Living on the Edge

Severn Suzuki, Then and Now

I found this amazing video of a 12 year old girl addressing the United Nations.  Her name is Severn Suzuki.  She raised money to fly to Rio de Janeiro and address the United Nations Earth Summit.  I was watching it trying to figure out when it happened.  It could have been today, although when you see the men and their suits and their hair styles...you'll know it's not current.

This video is from 1992.  So almost 20 years ago.  Isn't it interesting that nothing has changed since then?

I was also wondering where Ms. Suzuki is now.

I found that she is married now and has realized that the best way to effect change is to inspire people to change laws.  She realized what many environmentalists discover (other than those that just get off on the radical part) that living your life as the example and taking action whenever you can is what works.

Here she is talking about parenting.

I've always thought that being a parent truly is the best way to make you more aware...of everything!!  We have that innate need to protect our children.  That's why I also think there should be more women in government.  Anybody else think that if we had more women running the country, we would have fewer problems?

Otter to host Women's Day in Capitol - News Story - KXLY Spokane

Otter to host Women's Day in Capitol - News Story - KXLY Spokane

I got all excited when I heard this headline. I thought it was going to be working women from around the state. Let's talk about how the state's budget cuts are affecting women and the jobs they do.

But alas, it's just Otter's way of having a women's legislature's grumble session. It's only going to be women in government and agency directors. So some women in government will get a pay raise!?!?! Where will that money come from?

Here's a better idea...How about cutting the pay of the men who make more! Let's make a level playing field between men and women.

That would help the state's budget wouldn't it?

Loraxes of Learning!

This is such a cool page!  Send a letter to your senators and representatives so easily!  They have 'speaking points' to just click on and add to the letter.  You can add more thoughts too.

National Education Association.

Do you want to let D.C. know how you feel about the lack of money for educating our children?  Were teachers cut from your schools for next year?  Was your school year shortened next year (and teacher's salaries frozen and cut)?  Is the toilet paper your children using in schools only 1/4 ply?  Has your district cut your sports, your buses, your classroom aides, your library book purchases?  

Please speak up!  It's like The Lorax...he had to speak for the trees!  Well, we are the Loraxes of Learning...and we have to speak for the children and their education!  Our district is at only 165 student days now!  I came from California...where they required 180.  Yet as teachers, we have to still teach the same amount of material!  The kids still have to reach the same learning benchmarks as in all the other states! 

It's not right and the state and federal governments need to stop making education an acceptable budget cut.  They want to increase funds to social programs...well they may need to if they are not giving us the money to educate our children!  These kids will not learn what they need to be successful graduates if we are forcing them into larger classes and taking away their days of learning!!!

Please send a letter to your congress people today!!

Thanks Governor Otter!?!

Thanks to the state of Idaho and our legislators in Boise...we all get an extra week of summer vacation next year! They took more funding away from schools, so the only thing left for our district to do (other than cutting jobs, programs and increasing class size) is cutting salaries! So 6 furlo days for us...which means one less week of school in June next school year!

Not that we have to teach less...we just have to make sure to fit it into 165 days instead of 170!! Don't our legislators have children? Do they not go to public schools? How sad that our children will be shortchanged.

It's so hard to send our kids home in June knowing they will spend a long summer forgetting what we worked so hard to teach them all year long! Adding 5 more days will not make that situation better!

I think legislators should have to take the same 4 percent pay cut that we have to take! What do you think?

Count Yourself Lucky!

So the census forms have been mailed.  Everyone went to their mailboxes and got their form and are ready to answer their 10 questions...NOT!  Not all of us have been so lucky on our trip to the mailbox.  I'm not sure where we went wrong.  Whether it was the fact that we lived in three towns in 2009 or the fact that two of our addresses were P.O.Boxes....but no census form has showed up for us as of yet.

The different websites I visit assure me that someone will come to my house...at least a half dozen times...until they make contact with us.  Now this is a comforting thought.  Strangers driving...or worse yet...walking door to door down our long dirt road in North Idaho.  Sounds like a recipe for trouble when you count all the 'NO TRESPASSING' signs on our road alone! 

Maybe we should put up a sign saying "Census workers welcome here" or "we won't shoot you if you are a census worker".  Hopefully they come to our house before stopping at the drug dealer's house across the road.  We may never see them otherwise.

And hopefully they don't try to use a GPS device to find our address.  We know where that leads people, after a slumber party for our daughter, and three different dads all ended up at someone's house about 3 miles away.  Shoot, maybe I should look up our address that way and head over to that house.  Maybe they have our census form.  At least while I'm there I could introduce myself and let them know when we are having parties so they can hand out maps back to our house!

So I checked to see if I can pick up a form locally and fill it out.  I popped onto the handy census 2010 site and this is what it said:

Be Counted forms are census forms that are available at various community locations for use by people who either did not receive a form in the mail or whose information was not collected on any other form. Be Counted forms are available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Russian. These forms can be picked up in various community locations and mailed back in the attached postage-paid envelope.

Well, darn it if that didn't clear it all up for me!  Now I can just go to one of my 'various community locations' and pick one up!  By the way, the post office is NOT one of those community locations.  And since I didn't see one at the local Super 1 or the garden shop this week....I'm just not sure which location is the 'various' one!  We don't have too many here in Rathdrum you know.

Typical government...they can't even make the census simple!  One bright glimmer of hope in all this census and people counting....the government said that the census counters have been sworn to secrecy for life!! (they really did say that on the news the other day!) So feel free to tell them everything!  

So next step?  I think I'm just going to get some paint and change the number on the city's population sign myself.  Add four to the current total.  It might be easier than filling out a census form after all!

Deputies believe 'insane' killer headed for parents' house | Top Stories | KREM.com | News for Spokane, Washington

via www.krem.com

Read this story...it's amazing and terribly scary! Why would a 'criminally insane' patient be given a day trip to the Spokane County Fair? I know they have discount days for seniors, kids, military, families...but did I miss the inmate discount day? I want that one on the posted schedule so I can avoid the fair that day!

Scary thing about today...today was one of the big school field trip day!

Update:  It's after 11 p.m. tonight and they still haven't found him!  Big points to the Sheriff for taking a stand and stating on camera, that this should never have happened. 

Shame on their administrator who did the political double talk on the 11:00 news.  And double shame on the people at the facility that gave this fellow the field trip. Too many liberals in the kitchen, do ya think?  Can you imagine the meeting where they decided who got to go on the trip? 

"Well John, who should make our list today?  Bob, lets send this criminally insane patient, after all, he hasn't decapitated anyone in quite sometime."

How do we keep our families safe anymore?

ELCA Adopts Social Statement overturning Biblical teachings

MINNEAPOLIS —Leaders of Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Reform) expressed profound sorrow over the decision Wednesday, Aug. 19, by the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to adopt a social statement on sexuality which overturns biblical teaching on marriage and homosexual behavior. The social statement was approved by a one-vote margin.

via www.lutherancore.org

The ELCA has failed us on many fronts the past couple years in the Spokane area. Being an ELCA Lutheran becomes even harder with this current vote that gives them, what they think is permission, to ignore the Word and create social statements such as this. It's sad that they fall into the ranks of those that interpret God's word to make it more politically and socially correct or comfortable for their needs.

Think of people going to AA. When it gets tough, they can't just start drinking again, they have to be faithful to follow the 12 steps....not change it to 10 steps or add a 13th one that says...yeah, go ahead and drink if you feel like you can handle it.

What will be changed next? Cut a couple of the commandments out? Add a few more? Some things in life could and should be black and white.

My opinion has nothing to do with demeaning or degrading anything to do with alternative life styles, My opinion is totally separate from the lifestyle choices that people make. I'm just expecting the church leaders to not rewrite the Bible! Thanks!

Idaho Health Care Town Halls?

According to an article in the online version of the Boise Weekly, Idaho Rep. Walk Minnick is planning on some town hall meetings--by phone--during the August recess.  They are to be held on Aug 19th and 31st at 7 p.m.  Not sure how this is going to actually work.  Does that mean everyone is gathering in one place and he will be there by phone only?

There seems to be a low profile for town hall meetings around the Inland Northwest.  In the same article it mentions that, according to Northwest Public Radio, "the town hall meeting in Post Falls last week went well for Minnick."

Wait slow down...a town hall meeting in Post Falls?  Here is part of the article by Northwest Public Radio:

POST FALLS, ID - Health care reform is dominating many of the discussions between Northwest Congressional members and their constituents this week. In some parts of the country, representatives are running into organized protests. But in north Idaho, Democrat Walt Minnick received a polite reception at a Rotary Club meeting yesterday. Correspondent Doug Nadvornick reports.

Does that say a town hall meeting or Rotary Club Meeting?    I thought so.  This just means local business owners, not the general public.   Just members of the Rotary....that doesn't constitute what a "town hall" meeting should be--members of the community as a whole..housewives, grandparents, health care workers, college students, etc....the COMMUNITY!

I'm not sure where all this town hall meeting stuff began.  They kind of snuck up  on me.  Are they supposed to be about our opinion on health care?  Or the recession (which doesn't exist if the government says it doesn't)? Or global warming? Or WHAT?!  When people mention health care, we are told by the president that this isn't what they are about...so what are they for? 

I find  the reaction of the politicians 'running' them very interesting.  Are they really interested in what we think?  Or is their way of just 'showing' that they are listening...and now that they find out we have some real opinions of their job and our government, they don't really want to listen.

Another question?  How do they find all the smiling people that they put behind the podium?  Do they look up who has the local prescriptions for Prozac or who buys the most Crest Teeth Whiteners and invite them? Or do they have two lines entering the town hall meetings--the smiling and non-smiling lines?  I just don't know.

What I would like to see...is a website that lists all the elected officials who have actually read the president's health care bill.  Maybe it's not full of pork...but it does seem to be full of something.  At one time I read that it was 4,000 pages long!  And that next to no one has read it through!  How scarey is that!?

Health care will run as well as USPS?!

According to an article in the Washington Post, President Obama fielded a question about his health care plan competing with private industry companies.  In it he made the comparison of how well USPS functions while Fed Ex and UPS also deliver mail as private companies. 

Um....wasn't there just an announcement that 1,000 post offices were going to be closed across the United States?  Is this the same government funded USPS that keeps raising its price of mail because it can't cover costs?

I might have this wrong, and I'm not a political expert, but as your average working citizen, this seems like a bad analogy to support his health care proposals.

Military Recruitors Take Notice!

In Humboldt County, two towns have banned the recruitment of their youth under the age of 18.  It's been in the works for quite some time, but act finally passed in both Arcata and Eureka, two towns centered in the heart of Humboldt county.

It's odd that the two towns...one ultra conservative...the other beyond ultra liberal, should be in agreement.  But when you consider it's our children, one of the most valued treasures to come out of the county, since the demise of logging and fishing, it's understandable.

Here is the main part of the act:

The Arcata Youth Protection Act

This text is an abridged version of the Arcata law passed in November 2008. Eureka passed an identical measure.

No person who is employed by or an agent of the United States government shall, within the City of Arcata, in the execution of his or her job duties, recruit, initiate contact with for the purpose of recruiting, or promote the future enlistment of any person under the age of eighteen into any branch of the United States Armed Forces.

Nothing in this Ordinance shall prevent any person from voluntarily visiting a military recruitment office or specifically initiating a request to meet with a recruiter.

Nothing in this Ordinance shall prevent individuals who are not employed by or agents of the U.S. government from encouraging people under the age of eighteen to join the military.

Any military recruiter who violates this Ordinance, as well as his or her commanding officer, shall be held responsible for said violation. Both shall be deemed guilty of an infraction and shall be subject to the penalties stated in the Arcata Municipal Code.

I can remember being called when I was in High School.  It was odd, because my parents were at work and I was home alone with my younger sister.  Here was this stranger trying to 'sell' me on the military vs heading off to college with all my friends.  I was a hard sell...I went to college, but what I thought was odd was 'how did they get my name and number?'  The scary part is they got it from my high school!  I was pretty headstrong and knew that I wanted to be a forest ranger in the rocky mountains hanging out with Smokey the Bear, but what of those kids that didn't know what they wanted to do?  I guess the military would sound like a good thing. 

Now though...more than 20 years later...it's a much more dangerous choice.  These non-war type actions in places where everyone hates Christians.  Just doesn't sound as safe as it did in the early 80's. 

I don't know about other parents, but I sure wouldn't want them calling my daughters!  My husband is doing a job all on his own of trying to get them to go to military school.  We don't need any more recruitors!!   :-)