him a ballot.) You can
go to your local town hall to register (or call now for a form if you need an
absentee ballot), or you can start with the government web site ¾
http://www.eac.gov/ ¾
for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
In some states you can register on election day, which means that on November
4th you can go to the polls to register and then immediately vote! New
Hampshire is one of these states! Also in on this handy-dandy deadline are
Montana, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Unfortunately,
other states' deadlines fall as early as October 5th if you live in some other
state so you have to act soon. The League of Women Voters has a web page that
helps you figure out what your state's registration requirements are: http://www.vote411.org/bystate.php.
(Note that September primary deadlines are still listed on their site ¾
but you can still find registration requirements there.)
If you don't know who you want to vote for, register anyway... you will have
figured it out by the time you go to the polls. If you don't know where
to vote, call your town hall. Or ask your next-door neighbor. Or go to the
following League of Women Voters page and find out there: http://www.vote411.org/pollingplacebystate.php...
scroll down a bit and you'll find it on the right side of the page. Now don't you wish everything were that easy? Anyone who isn't registered and
who isn' t voting is a namby-pamby, right? Right! =)
September 12,
2008
If you plan to vote in the
November election, you might find interesting this
NPR story called "Race Don't Matter in '08?" about voters in York,
PA. (That link goes to the text of the show, but you can listen to it, too.) A
lot about that story is so disturbing... this is the type of thing that makes me
lose sleep:
Leah
Moreland... says her gut tells her not to trust Obama. This woman is saying
something that  a lot of people are thinking, and it illustrates something that
disturbs me tremendously. Not only has she confidently chosen to disbelieve the
facts (that Obama is not a Muslim), she harbors a fear of Muslims using her
ignorance of them as her "gut" reaction, which she clearly
demonstrates by being afraid of them. Had she educated herself, she would
realize that Islam has much in
common with Christianity (obviously, it's not the SAME as Christianity, but to
be honest I'd be hard put to find any two Christians who share the same
beliefs), and that the current terror threat eminates not from all Muslims
but from Muslim extremists, much like the Oklahoma City bombing eminated not
from all white Americans but from white American extremists. I
also wonder if people like Leah choose not to educate themselves because they
don't trust their own ability to learn... I have encountered friends who are too
insecure to draw their own conclusions, so they accept what they are told. I
also wonder does she understand the extent to which each political party floods the market
with misleading information to sway people like her who choose not to fact-find
on their own. This
is dangerous... to people like Leah, yes, but more so to the rest of us. Is this why Leah
has been so easily led to the wrong conclusion? If she doesn't want to vote for
Obama, fine, but it is irresponsible of her to base her decision on propoganda
that has been spread by people who are, for whatever reason, determined to
exploit the confident ignorance of people like Leah. If you're going to check
facts, make sure you stay away from the partisan sites... a way to detect a
partisan site is that it doesn't vet both sides. You can start with factcheck.org.
The Washington Post has a fact-checker, too, here.
And not to
be overlooked, Jan Howe's book "Nothing
Ever Happ
September 11,
2008
Northeastern University is
offering a free course this fall called Policy
Advice to the Next President. You have to register but it's free. It
will be held Wednesdays, 6:00-8:00 PM in Boston. It's taught by Robert Culver
(CEO, MassDevelopment) and Michael Dukakis (Professor of Political Science;
former Governor of Massachusetts, once candidate for President). It's killing me
that I can't  register... I have a hybrid class on
Wednesdays this semester. If you register (and you can if you live
in the area), let me know what you learn! The first class was last night.
Today's going to be a busy one. After the Social Security office, I have to hit
the bank, my eye appointment (to get those reading glasses I need so much), the
post office, then my annual physical (rrrr, I'm remembering last year's
physical), then an oil change. That's Norwood, to Walpole, then Millis, then
back to Norwood. Will she remember to hit all these places? Who knows! =)
I sat for the Mensa test last week. It'll be a few weeks before I hear the
results. There were a few questions on the test that required accumulated
knowledge, which I didn't think they tested for because it's a test of one's
ability to reason. For example, one question assumed knowledge of the periodic
table of elements. And another question assumed knowledge that the moon
affects the tides. Those are the two that pop to mind. And there were pictures
that were so small I had to remove my glasses to see
them. I guess what I'm saying is that parts of the Mensa test are stupid. But
overall, taking it was fun. In addition to the two Mensa testers, there were only
six of us there: a couple on a
date, a 16-year-old girl on her birthday who was escorted there by her father
who wanted to state on her behalf that she was now old enough to sit for the
test, a guy in his mid 20s covered in lovely tattoos (I really do mean that --
they were lovely), and me.
And wouldn't it be so nice if the media's campaign coverage
focused on the collapsing world economy, the diminishing status of the U.S. on
the world stage, the morphing ecology, the unfolding tragedy of the U.S.
educational system, and the like, rather than the ratings-boosting topics of
lipstick and preachers? Rrrrr. I'm now watching the Jim
Lehrer news hour and the BBC
world for news... and nobody else. And I'm sticking with The
Economist. No Fox News, no MSNBC, no CNN for me. =(
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