Gifts From the Past- Our "Gifts" to the Future

I just got back from our Sunday morning Flea Market and started thinking on a story an old farmer told me. He described how he used to plow his fields with his daughters sitting on the back of the tractor watching for Indian relics to emerge from the soil. He said they had quite a collection. It was a lovely memory for him and a beautiful story to listen to. As I drove home I thought how wonderful to find pieces of history that are cherished by those in the present. Some of these artifacts are thousands of years old and there they are still coming to light. (I won't get into all the horrid negatives here about the conquest of North America by Europeans but you are welcome to let your mind run wild on this topic) As I drove home I started to visualize the future, people living here hundreds even thousands of years in the future and what they may find coming to light. Will these be things to cherish and share? Will they be something for facinated children to eagerly collect? Rusting barrells of toxic poisons? Plastics that still haven't degraded? Containers of all kinds of poisions that we use so thoughtlessly to clean, disinfect, kill unwanted pests, or ingest as "medicine". Nuclear waste that can't be safely disposed of? Think of the landfills, toxic waste dumps, litter along our highways, all the man made unnatural toxic waste that piles higher and deeper every day. I shudder at this vision.

Mortgages

My Submission to SinceSlicedBread.com

Check out this great site http://www.sinceslicedbread.com for gathering the ideas of ordinary Americans on how to improve the good old USA. Great site. Here is my submission in its longer form. Submissions can only be 175 words. Right now there are almost 800 ideas from every state in the country. Pass the word about this website- what's your idea? You could win $100,000 and if nothing else share your ideas with your fellow concerned citizens.

A Mandatory Curriculum for Teaching Critical Thinking in Consumer (and other) Choices.

A mandatory curriculum for K-12 students focusing on being a thoughtful, informed consumer and citizen. The focus of this curriculum will be making informed choices after doing research and thoughtful consideration of the consequences of each choice made. This curriculum will have to be created with totally non-corporate or religious money and research with an emphasis on healthy choices for each person, the community and the environment based on information from many non-corporate sources. There will be no “right” choices taught- this is not brainwashing- but a step toward creating the life long habit of making informed, thoughtful choices. Maybe start with food and entertainment choices for the youngest children. Progress through the age groups with issues and choices that are important to them. How do their choices affect themselves and the complex web of human and environmental factors that make up each community and the world as a whole? As a teacher in a high school it is very clear to me that the whole focus now in education is on passing mandated tests. The pressure to “teach to the test” is enormous – no they don’t call it that – new terminology has been created but it means the same thing. Nowhere in the curriculum are we teaching critical thinking about consumer decisions. A truly educated population can no longer be held captive by corporate interests. A truly educated population will not allow our precious democracy to be sold out to the greed of big business. I know this will be fought tooth and nail by those in power- deceitful practices will become transparent to a citizenry that has learned how to critically analyze and gather information from a variety of sources.

COST OF WAR IN IRAQ-in case you weren't fed up enough

Make sure you check out the website http://costofwar.com so you can see what else this money could have paid for. You can see your state or major metropolitan area.
Get active, write letters, spread the word, attend protests, do all you can to help stop the insanity.

Bush scarier than Avian Flu

In Bush's press conference this afternoon he suggested using the military to enforce quarantines in case of an outbreak of the Bird Flu in the United States. Last month, after Katrina, he was also mentioning getting rid of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that bans the military from participating in police-type activity on U.S. soil. Given the reports from Iraq of the behavior of the military and the recent arrests of military people here involved in murders, I find this a scarier thought than the bird flu itself. Please be very aware of the possiblity of this law being overturned- contact your senators and congressmen. With Martial Law imposed our Constitutional rights will be wiped completely out, democracy will no longer exist. Do not let these people scare you into further giving away your rights. Let your imagination run wild- Bush's obviously is- as to just exactly what this could mean to you, your family, your community and country.