When Life Hits Hard

Two months ago a  young couple went to check on their 6 month old daughter.

She wasn't breathing. A friend of mine who was visiting gave her mouth to mouth resuscitation which tragically was not successful. The little girl died of SIDS. My friend was devastated. He described the feelings of helplessness and frustration at not being able to do anything to save the baby. SIDS remains a mystery and every parents deepest fear. The parents have since split, trying to understand this senseless death is overwhelming and for a young couple beyond the limits of comprehension. At the time of the incident the police were called. They investigated my friend although the situation was apparent.

A month later this friend drove a visiting buddy back to his hotel room on the strip. It was late in the evening when the police pulled him over. Not that this should matter but he drives a red car with tinted windows. He was told he turned right at the wrong time and the Las Vegas police did a registration check, handcuffed him, threw him on the car, told him he was drunk, refused to do a breathalyzer and requested a blood draw instead, They then charged him with a DUI, driving without his license, some kind of thing about lane change and threw him in jail on a Friday night. They held him until late Monday night , releasing him after dropping all the charges.

Did you know the police can accuse you of DUI and hold you in jail for 72 hours awaiting the results of a blood test, without bail?

We all know and fear the Las Vegas Police department. It is corrupt and random. We have citizen shootings frequently and the police are not held accountable. It is a frightening place to live for many.

Most rational people will excuse this police activity away. "Well, if he wasn't doing anything wrong he wouldn't have been noticed.

I don't know about you  but I am beginning to feel a LOT of uneasiness with the way law enforcement in many parts of the country are doing the job.

My friend moved here from California in September. His parents live in an upscale neighborhood in the southwest side of the city. He holds a Masters Degree from UCLA. Since he moved back he has been pulled over four times in his own neighborhood when returning late at night. Each time he is treated with disrespect and literally baited. This last time was pretty frightening. 

I worry about him. He is young. He drives a red car with tinted windows.

The police profile is not good for him. He is a responsible, caring individual who moved back to Las Vegas so he could help his elderly parents.

Oh, did I tell you he is also black?

It's an Ugly Place For My Grandson

I worry about his future. Not yet two, his wonder about the moon and the stars, the darkness of night, the sun, how trees grow and why he can't move big rocks delights me. He wakes up in joy and expresses every emotion known to man and woman.
Over time he will become socialized. He will learn to control his impulses, to stifle his emotions and become a citizen of this anal repressed country.
How sad is that?
Not only will he lose that wonder in the schools we are now shaping as testing factories, identifying his talents as deficits because they don't fit the mold, by kindergarten testing, he will be labeled as either competent or "emerging" and discussion will begin about retention.
He will face pollution, water shortages, extreme weather as a product of global warming, racial profiling, dishonesty in product safety, and sadly, less opportunity in a country which once prided itself on opportunity. His chances to succeed financially in this world will be limited. Our income, as a school teacher, will limit his mobility. I see his mother struggle and I wonder, will he have the opportunities I had, to get an education? My family was very poor. I still had the opportunity to attend college without placing myself into  enormous debt.
I wonder if he will be part of a generation which pulls it together. Stops the selfish, greedy capitalistic raping of our world, puts the brakes on the uberrich and corporations which set policy for our country? Will he be able to help stop the sucking of our world resources to benefit the bottom land and save our world for generations of the future? Will he even be able to have a family and raise it in a safe world?
I won't be here to see it but my spirit will be floating over him each day with hope and love for our earth and his life.

Legalizing marijuana ? Why not?

Gateway drug? lmao! Addiction to prescription pills is the number one addiction is America.  Alcohol? A genius in mixology over the past ten years created one drink killers. Addictions? Anyway the tobacco manufacturers label them, cigarettes are best friends until death!
How many thousands are locked in jail because of possession?  What a waste.
America has no good reason to keep pot illegal. Unless the powers that be want to make alcohol and cigarettes illegal as well.
Now I am not saying I am a pot smoking grandma. I'm just asking the question-why? Why is marijuana an illegal substance?  What part of our government strenuously objects to the legalization of marijuana?
Isn't it amazing to you all that those who govern our country are the baby boomers? Those who smoked pot in public? Those who flaunted the "establishment"?
When those guys go this country will be a different place.
What scares me is the ignorance of the Perry generation.
You may never get legalized marijuana.
If you vote Republican, you all deserve what comes.

American Politics-Ask not what I can do-ask me what the other guy can't do!

Republican debates are entertaining. While candidates use sound bites for the most serious political statements, they use national media, paid ads, local and state supporters and PACs to keep voters from asking for more detail.
How do they do it? Trash the competition. Load the airways with deceitful half truths about fellow candidates.
We really should pay attention.
Karl Rove was the mastermind of trash elections and we got George Bush. He left office scurrying like a mole looking for darkness and anonymity.
Our country is still reeling from his incompetence.
I guess the Democrats timidity and good manners was perceived by the nation as weaknesses.
Perhaps we like the idea of a deceitful, vapid, uneducated and proud of it kind of guy.
If that is the case, go for Rick Perry.
Another Bush? Mitt Romney-this country has a weakness for rich, white guys who cannot relate to citizens. Go figure...

America's Educational Standards-Are we failing our children?

I have two Master's degrees As an elementary school student I sat on the gym floor, month after month, wistfully watching the same students receive academic awards. I was told if I tried harder I  too could get those awards . I struggled with math. I didn't get what the tests asked me to tell them. I could always find an argument for another answer. It was agonizing-and elusive.
The best teachers I hold in my heart are the ones who recognized the potential in me, used my strengths in reading and my ability to look at both sides of an issue and taught me how to use them for all my subject areas. Still it wasn't until high school that I realized I was intelligent and could be more than successful in school. Oh, I had moments of brilliance in my school career. A film I made about the elderly in Santa Monica made the paper. The poetry I wrote in elementary school hung in the hallways. I actually score the highest grade in a high school lit exam. The problem is, if you measured me against the standards today I would have been considered a remedial student and never, ever, would I have believed I had anything to offer the world, except perhaps, a minimum wage job.
As a teacher, I understand how important it is to keep track of what our students are gaining in terms of fundemental knowledge. As a parent, I would pull my kids from the school system the way it is curently pursuing a one size fits all approach.
The current quest for all kids to know all things at certain grades rather than see education as a developmental process throws away thousands of creative , eager, talented children in the process. If a child isn't following the same incubation period as the standards, he or she is failing. More ever, this "group think" process" provides no room for the "off the beaten path" child who sees the world and learning from not from a linear perspective, but perhaps from an off sides location, much like many gifted souls do.
Many of our most imaginative and creative citizens accomplished great things, despite our educational system. In fact, they had to leave it in order to pursue their goals.
As a parent and an educator, I want those kids to flourish in my classroom and our schools.
How can we both measure and grow our students in a manner that fits them?
The best teachers teach the student, not necessarily the curriculum as it presents itself. The best elementary school teachers teach children HOW to learn as well as what to learn. Learning to learn is an important process. We waste those precious growing and developing brain cells when we test them repeatedly,  constantly sending the message that the child is a failure if they fail a test.
The question I ask parents is this,
"In this "data driven, one size fits all, education system, are you aware your child is no longer a person but a series of test scores?"
Is your acquiescence , by way of silence, of the educational system, as it now stands, providing the optimum educational environment for your child?
I cannot think of how my two year old grandson will survive the school curriculum the way it stands. It will crush his spirit. His language skills are already exceptional, he is inquisitive, he is enthusiastic, he has a bright smile on his face each morning when he wakes up. He reminds me of me when I was a child. The world was an incubator of wonder and awe. He may not follow the progression of the curriculum and the testing calendar. Is he, then a failure in kindergarten because he did not learn how to add and subtract numbers according to the calendar?
What do we tell our kids when they fail the tests in first or second grade?
As a parent I would be asking these questions.
In the hallway at our school, the walls are lined with the results of testing data. Teachers are given rewards for testing data results.
Students progress is important but we can't omit each student's personal idiosyncratic learning styles.
Lastly I want to tell you a story about a student who came to my class this year.
She moved from a midewestern state. She is ADD, and boy is she ever. By 9am her desk is a mess, papers on the floor, lost pencils, wet paper towels left behind from a spill.
A brilliant reader. Not just a brilliant reader, a child with the potential to write amazing stories, high verbal skills, great comprehension skills. Barely hanging on at her last school. Once she learned testing strategies she was able to demonstrate her high language apptitude.
Mostly she needed to see her strengths and develop confidence.
She is still a work in progress. Her writing is all over the page, she is not neat but her thoughts and ideas are wonderful!
She is moving to another state! Will her next teacher see the potential? Will the next teacher see beyond the messy, scattered desk and the scrawled writing?
Or will she return to the status of "remedial student" because she tests poorly?

Are Las Vegas Police racist??

My daughter's boyfriend recently graduated from UCLA with a Master's degree.
He worked in California as a high school teacher. He currently works in the education field in Las Vegas. He bought a shiny new car last month. He has been home for three months.
Since he moved back home he has been pulled over three times by the Las Vegas police. Each time he is asked if his car is stolen. They run his plates, check is ID, run a federal search on his social security number. I think he should have purchased a white or a silver car. Maybe the color of his car would not have made a difference, but the color of his skin does.
He has never had a record with the police-anywhere.

Each time he leaves the house to go out for a night with my daughter or his friends, his father, a well respected black man, living in an upscale neighborhood, calls him throughout the night to make sure he is okay. He is worried about him being harassed by the LVPD. Each time he is pulled over it is in his affluent neighborhood.
The police appear to believe since he is black he has no business on that side of town.
The most recent pull over was definitely frightening. The police pulled him over and asked him if his car was stolen. They ran the usual checks. They asked him for his social security number. They treated him rudely, baiting him, egging him to lose him temper. They made him sit in his car  for an hour by the side of the road.

He knows better. He is unfailingly polite and cooperative.
His plan to live in this town is gone. He is bright and talented. His father is an educated and successful man.
Black, educated, articulate and successful-I guess this means little in a town where the police department shoots first and doesn't have to ask questions later because the "suspect" is dead.
He needs to leave this town before it hurts him-fatally.

Revel Casino in New Jersey tells new hires reapply every four years for your job

This is frightening. Can you imagine your employer telling you  to reapply for your job every four years? The quality of your work doesn't matter. We want them young and pretty. You don't have a job after four years.
If you want to know what the breakdown of a civilized society looks like, try destabilizing the workforce.
Blatant ageism and sexism, backed by weakened labor laws allows such arrogant disdain for the respect of workers.
It could happen in any "right to work" establishment. Keep your heads in the sand, Americans. Worse is yet to come.
Those, "unemployed need not apply" signs are nothing  compared to what might come nest. Too bad so may people see unions as the bad guys. Those years of fighting for workers rights kept this kind of contemptuous behavior off the table.