Schools Taken For a Ride and our Kids Pay the Toll

Another very informative lecture about Common Core and the application process taken by the states.




After learning about the UNCRC(United Nations Conventions for the Rights of the Child) I wasn't so terribly shocked to then learn that UNESCO (the UN, essentially) is writing the kids' curriculum now under Common Core.

The SAT's and ACT's are Common Core now. This makes me truly angry since my thirteen year old is such an ambitious little fellow. I don't know when he'll be taking his SAT's(probably in two years) or what college he'll attend but as I keep telling him, "Man, you live in interesting times."

She mentions the Earth Charter which is adored by Common Core proponents(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Charter) and wow, doesn't it sound a lot like the Georgia Guidestones??? Especially #4(that would be the UN taking over national parks, which they've already done), #5(Agenda 21/Regionalism/Sustainable Development), #6(precautionary as in 'let's spread barium aluminum mixture all over the skies to protect our current climate meanwhile ignoring the obvious problems associated with it'), and #7(planned parenthood and eugenics).

A screenshot of some info in the lecture:

That's about the Math. The LA was just as bad if not worse, saying that 'college ready' by Common Core standards would be at about the 7th grade level.

I learned something quite surprising in the video which I don't know why it didn't occur to me before now to make the connection what with all the pay-for-grades, but the kids in our virtual school(FLVS) are constantly asked to evaluate and grade their teachers' performance and skills. This is done through The Tripod Project. It is a distinctive part of Common Core which is supposed to motivate the teachers to do better but the fact of the matter is, if a kid is pissed at their teacher, what do you THINK they're going to say??! They're KIDS for cryin' outloud! This is just about as ridiculous a thing to ask a kid to do as anything in the CC curriculum so far. Actually, it's the worst thing. Why? Because why should the children be asked to grade their teacher? The child is not qualified in any way to judge such a thing no matter how you word the questions. Children are emotional and fickle little beasties and with the psychologists writing the questionnaires you can bet they're formulated to have a certain bent to them in the end. It's psychological tuning. They can make the results say whatever they want in order to justify pulling a teacher's pay down.

http://stopcommoncore.com/ StopCommonCore is being added to the Human Rights Sites and Organizations area on this blog as of tonight. I encourage you to visit and spread the word. 

Here is a fantastic list of documents which spell out what Common Core is and is not. 
http://stopcommoncore.com/show-me-the-evidence-toc/evidence-standards/

Here is a long list of state initiatives to stop Common Core and links to their sites: 
http://stopcommoncore.com/get-connected/

 

MRI's for the classroom? Common Core Chaos

Common Core bypassed Congress entirely. It even bypassed the education boards because the states wanted the money so badly they raced to put in their applications. It was attached to the stimulus bill in 2008. And then grades dropped even more. hmmm... 

I think that Glenn Beck's breakdown of the entire political situation is absolutely spot on. Please watch.  

Thankfully, he dug deep on the funding of Common Core and listed a few of the big ones like GE and the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation. ahhh smell the stench of rotting, over-vaccinated brains in the classroom yet? 



Here are examples of Common Core, looking directly at textbooks, both LA and Math and contrasting them with 'old school' textbooks. I grew up with the old school texts and this 'new math' that my twelve year old was being taught the past two years was making him absolutely miserable until I taught him the way I originally learned and we started using outside sources(NON Common Core!) like Khan Academy to study and practice those concepts. I don't even understand the new math, honestly. They take a two digit multiplication problem and turn it into some convoluted rocket science disaster of a mess. It's driving kids crazy. They don't understand simple things because it's so severely overcomplicated in how they're being taught now.



I had enough of the language arts my twelve year old was being taught. I pulled him out and am currently teaching him myself. We're reading all sorts of wonderful books now and he's writing funny short stories using his spelling words. He's discovering he has a talent to write scary stories. Would he have ever found this talent if I hadn't stepped in? I really don't believe so. His poor brain was overwhelmed with useless nonsense they were trying to cram down his throat.

A New Road Less Terrifying

"And the new man reigns by love, by faith, by perfection, by patience, and by wisdom. Yet his king is the light mind, who is king of all. He reigns over it as he wishes." 

~Manichaean Literature

Quite a bit happened over the past few days with my youngest(12yo) boy with school and it's led me to make decisions I never thought I'd be strong enough to make. I'm brave. I'm fearless. I have taken on the responsibility of teaching this boy 8th grade US History for the rest of the school year. Yes, yes, REAL home school. He was virtual schooling up until now, curriculum and teachers provided by the county. 

Emotionally, as of Friday I was a wrecking ball of nerves after fighting with the county administration for virtual schooling over his Final Exams for 7th grade Civics. (He's worked ahead and is going into 8th now.) Long story short, there is no such thing as letting a child fail anymore. No Sir. Nope. Now, you either make a 60% or above on your Mid Term Exams and your Final Exams(apiece) or you fail the entire course and have to retake it. OR you can retake the Exam itself. Well, when a teacher resets the exam before even talking to the parents it kinda takes the whole 'choice' out of everyone's hands, don't you think? That's precisely what happened on Friday.

As a rule, we do not allow do-overs or resubmissions. We've always let our kids suck it up and take the failing grade so they learn from it. And until now we've never run into this 60% policy of this virtual school. With the elder boy(13yo) being such an overachiever the lowest grade he's ever made on a midterm or final was a C. John is not his brother. John has problems memorizing facts and dates and definitions. History is BORING!!!! Ergo, his grades in that class have always been on a slippery slope. I get it. I totally do. I was the same way in history classes all my life.

His teacher held the password for the last part(there were three parts) of the Final hostage until he retook the second part. He did better on the second part by a good twenty points. GREAT! Not that it's any real indication of learning since quite a few of the questions were the same the second time around and the night before I made sure he looked in his lessons and found the correct answers to figure out what happened on the test. Of course he did better the second time around! He had access to some of the same questions and had time to look up the correct answer. This is kind of a no-brainer to me.

Anyway, hubby and I were not happy and vented to every administrator you can think of with the county and the main company itself which provides the curriculum the county contracts from on a yearly basis. It's a respect issue, I feel. I think it's disrespectful to expect a kid to be happy about retaking a test because he didn't get the information the first time around and then letting it all be about the company's numbers during auditing. And that is exactly what it's about. (K12.com has a minimum of 80% by the way. On EVERY assignment, not just the tests. Imagine the stress being in school there!) Life doesn't give you do-overs and neither should school. It's a bad way to practice for 'real life' after high school. My kids totally get our philosophy and happily abide by it because they understand its worth. It helps them push harder to do better in the future.

So I decided to take the high road and home school John in 8th grade US History. We'll get a signature from a teacher at the end of the year and submit it to the county and that will be that. This is an adventure that is quite a bit less terrifying since it'll only be one class but still, when I went to the library this afternoon to find a starting point I was looking at four shelves of books for the main core topics and could only guestimate what would be best based on the time frame of the topic. 

Monday is a long way away still in my mind. I have some work to do and some decisions to make about how to make this more digestible for my boy. I want to do some old school kind of learning to help him with reading and vocabulary and writing but still teaching him the subject. I came home with five books dealing with and leading up to the Colonial era and I guess that's where we'll start. We'll compile a bibliography for his homeschool portfolio as required. Read, write essays, research using the Library of Congress for students, find things he's interested in learning about on his own and he can report it however he wants.... I'd like to make it more easy going than the cyber pressure he's been feeling in school. Not sure how successful I'll be or if I'll turn into a raving beast when confronted with his bad spelling. I don't want everything to be graded. I'd rather have an 'unschooling' approach to the final result but have structure because of John's lack of enthusiasm about the subject. 

Who knows, maybe he'll bloom within the new freedom and find that History isn't such a dry thing after all? 

I am breathing deep and finding that calm inside myself to understand that perhaps this is what this child needs right now. So what if we spend a month doing absolutely nothing but reading cool historical books and figuring things out, right?!! Oh well. We'll have fun reading and talking about the books and anything cool he discovers. Then maybe we can get a timeline going up on his cork board and put things into perspective in a more logical way for him visually. 

I'd love to do the same thing with him in English but fear I'd be biting off more than I can chew at the moment. As it is, the second semester of his LA class can't be opened yet because the curriculum hasn't been published yet. Why? Common Core is about to crash and burn in the state of Florida and the school can't figure out what to do. I know, right? It's insane!! He should be done with the second semester of this year's LA in six weeks and instead, we're still waiting for the school to retract it's head from it's sphincter and take a look at reality. People don't want Common Core. Competition is a good thing, keeping everyone on the same level is BAD. It pulls everyone down.

This momma is ready to learn whatever the journey is willing to teach. Hopefully a little boy is willing to go out and find the lessons he wants to learn best. 

 "He breaks off from his teacher and the brothers. He always wants to go in and come out alone, a solitary man. He will always walk alone. It is a sign that the closeness of his brothers does not persuade him." 

~Manichaean Literature

And this is the way of gnosis, entirely. It is a solitary pursuit when it's all said and done. We take cues from the world around us which are available but we must apply it to our heart and sort out the gold from the chaff.

Cat's Eye Nebula, Hubble telescope

Between the Folds

Origami! RNA sequencing. Tissue paper crumpling. Wet molding. Computer models and designs for airbags. Sacred geometry. Sound intriguing?

Between the Folds is a beautiful documentary I watched a few months ago and I wanted to make sure I posted something about it here since I mentioned origami and DNA folding in a recent previous post.

Look for it on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix(how I watched it) and any other place which might have documentaries of a scientific or artistic nature. 

This movie inspired me to look up origami online. I made my first paper crane that day. It had some wobbly wings and one crooked assed beak but ya know what? It was fun and it reminded me to have fun with simple things around me like paper.

Between the Folds follows several artists in their ever changing craft but also explores the real scientific boundaries which are being crossed by... origami scientists! They're in Harvard and Yale and Princeton. These folks aren't slouches and they're radically changing our understanding of physics. 

Watched this with my kids and they both loved it. Go find it!!

EOC/FCAT School Insanity

If something is labeled End of Course then doesn't it seem logical that the test would be taken after the course is ... finished... and all the information of that course is expected to be in your head and then tested? 

Sorry, but this is going to be a Mommy-vent post.

The Florida Board of Education is just getting stupider and stupider every time they change something to 'update' it and make our children more capable of competing with children in other countries. So this year they've gotten rid of the FCAT standardized test which we've had for years and years and oh yeah, since a certain president decided that No Child Should Be Left Behind. That hasn't worked out so well since the teachers and admin created an environment where cheating and lying have become the norm.

We have now moved onto specific EOC(End of Course) tests for specific classes. Namely, Algebra, Geometry, Biology, and US History. My thirteen year old will be taking the Algebra EOC this year. Technically, since he is a homeschooler(virtual schooled) student he doesn't even have to. But au contraire, now the county says that he has to take the EOC if he wants to be enrolled in any public university at a later date. So what was that again about homeschooled students having more freedom than brick-and-mortar students??? Legally, we don't have to do standardized testing. But now we do. But legally we don't. *sigh* Even if universities are throwing money at the kid by the time he's sixteen, I seriously doubt they're going to overlook his lack of EOC test scores. So he has to do them.

Trying to help Trey become more adept at speaking with others about his schooling, being assertive, and getting things done for himself I decided to have him schedule his own EOC testing at his local domiciling school. He's taking an AP test at what will be his domiciling high school(I already got that scheduled) but his EOC testing for Algebra is at his local middle school. Poor thing. He's in 7th grade and having to juggle two different schools. But I thought it'd be good for his character to see exactly what kind of crap I have to deal with trying to get anything at all done for him or his brother. By five o'clock yesterday he was a shaking mess and ready to burst at the seams. He'd had to give messages to three different people at two different locations, and one of them was county based. He'd been transferred ten times and once to a person who was supposed to be someone else but the person lied to him. (This was the assistant principal.)

End result? The middle school didn't have a clue what End of Course testing even was and they're supposed to be doing it in less than two months! It still isn't resolved, even after three days of calling and waiting. 

Now here's the truly stupid thing to have to consider here-- none of his teachers have specifically told him that the courses have to be complete by the time he takes his AP(college) exam or his EOC test. Think about that for a minute. The course doesn't have to be complete. But you're being tested on it. I had to ask the teachers directly about this and even then they were wishy-washy about it. They half-heartedly advised finishing the course but weren't too sure if it had to be done. And that was only after I hounded them for a real answer. Where is the educated in education?

Trey's AP exam is May the 17th. But the course itself doesn't end until June the 1st. This Algebra course? The same thing but the test is a week earlier! So now, because none of his teachers know what the hell they're doing this kid has to completely rearrange his syllabus to make sure he is done with those classes and is ready for the tests. This is not an easy thing to ask him to do. His schedule is loaded already to make time for studying.

Thankfully, he only has the one AP Human Geography and the one Algebra EOC test this year. Next year, since he'll be taking Honors Biology, Honors Geometry, and AP US World History he'll have three tests to schedule and worry about. Those three classes will have to be completed by April or May. This means his first semester will be shorter as will his second semester. Jumpin Jesus, people, think about that. It's nuts.

The Board of Education still wants to have their summers off, that is the only reason why they do all this standardized testing between March and the end of May. They want to have the test scores mailed out by the last day of school. Anything the child is 'learning' after the standardized test is taken is supposedly NOT TESTED upon! I ask you-- what is the point of even going to school all those weeks afterward? Talk about a waste of money. If I'd known this when I was in school I'd have skipped those classes every single day and not felt the slightest bit repentant. And yet I would have been suspended for such a daring(intelligent/logic based) move. Damn skippy I'd have rather been going out and having fun rather than sitting around doing lessons that didn't even matter.

Board of Stooopidity. Not Education. 

After all this chaos the past three days, Trey told me flatly that he understands now why I rant and scream at the phone sometimes. He said, "It's like talking to a three year old. They didn't even sound like they knew what to tell me about anything. They just kept transferring me."

Amen. Now he gets it. 

Teach a child to be independent and they will be independent..... if there's something they want. And in this case there is most definitely something Trey wants and he's going after it full steam ahead-- a free ride to university without $75,000 in tuition hanging over head head until the day he dies.

Back to School Time and Vaccines

Both my boys (11 and 12) got their physicals today and of course we were shown their vaccine records so they could be updated. Now up until three years ago I had no problems with vaccines except for making that decision about my own body(I got pneumonia from a flu and chickenpox vaccine which put me in the hospital for three weeks). About my stepsons, though, this was of course a bit more tricky. Hubby had his own ideas and I had mine.

Through time, reading, and much deliberation, I decided to broach the topic with my husband about discontinuing vaccines with the boys. He fought me hard last year but gave in. This year, after all the ranting I'd done about all the new research on Gardasil killing pubescent girls he finally woke up. The trigger was, I think, that they started pushing it so hard toward BOYS and for the most inane thing: genital warts. Gimme a freaking break. Warts never killed anyone. 

"Son, I'm terribly sorry but if you don't get this potentially deadly vaccine your penis may not be as attractive to a woman." 

I hope that sounded just as ridiculous to you as it does to me. 

Cervical cancer? Ok, yeah. I can agree with there being a need for a vaccine-- if one did exists which was SAFE!-- to protect our girls. But when you give a girl the Gardasil vaccine, she gets WARTS on her body, and after a lot of other complications then drops dead-- well. I have to say that there's a sick sort of irony in there somewhere. 

If you see a sudden surge in adolescent boys with genital warts in the next decade or so ehh... I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about why and how that might be coming about. This puts me in mind of our  dear ex-president saying emphatically, "I. Did. Not. Have. Sex. With. That. Woman." (But he did ruin her dress.)

Also, if they can come up with a vaccine for cervical/penile/anal cancers and genital warts then why the hell can't they cure breast cancer yet? With as much money thrown at the Komen foundation I have to wonder where all that money is going. They have a vaccine for several cancers but can't kill it? 

A vaccine for CANCER but we still can't cure the common cold? I do not believe for a minute that the science behind this is based in reality. Wishful thinking, maybe, for those who have been affected by these cancers or warts in some way but realistically speaking: what is the gain here? You can't cure the people who are already sick besides irradiating them and injecting them with poisons and then hope their immune system reboots. It's a crapshoot. 

Getting back to my boys being hounded to get their vaccines today. The nurse was nervous and shoved a pile of papers at me when I informed her we were declining. The doctor, however, was more composed and wanted a specific reason. I was pretty blunt. I told her that when the companies which are making these vaccines remove four items then we'll get vaccinated again. 

1. Thiomersal 
2. Squalene
3. Aluminum
4. Polysorbate 80

She said that all of these ingredients serve a purpose in the vaccine and that they can't remove them. I told her that I don't recall reading in my multivitamin information insert that the human body has a deficiency of any of those ingredients. 

"Well, I give my kids these same vaccines and I feel comfortable doing so." 

"I'd like my documentation on the physical so we can leave." 

She left the room and got me the paperwork and that was that. Here's the list of vaccines she wanted to give my twelve year old boy: 

1. HPV(Gardasil)
2. Meningococcal
3. Hepatitis A
4. TD or Tdap
5. Chickenpox

Five. That's FIVE vaccines with all of those insidious ingredients that he would have gotten today if I hadn't spoken up. That's five shots of thiomersal, five shots of squalene, five shots of aluminum, and five shots of polysorbate 80. 

Considering the fact that this twelve year old is probably going to be in college by the time he's fourteen or fifteen he certainly doesn't need all this crap floating around in his brain! Although some days I am tempted to gag him to protect him from himself and his ever-eloquent and comedic smart mouth, the truth is that at some point he's going to outgrow this phase and learn how to not sound like such a snot. I'm willing to wait. But I certainly don't want to deprive him of the chance to do that by turning him into another stupefied sheep. We've got too many already. 

The whooping cough vaccine(Tdap) certainly hasn't helped all those people the past few years which have contracted it. Seventy percent of the people who've contracted it were vaccinated! Herd immunity theory is debunked with that alone. 

The more I read about school districts trying to force the Gardasil vaccine on children in their school clinics even without parental consent the more strongly I began to feel about refusing further vaccines for the boys. You have to ask yourself why these pharmaceutical companies are so gosh darn insistent that our little boys shouldn't have genitial warts and our little girls have to be protected from cervical cancer-- especially when it's now shown that the only thing the Gardasil vaccine can positively do is give a false negative on a Pap smear. Congratulations. They just killed another woman. If that's not proof of a soft kill operation then I don't know what more people need to see.

UNCRC- Important Parental Rights Law video!

United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child(wiki link): When I stumbled across the video I've embedded below I was shocked, but not so shocked that I was falling on the floor twitching dumbfounded. Why? We've had enough run ins with our local elementary school which made me pull both my boys out to do cyber schooling two years ago. But this!! this is absolutely insane- and the USA is the only country so far which hasn't accepted it. Read how here. I find it positively nauseating to think that our current method of raising our two sons in Customary International Law, is illegal. If I didn't set boundaries for these boys they'd run over me and burn our apartment down. Or kill us. But hey, what's a little blood and gore between parents and kids if it's what the kids want, right?



Watch for yourself. It's true. After you watch the video think think long and hard about whether or not you want to have more children added to your family. And maybe in the end that's the whole point? Because if the government has control over your children and how you raise them then where has our freedom gone? We've signed them away. We're nothing more than a breeding workforce. There is hope. People are fighting this law. Keep reading and watching.

Here are some main points from the video:

• Uganda and other countries in the middle east: still figuring out whether or not honor killings should still be legal and yet they have passed the UNCRC for their country. So killing women who are raped is/maybe alright but disciplining your children is wrong? Who's raising who here? The parents or the state?
  
• Holland: children start sex education at the age of four. Why? I'm pretty sure they've seen body parts from both parents or siblings by then to say that there are differences between boys and girls. So why formally educate? So they can learn even earlier how to damage someone? As if the Terrible Two's weren't enough, for crying outloud. Next we're going to have eight year olds raping each other.
  
• Sweden: homeschooling is illegal. Only state indoctrination for the Swedes, it appears.
  
• Belgium: doctors can murder a child under a year old if they find the child physically or mentally deficient/disabled. In 16% of cases they didn’t even ask for the parent’s consent. Government sanctioned murder.
  

US courts are more frequently using ‘Customary International Law’ to decide domestic case outcomes. So we have not ratified the UNCRC here but it is still beginning to take effect in public schools and in the home itself.

Once enough of these bits and pieces of international law have passed here in the USA then a precedent is created and… UNCRC will be passed. Clinton(Mrs.) signed it already in the UN but Clinton(Mr.) didn't push it forward for ratification. And so it sits on the shelf scaring the crap out of parents in the US while it is slowly being obeyed by local family courts even without official ratification.

Taking the opinion of the child into consideration is the priority with CRC:

• The parent cannot have access to medical tests unless the child gives the doctor permission. Think your kid is high and up to no good? Good luck proving it! Even if the child is a danger to the rest of the family because of their mental state you can't do anything because the child will not allow the parents to see the drug tests.
  
• Anything the parents state the child must do to fulfill family obligations is subject to state approval. Real court case example given in movie: child doesn’t feel like going to church three times a week. Child complains to the school counselor. Child is removed from school and put into foster care and parents not even notified until after the fact. No court case is presented for abuse of any kind or imminent danger. The child simply doesn’t feel like complying with the family’s schedule. “I don’t wanna” becomes “I get put in foster care.” Surprising to the kid but then they decide to go along with it because it's how they can get what they want. Does this sound surprising to most parents? NO! (What, don't you remember being a headstrong little punk and driving your parents up the wall? I can answer honestly- yes, I do. I was a hellion.) Three times a week is too much for a thirteen year old but once a week sounds about right, according to Washington state law for a few years until it was thrown out. Many more cases were brought before family courts before it was taken out of the state’s law.
• Spanking? Forget about it. Grounding them? No can do. They have a right to freedom. Standing them in the corner or have them write a repetitive paper on their infraction(That's my personal fave. They hate handwriting assignments)? Get sued by your own child because they disagree with you. Can you imagine it, getting called into court because you tried to discipline your child and every spat turning into a legal battle? It'd be enough to give any sane person the chills when that pregnancy test comes up positive. At that point you might as well hand the child over to the state because everything you say or do is up for review in a court of law. I can see abortion rates rising exponentially as the generations get more and more unruly because to be a parent is to be the ultimate schmuck.
  

3) From the ParentalRights.org website an example was given of the ‘perfect storm’ which will rise up from the CRC being passed in the US: In the early 1980s, a landmark parental rights case reached the Washington State Supreme Court. The case involved 13-year-old Sheila Marie Sumey, whose parents were alarmed when they found evidence of their daughter's participation in illegal drug activity and escalating sexual involvement. Their response was to act immediately to cut off the negative influences in their daughter's life by grounding her.

But when Sheila went to her school counselors complaining about her parent's actions, she was advised that she could be liberated from her parents because there was "conflict between parent and child." Listening to the advice she had received, Sheila notified Child Protective Services (CPS) about her situation. She was subsequently removed from her home and placed in foster care.

Her parents, desperate to get their daughter back, challenged the actions of the social workers in court. They lost. Even though the judge found that Sheila's parents had enforced reasonable rules in a proper manner, the state law nevertheless gave CPS the authority to split apart the Sumey family and take Sheila away.

The moral I take from that story is that it's alright to say, "Sweety, we think your friends are a horrible influence," but it's not ok to keep your child safe inside your home from getting into trouble with those same horrible friends. What rights do we have left as parents??

ParentalRights.org has put together a Constitutional amendment(SR 99) which will actually spell out parents’ rights since currently there is nothing to protect a parent from saying no to their child and it being Constitutionally legal. That's right. It's not legal to tell your child NO! or that they must comply with your decisions about their friends, medical testings, education, etc. Let's just let the little darlings run wild, yes?

This is the proposed amendment SR99:

SECTION 1
The liberty of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children is a fundamental right.

SECTION 2
Neither the United States nor any state shall infringe upon this right without demonstrating that its governmental interest as applied to the person is of the highest order and not otherwise served.

SECTION 3
No treaty may be adopted nor shall any source of international law be employed to supersede, modify, interpret, or apply to the rights guaranteed by this article.

Sign the petition to pass the Constitutional amendment!

Reading the 'Parental Rights in the Courts' and 'Families in the News' examples on the site will blow your mind. This is real, people. The state believes it can raise your child better in foster care than you can!

• Parker v. Hurley(2007)
  
• Brown v. Hot, Safer and Sexy Productions
  
• Fields v. Palmdale School District
  
• Graham v. Florida(2012)
• + dozens more in the past twenty years.
  

More lawsuits are coming and things are coming to a head now.

Here is a direct link to the current 2012 update to the ratification process and who has has/has not supported the adoption of the International Treaty or the UNCRC. The statistics are appalling. The Democrats are trying to collectively throw our children under a bus.

So Readers, what is your opinion of the legislation? What have you seen or heard about it?

Breasts! OMG!

Defiantly lactating in public, women across the USA have united and decided to go out to their local stores and feed their babies in order to show their support of a woman who was harassed in Texas.

Oh we have such horrid hang ups over the female body.... I can understand the act of procreating as something not to be seen in public but naturally feeding a child? Hey, the baby has NO problem whatsoever with it. All they see is foooood. Not booooob. Well, maybe they do equate the two in their mind and start furiously salivating in response to seeing one but seriously- WHAT is the big deal??? It's not like a woman is flashing you in a sexual way or anything. We have milk bags and sometimes they're used for what they were created for. Most moms hang a small blanket over their shoulder for privacy anyway and to keep their baby comforted.

The accompanying vid to the article is more informative but here's the article itself:

Breastfeeding In Flash Mobs Protest At Target Stores

By Cory Perrin 12/29/2011 10:06 PM ET

Breastfeeding Flash Mobs – Breastfeeding moms are so upset that they are taking their anger out in a protest against 100 Target stores. The mothers have created a flash mob and have joined the cause to support a fellow nursing mother who had an unpleasant experience.

Yesterday mothers around the US went to their local Target in full participation.

This was an act to support Michelle Hickman, a Texas mother, who felt she was being harassed by Target employee’s last month when she was nursing her infant son in the Fortune 500 retail store.

These flash mobs took place in 35 states following the story of Michelle Hickman being aired. According to the mother of four, she was nursing her baby in a remote area of the Target store in TX when employees approached her and asked her if she wanted to use a fitting room.

Hickman is receiving way more support than she ever imagined she would. She feels hopeful that the actions taken yesterday, December 28, will encourage Target to educate their employees about their breastfeeding policies.

________________

Good for you, moms!!! And according to Target's corporate offices, they do allow breast feeding mothers to do so anywhere they wish so it was the employee who was out of line, not the mother.

The more women push back and fight for what is natural and right then our laws will reflect this. My mother never fed me in a bathroom or a closet at work when I was nursing; she fought for the right to be comfortable and the men in her office spoke up in her defense as well. At break time and lunch she'd come and get me from the office nursery and feed me while chatting with co-workers. She fed me in restaurants and stores. And when another baby cried nearby, yes, my mother was the one running out to the car to change her shirt because she let down in a flood. It's natural.

Hilariously, my own husband thinks public breast feeding is 'indecent.' I told him that if our boys were still at that age I'd whip a breast out anywhere I felt like it and feed them. He looked at me like I had two heads. Then again, he's never had a great relationship with his own mother or the mother of his children so.... perhaps more a more prudish attitude was the result? I love him anyway but wow we butt heads on some weird stuff! lol

Procrastination And Living With Blinders On

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's book The Laughing Jesus talks about 'living lucidly' in chapter ten. I equate this task with removing the blinders and getting up off our spiritual butts. It's very difficult to stay disciplined with the way ordinary life slips in, demanding our immediate attention. The authors had interesting things to say about procrastination concerning gnosis:

"Life is a game of awakening and the way we win is remarkably simple. We live or ordinary life, just as we have always done, but we choose to live consciously. We recognize that even the most seemingly trivial events are opportunities to enjoy the moment and love others. We embrace the stranger who serves us at the local shop with big love, because we no longer see them as just a cashier, we know they are also the mystery made manifest. And when we love others we may help them wake up and become more loving. In this way we can send out ripples of kindness wherever we go.

We wake up by approaching our everyday existence as an ongoing spiritual exercise. Not in some overly serious way, but like a game we enjoy playing. Yet it does also have a serious aspect. Life will naturally present us with the challenges we need to become more conscious, some of which can be hard to face, and the best way to avoid being pushed is to keep moving.

We tend to think that it is when we feel bad that we need to wake up and when we feel good everything is fine as it is. But actually it is often when we are enjoying life that we become most unconscious. When life is bad we are impelled to do something about it and we may take a step forward on our journey of awakening. But when we feel good it is tempting to settle into a comfortable unconsciousness. We need to pay attention to waking up all of the time, not just when we are pushed into it because we felt bad.

Once we understand that the game of life is about waking up and that what we really want is to love this moment, we will cease distracting ourselves with the relentless quest for transitory satisfaction, through accumulating material possessions, acquiring social status and attaining personal power. We will stop numbing the pain of separateness with TV and trivia. Instead we will give our precious attention to the process of awakening. We will stop seeing lucid living as an attractive idea and make it a reality. We will stop procrastinating and go for it."

As I write this my ten year old son is sitting out at the dining room table sobbing his little heart out because he procrastinated all day long on school work and now here it is only a few minutes before Daddy gets home and he swears he's going to be killed. It's always just before Daddy gets home that the kid looks at the clock and freaks out.

I've given him pep talks ten times a day. I've taken away all his toys, electronics privileges, had him write papers concerning procrastinating, and even had him write essays forcing him to give HIMSELF a pep talk to stop procrastinating; listing all the reasons it's not such a good idea and specifically what he loses by doing it. But we still haven't broken through that barrier in his mind.

As the two good authors say, "you have to want to wake up more than you want to stay asleep."

And as I've asked my youngest time and time again, "why are you stopping yourself?"

Children teach us patience in surprising ways. I look at him and at times think, 'why can't he do this?! It's easy! If he gets done then he gets free time. What's the issue? I got done with my school work in a reasonable amount of time when I was a kid. What's the big deal?'

But to him it is a big deal. So I get to watch him overcome this demon and in the process learn more about him and myself. Can I be patient enough to not scream at him every time I see him staring off into space or 'accidentally' dropping his eraser on the floor for the thousandth time? Can I be compassionate enough to let him learn from his mistakes? Can I be strict enough to enforce that no work will carry over to the next day and watch him sit, miserable, at the table until 11pm? It's no fun for me or my husband. We don't get anything out of it. This is a roadblock of our son's making and his life is his own journey. But our journeys sure do intersect an awful lot!! And that's where loving others with Big Love comes in handy. I can give John a big loud kiss on the cheek, hug him tightly, tell him that I love him with all my heart... but afterward I still have to nudge him toward the table to get his school work done.

Life Sucks Like A Freshly Unclogged Toilet

Couldn't really think of a different title to this post. My apologies. But it is accurately descriptive of my state of being at the moment, unfortunately.

Lemme go ahead and get the whinefest out of the way then I'll try to weave some sort of gnostic wisdom into this somehow.

Gripe #1: My stepsons have been driving me batshit crazy and I'm tired of fighting with my husband about their behavior; thank the All that they are at their birthmother's the next two weeks. She is trying to virtual-school them for one of those weeks so that she can keep them a week after Spring Break and quite honestly I have to say that as a substitute Learning Coach she sucks! Ugh. I'm watching the boys grades go down the drain.

Granted, it's been funny from our perspective(mine and my husband's) watching this all happen in their gradebook online. We can accurately tell when she's trying to be firm with them and when they're tap dancing all over her head like she's an idiot. I even wrote her a five page Guidebook for heaven's sake, describing in great detail all the stunts they'll try to pull and how to deal with it! Does she call and ask for help? Nope. I offered. And it was sincere. If she called I would honestly put the crackdown on those boys if she asked me to; however then of course Daddy would have some serious questions for them when they came home about why they act like such jerks. .. oh wait. That was last week. And that discussion didn't really lead anywhere. I feel like I'm caught in the Groundhog Day movie.

Gripe #2: discovered my cat is bulimic. Our carpet cleaner has been getting quite a workout lately. Only made the logical diagnosis when I spotted him wolfing down his food then sauntering his fat ass over to the Siamese's bowl, shoving her out of the way, gulping down half her portion, and then walked over to the carpet to hurl it all back up. I swear this cat is just about too damn stupid to live. (And no he doesn't have an allergy to the food.)

So now I have to feed the Siamese in our bedroom and el stupido gordo in the kitchen, effectively locking the two apart from one another until the bowls are empty or they lose interest. Then pick the bowls up. Otherwise, the male speeds his butt on over to her bowl and digs in. Then I have to shoo him away and that's just a sad dramatic story all in itself because he's really a very stubborn cat and this argument of ours tends to get a bit loud. He's not very good at taking no for an answer. My foot on his face and shoving him in the opposite direction is usually how we settle the disagreement. Even then sometimes he has to be the masochist and come running back for some more yelling and foot action on my part. He is seriously demented. Sweet and cuddly. But demented.

The few times my mother has watched him for a couple of days she always drops him off early saying, "that cat is a jackass!" and who am I to disagree? I have literally woken up to his bad cat breath in my face, wondering what the hell he was doing in the house, and then found a Post It note on the inside of my front door saying, "Honey, your cat is a jackass." No joke. She really does this.

And he is a pushy little jackass. I'm sure our neighbors think our cats are starved and beaten. Au contraire. They just have their humans wound around their little kitty paws and oh boy do they know it. I open a can of tuna in this house and the Siamese sounds like a baby who hasn't been fed in a week. I swear, I'd wire her jaws shut if I didn't love that little brat so much. Her name isn't Little Big Mouth for nothing. A pedigreed brat. At least she isn't bulimic. She does have that going in her favor. And she is the absolute best movie critic. The more blood and gore she sees in a movie the harder she switches her tail across my face and chatters at the TV. She loves scary movies.

I'm just really sick of cleaning up orange colored puke stains in the carpet. Why do they have to put so much food dye in animal kibble anyway? Then again, why do we have white carpets in this apartment??

Gripe #3: My fish died yesterday. I really miss him. Beta. Off white with red fins. He was gorgeous. I think he had an albino somewhere in his lineage because at first glance you'd swear he was a female. I bought him because I thought he was a cool looking little cross dresser and anyone else would just plain make fun of him. I wouldn't. I like the misfits and the outcasts. He was a real sweety.

The boys are coming back next Thursday and I honestly don't know how to reconcile myself with that fact. I feel like locking myself in my own closet and reading a book all day just to get away from their attitudes. And anyone who wants to comment, please be aware of this first: yes, the kids know me. I've been in their lives for more than a few years now. No, they don't need 'divorce therapy,' they're just regular kids who will take ten miles if you give them an inch. With ADHD. And lungs. And the ability to turn my hair gray with their reckless shenanigans. Hubby says that if they both keeps this crap up he's going to have to switch to the night shift. (I'm not quite convinced that he doesn't fear I have homicidal tendencies.) Nah. Xanax + iPod. Problem solved. But that doesn't mean my roots don't need constant touch ups from the stress. I'm giving Clairol a lot of my money lately.

If it was legal I'd put them both in a box, turn on a camera, sell tickets to the fight, and let them duke it out like a pair of pissed off chinchillas. I think that sometimes that's just what siblings need- to kick the crap out of eachother and be done with it. That'd be stress relieving for all of us, don't you think? The masses are entertained, money flows in the bank, and the kids end up so tired that they actually don't have the energy to run their mouths and piss anyone off.

About that gnostic wisdom bit I mentioned in the beginning? I just ain't feeling it. The closest I've come to any kind of rational thought the past few days is today when I finished reading Anne Rice's "Vittorio, The Vampire" book. (First edition, ya'll! My first edition collection of Anne Rice's books are my only materialistic vice.)

Page nine of the book contained such a piece of eloquent drama I feel compelled to recount it for you here. Simply magnificent!!

Vittorio is talking about how he may be a blood sucking revenant of a monster but that makes him no less a human being with human feelings with an equally important life story to tell. Then he began reciting a passage from Sheridan Le Fanu's story called "the Familiar."

"Whatever may be my uncertainty as to the authenticity of what we are taught to call revelation, of one fact I am deeply and horribly convinced, that there does exist beyond this a spiritual world-- a system whose workings are generally in mercy hidden from us-- a system which may be, and which is sometimes, partially and terribly revealed. I am sure-- I know... that there is a god-- a dreadful God-- and that retribution follows guilt, in ways most mysterious and stupendous-- by agencies the most inexplicable and terrific; -- that there is a spiritual system-- great God, how I have been convinced!- a system malignant, and inexplicable, and omnipotent, under whose persecutions I am, and have been, suffering the torments of the damned!

Vittorio then begins speaking to his Readers again saying,

"What do you think of that?

I am myself rather mortally struck by it. I don't think I am prepared to speak of our God as "dreadful" or our system as "malignant," but there seems to be an eerie inescapable ring of truth to these words, written in fiction but obviously with much emotion.

It matters to me because I suffer under a terrible curse, quite unique to me, I think, as a vampire. That is, the others don't share it. But I think we all-- human, vampire, all of us who are sentient and can weep-- we all suffer under a curse, the curse that we know more than we can endure, and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do about the force and the lure of this knowledge."

This curse Vittorio bears is indeed unique among vampires: he can see the divine glow of the human Spark in every person on the planet. Vampire, human, doesn't matter. Anyone with a human soul has this gold aura to his eyes.

So as he's killing to feed he has to acknowledge that his actions are slowly snuffing out a spark from the Divine. He literally sees the light dim and then die altogether. That is the unique suffering he must bear. And why? Because he broke a deal with three angels.

The angels agreed to help him physically enter the vampire coven's(this is when he was human still) castle if he himself will do the actual slaying in order to avenge his slaughtered village. The angels cannot kill without divine command so Vittorio has to do the actual killing. The angels fulfill their part of the bargain but Vittorio grows a conscience and backs out when it comes to the last coven member, Ursula, with whom he is unfortunately infatuated.

He argues with the angels saying that if Ursula repents of all her past sins then he will kill her-- IF they swear that her soul will go to Heaven. But the angels cannot say whether or not her soul will go to heaven and because they see his conflict they back away and let Vittorio do what he wants. In the end, Ursula tricks Vittorio into becoming like her and he's so pissed about it that they go on a killing spree but that's not really the point.

The real kick in the pants is that two of the angels Vittorio first sees are the very guardian angels of a painter he adores. And because he happens to glimpse behind the veil of reality and spy on the guardian angel's activities he changes(or does he??) the painter's future. When your guardian angels aren't around and are helping other people what kind of mischief can a person get into?!!

Fra Filippo Lippi ends up kidnapping a nun from a convent, her sister, and then setting up a house with all three of them! His vice was women and without his guardian angels to steer him clear of temptations he apparently said to hell with it and royally screwed the pooch. The town wanted to lynch him.

A whispering came to Vittorio's ear, "One might wonder where were his guardian angels on the day that Fra Filippo did such a mad thing?"

Vittorio whirls around and sees no one.

Finally, after much running about he is allowed to see all the angels he brokered a deal with. As a vampire he could not understand why he could still see them. They explained his newly(and uniquely) damned status: he would forevermore see angels when he viewed Fra Lippi's paintings and he would always see the bright divine spark of God within humans to remind him of his bad decision to linger on earth longer than a human should have a right.

Technically, he was tricked, right? But he wouldn't kill Ursula unless she was repentant and she wasn't so..... he's just plain out of luck.

A few points of interest I found particularly intriguing was that Vittorio mentions it's not just Fra Lippi's paintings which take on a lifelike quality when he views them; his son, Filipino's paintings of angels are quickened in his presence as well.

The two angels who first attract Vittorio's attention are portrayed in Fra Lippi's "Annunciation" series of paintings. I managed to find one of the angels. He talks about the one with 'peacock feathers in his wings.' I have not been so lucky to see the second angel.



Vittorio's parting words to his Readers :

"Gold. that is what I see when I look at you.

That is what I see when I look at any man, woman, and child.

I see the flaming celestial gold that Mastema revealed to me. I see it surrounding you, and holding you, encasing you and dancing with you, though you yourself may not behold it, or even care.

From this tower tonight in Tuscany, I look out over the land, and far away, deep in the valleys, I see the gold of human beings, I see the glowing vitality of beating souls."

..... "I am not saying I am a great painter. I am not such a fool. But I say that out of my pain, out of my folly, out of my passion there comes a vision-- a vision which I carry with me eternally and which I offer to you.

It is a vision of every human being, bursting with fire and mystery, a vision I cannot deny, nor blot out, nor ever turn away from, nor ever belittle nor ever escape.

Others write of doubt and darkness.

Others write of meaninglessness and quiet.

I write of indefinable and celestial gold that will forever burn bright.

I write of blood thirst that is never satisfied. I write of knowledge and its price.

Behold, I tell you, the light is there in you. I see it. I see it in each and every one of us, and will always. I see it when I hunger, when I struggle, when I slaughter. I see it sputter and die in my arms when I drink.

Can you imagine what it would be like for me to kill you?

Pray it never takes a slaughter or a rape for you to see this light in those around you. God forbid that it should demand such a price. Let me pay the price for you instead."

Vittorio may be a fictional vampiric martyr but I think there is a lesson to be learned in this poetic bit of prose: Anne Rice is a closet gnostic. And she, like all of us, is perpetually 'under construction.'

Cringe-Worthy News

I cannot, absolutely cannot, believe I am writing this blog post. I cannot believe that the legal system in my country resorts to the kind of twisted entrapment just to get a pervert off the streets.

Looking up the actual legal definition for "entrapment" leads me to believe that it's not so much a standard case of entrapment, but still a legal nightmare nonetheless. I happen to live close to where this pedophile will(eventually) be jailed and I cannot believe I am defending any part of his case but that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. My comments are below the short article, attention given to red text.

Pedophile's Guide author locked up in Polk County Jail

Bartow, Channel 13 News. Article last updated: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 1:15 PM

Polk County Sheriff's Office detectives are in Colorado making an arrest for violation of obscenity laws.

According to Polk Sheriff Grady Judd, the sheriff's office, along with authorities in Pueblo, Colo., have arrested Phillip R. Greaves II, the author of the book "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct."

Greaves was arrested on charges of distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in harmful conduct, which is a third-degree felony.

Judd said Internet Crimes Division detectives who were investigating the case researched the book and inquired about receiving a copy. Judd detectives paid $50 and Greaves sent the book to an address in Lakeland, which violated state obscenity laws and led to the arrest. Judd said Greaves even signed the book he sent.

Investigators said the book contained graphic stories describing sex acts involving adults and minors.

Officials requested a warrant and made an arrest Monday. Greaves has no other connection to Florida.

Judd said Greaves could be extradited to Polk County as soon as today. Even if Greaves were to fight extradition, Judd said he likely would be brought to Polk County within 30-60 days.

Amazon pulled the book off its website earlier this year after an online boycott against the book led by a Lakeland woman.

"He wrote this book specifically to teach people how to molest and rape children,'' Judd said. "You cannot engage in or depict children in a harmful light.

"There may be nothing the other 49 states can do but there is something Florida can do. We can prosecute (Phillip Greaves) for this manifesto.''

************************************

So, Colorado detectives had the author send the paid-for book to an address in Florida, thereby breaking the law. Because Florida is the only one of fifty freaking states which has obscenity laws?!!

I'm not condoning pedophilia. I am in no way supporting this bastard's sick book. But I am opposed to someone in law enforcement requesting an author ship out their book to a place in order to take advantage of the law there. What, was the book for a "friend" in Florida? A Christmas gift, perhaps?

Ugh. It just sickens me. It sickens me on so many levels that it's all just a big mushy mess in my head. There's right and there's wrong. Their are shades of gray. Then there are those tricky little legal scenarios which make mutter to yourself, "Wow, wonder how that's going to turn out?"

It's like with the whole Wikileaks deal going on now. The guy leaks tons of classified military documents on wars and actions taken by governments and you've got half the people commenting on how heinous a thing it is for Assange to do what he does and the other half screaming about what a saint he is. Then when new leaked reports about certain American pharmaceutical company's criminal testing activities are brought forward and discussed, all of a sudden everyone swings over to Assange's side in vilifying the US government and the FDA. Oh come on now. What happened to all that patriotism?

When it involves killing people in wars it's ok with half of the population because, let's face it, there are a lot of veterans and relatives of veterans who have strong feelings. But when it comes to our household medicine cabinet then that hits a little too close to home for comfort.

Conclusion: "patriotism" is just a PR tactic to divide and control populations. I think the only loyalties we should have is to one another as part of the human race. And in order to be true "patriots" for ourselves and others that means doing the difficult thing, even if it means giving up our own comforts. Unselfish behavior is so rarely seen today that we have difficulty quantifying it let alone understanding it when it is a pure thing.