The Real Reason People Are Pissed Off About Starbucks Cups

source: Starbucks

I have been following the absurdity that is the "War on Christmas" with a mixture of amusement, bewilderment, and lots of head shaking.

Something's Gotta Give with Gun Violence

Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School.

I live in Marysville, Washington (and have two kids in school). It's a bedroom community bursting at its borders with 10 elementary schools, four middle schools, and another four high school campuses.

Children everywhere!

There are not a lot of violent crimes here. Still, on Friday, October 24, 2014, a 15-year-old boy brought one of his father's handguns to school with him, walked into the cafeteria, and shot five of his friends and then himself, all in the head.

Only one of the kids survived. He was the shooter's cousin.

Life Will Go On Without Derek Shepherd

I rarely do this.

You know, when you see a really big event happen on one of your favorite shows and immediately need to sound off about it?

In fact, I don't think I've ever done that. Not here on my blog, anyway. And actually, considering I didn't even watch the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy until two days after it aired, and I'm not writing this until two more days have passed, I don't think it qualifies as a knee-jerk reaction.

What Compassion Means to Me

Earlier this week I posted about what a pretty perfect day for me would be like.

I wrote it that way because of how overwhelmed by my life I was feeling in that moment, and I wanted to speak up for my personal happiness and sanity.

But before sitting down to write that post, I had thought I might write about what I would want for the world at large, if I had my way.

About things that really matter to me, that tug at my heart and I feel compassion for.

Not that fixing any of those things would be easy. But in a perfect world....

::

I asked my 9 year old son if he knew what compassion was. He said he sort of does, that "it's when you have compassion for people".

When I asked him to clarify what having compassion for people IS, he didn't really know what to say.

I told him that you have compassion for others when you are able to put yourself in their place for a minute and try to get a sense of what their life is like. When you see what some one's circumstances are and feel something about it. Maybe you want to help, or maybe you just show concern. It's also when you are KIND to others because they need some kindness.

My son's attention started to drift so I stopped there. But there's quite a bit more to it, isn't there?

I Don't Need to Pledge Not to Shop on Thanksgiving

Have you seen this?

Pledging not to start your Holiday shopping on Thanksgiving Day seems like a worthy thing to do, right?

It's meant to be a day for gratitude and family. To make yummy food together, eat it, clean it up, have seconds, have pie, watch football or a movie and just SPEND TIME with those you love.

You shouldn't be itching to get out the door to the local mall for scrambling and brawling over the latest hot toy for your kid or grandkid. The next day, Black Friday, is soon enough for all of that.

Right?

Brittany Maynard Has Made Me Think

Suicide is wrong. It's selfish, the easy way out and might even be an unforgivable sin for which you will surely be damned to Hell.

Those are all things I used to think.

But that was before....

• I started reading the personal blogs of people who fight depression,
• I witnessed many celebrities take their own lives, and
• I began to see my husband's illnesses taking such a big toll on him.

I understand much better now how hard depression is on a person. I also understand now that one can be so physically ill that they might as well just let go.

There Has Been a School Shooting in My Town

On Friday morning, October 24, 2014, at 10:39 AM, freshman Jaylen Fryberg brought a gun to Marysville-Pilchuck High School, invited five of his friends to have lunch with him, walked into the cafeteria and shot all five, two of whom are his cousins. He then shot himself.

source

I was 3.9 miles away, welcoming my husband home from dialysis and doing a little housework.

A few minutes later the local news app I use pushed a breaking news notification to my phone. I very often don't even pay much attention to them. I did tap this one and read a headline about a possible school shooting here in Marysville.

"Oh God, no", I muttered.

And immediately went into GET-ALL-THE-INFORMATION mode.

I was holding out hope that the word "possible" would turn out to mean that that's NOT what happened.

Alas, it was true.

The View From Here: The "American Blogger" Movie

Soooo....raise your hand if you've heard about a documentary coming out titled "American Blogger".

Quite a bit of controversy has erupted over it.

I must admit, I have felt my share of irritation over it.

Today, Elaine of The miss-Elaine-ous Life shares her View of the hoopla.

__________

My View of "American Blogger" (so far)

Last week I went through a range of emotions after seeing the “American Blogger” trailer that many people were talking about.  As I watched it for the first time I thought “how pretty” and also “how very singular”.  I immediately wondered why the film was titled “American Blogger” when it simply did not seem to represent the true scope of those of us that blog in this country.  I saw very little diversity.

Gay Pot Day

Today is a big day in Washington state.

It is the day that both the legalization of same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana use go into effect.

I'm calling it "Gay Pot Day". Catchy, isn't it?

I am neither gay nor do I smoke pot. But I voted yes on both of these issues.

I must admit, I wasn't always cool with gay marriage. For a long time I looked at it through religious eyes. But over the years I have come to see that WE make marriage what WE want it to be. Some people have a religious ceremony, some do not. WE place that on it. Essentially marriage is only a civil, legal arrangement between two people. WE put love and/or religious beliefs into it. There was a time when marriages were negotiated for land. That's neither romantic nor religious.

So now I feel that marriage should be allowed for ANY two people who want to make a life-long commitment to each other.

I bet these two have been waiting a long time!

As of 7:00 this morning King County had issued 279 marriage licenses to same-sex couples since midnight. They are so excited and happy! How can anyone think this is a bad thing?

The marijuana law is a little trickier. Washington voted to legalize and tax pot use, not only for medicinal purposes anymore. Problem is, the federal government still doesn't like it. As of the 11:00 news last night there was talk of a "smoke out" under the Space Needle to celebrate the new law, even though smoking pot in public can result in a fine just like having an open container of alcohol in public.

It's all a little convoluted I suppose, but I think still a step in the right direction. Really, the feds just need to pull their heads out and get over it. Drug USE really shouldn't be criminalized and the government could bring in so much revenue through taxing drugs. Revenue that could be funneled to SCHOOLS. I don't care where the money comes from, they just need the money.

Also? I believe marijuana to be a very benign drug. Further, I believe it to be MUCH healthier than cigarettes. One could argue for outlawing those. But I won't go there.

So, Happy Gay Pot Day, Washington! Or, Queer Weed Day, as my husband put it.

The State of Public Schools in America

Not too long ago I vented my frustration about our state's standardized testing and my daughter's middle school's policy on electives based on passing or failing the test.

I am not happy with it at all.

So when I was presented with the opportunity to read about a completely different approach to teaching, I was intrigued.

Let me point out that I am not an educator. I am just a mom of two school-aged kids. A mom, who for quite a while felt alright about the public schools her kids are attending. That is until my daughter started middle school.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself. The book I was given to read, discuss and GIVE AWAY is Mission Possible: How the Secrets of the Success Academies Can Work in Any School....

This book is about how some passionate educators took it upon themselves to start a public charter school in Harlem, NY, how they did it, how they continue to teach and grow, and what other schools can take from the Success Academies and implement to increase learning across the country.

What I have taken away from this book is that if you change the way teachers teach, and give them tons of professional support and development, kids -- from all socio-economic circumstances -- will respond with out of this world results.

Teaching has long-been a highly respected profession. But it seems that that respect does not translate into the support teachers need to do their jobs well. Many public schools struggle to provide students with quality textbooks, let alone all the tools a teacher could use to help their students learn, and learn well.

Shall I go off right here about why this is? I think it's because our country's priorities are seriously skewed. That our government is spending way too much on things like tanks and bombs and lifetime congressional salaries, than it is on educating our children. The statistics cited in Mission Possible are scary! Our kids are NOT being educated on par with other countries similar to ours. Considering how we Americans feel about our country, and our children, that seems very UN-American to me.

Unfortunately I must admit that I have been one to complain about the "professional development" time our teachers take because it cuts the school day short. But my goodness, they NEED all the help they can get! Success Academies provides an intensive "T School" (that's school for teachers) during the summer, and this is translating into well-trained and highly motivated teachers and it rubs off on their students.

So all I'm saying is, a long hard look has been taken on so many other issues in recent years and I think it's time for our eyes to turn to improving the state of public education in America. And maybe the approach of the Success Academies is a good place to start.

Connect with author and Success Academies founder Eva Moskowitz:

Facebook - Twitter

Buy the book

Win the book

If you are a US resident age 18 or older, you can enter to win 1 (one) of 2 (two) copies of Mission Possible in the comment section below. Giveaway will run August 2 - August 9, 2012. Winners will be selected via Random.org, announced and contacted on August 10, 2012. Books will be mailed out the following week.

• Mandatory: Leave a comment telling me what worries you most about the state of public education in America.
• Optional extra entry: Tweet Enter to win a copy of Mission Possible, about NYC's charter Success Academies from @JenAnnHall! http://bit.ly/PAa61F #readmissionpossible and leave a separate comment with the tweet URL. You may do this once per day.

*I was compensated for this post. However, all opinions expressed are my own.

I feel betrayed.

This?

Is a betrayal.

I used to read TIME magazine religiously. Loved it. Trusted it.

Sure, I've fallen off the wagon since becoming a mom, which exposed all my feelings and left me no longer desensitized to the bad news in the world.

But I made sure to pick up the occasional copy of my old standby news magazine when something super important happened that I thought I might want to keep a memory of for later in life.

The death of Princess Diana.

9/11.

The election of our first black President.

Let me be clear, it's not the picture of a mom breastfeeding her older child that's got me.

That doesn't bother me even a little bit.

Well, I can't say I'm all for it (the continued breastfeeding of a preschooler), but I have zero problems seeing breastfeeding.

I mean, I'm a woman, a mom, who breasted both of her babies. To me, it's a perfectly natural thing that the majority of the moms I know have done.

So it's not that.

It's the headline, "Are You Mom Enough?".

Are you kidding me, TIME?

How could you do this to me? How could you betray me like this?

How could you openly, blatantly not only participate in, but also perpetuate, these ridiculous so-called "Mommy Wars"?

Right before Mother's Day too. Oh, but that's just it, isn't it?

Shameless!

Can I trust any news agencies anymore?

My local reporters don't know how to properly gather information before they break a story.

I have felt disconnected with national news shows since Peter Jennings died, and Tom Brokaw and Charlie Gibson retired.

They were my go-to news guys. Especially Peter.

Sure, I like some who have come after, but not the way I trusted those guys.

Everyone knows FOX News is politically biased. Can't watch them.

And now this sensational magazine cover that is meant only to rile American moms and sell copies.

It's such a disappointment.

Don't even get me started on how much we moms don't need this crap thrown in our faces!

You should be ashamed of yourselves.

I no longer trust you.

Guess I'll just have to get my news from Twitter.

For some other great opinions on this matter, check out:
Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms
and
The Momalog

Do you agree with me? Do you have a different take on this?

Are Seattleites "Snow Wimps?"

Many in the lowlands of Western Washington hope for at least one good snowstorm per winter to break up the rainy doldrums, and to let the kids have some winter fun.

And last week we got it!  Here's how things were looking around my house (about 40 miles north of Seattle)....

With MLK day last Monday, the kids got an entire week off of school. I mean, it just kept snowing. It stayed below freezing for an entire 5 days.

And then a little controversy ensued.

A reporter for the LA Times posted an article calling us wimps! Specifically, "Snow wimps: Seattle is shut down by first real snow of the season". Besides that rude headline, Kim Murphy wrote:

• Color Seattle clueless. The city has always marched unarmed into its infrequent battles with snow, and Wednesday's snowstorm was no exception.
• The snowstorm had been forecast to be the worst to hit the Puget Sound region in 30 years, an ominous warning that scared easily scareable Seattleites. 

The kicker to her comments is that she lives in Seattle. The biotch is a backstabber!

Art Thiel of KING5 News wrote a great rebuttall. He pointed out two important points to keep in mind about Seattle snow:

• No downtown that receives snow is as as hilly as Seattle. Period. The Priniciple of Verticality. There's just too much up here to get down safely.
• Wet snow doesn't drift. It gets compacted onto road beds and sidewalks. Plowing and salting helps, but 90 percent of the streets in a metro area as large as Seattle will never see a plow or a salting truck. Seattle cement can only wait for warm rain to wash most of it away.

Let me first admit something. I used to harbor similar feelings to Ms. Murphy's when I first moved back here after having lived in Lake Tahoe, which is over 6,000 feet above sea level and gets lots of snow every winter (except this winter, apparently). I graduated from South Tahoe High and you better believe me when I tell you the snow had to get pretty bad before they called off school. Because of my experience living in the mountains, I too thought Washingtonians were a little overly cautious when it comes to snow.

However, now that we're going through our 9th winter here, I understand the caution. The simple fact is, we are used to rain. Even wind and flooding. We're not used to snow. It doesn't snow here every single winter so we don't put snow preparedness things at the tippy-top of our city planning priorities. And frankly, these days, we simply do not have the money in our state budget.

And like Mr. Thiel pointed out, the snow we get here is the polar (polar, ha!) opposite of the snow Lake Tahoe gets. The variety of snow experienced in the Sierra Nevada mountains is the dry kind. It's not as heavy or sticky or slick.

For this chic to criticize how we handle our snow storms for the Los Angeles Times is ludicrous. LA has not a single leg to stand on when it comes to snow! The rain we're used to here in the Pacific Northwest causes all kinds of problems for the residents of Southern California when they get it. They encounter the same idiot, white-knuckle driving and increase in accidents during rain that we do during snow.

And excuse me, but if a portion of the 405 being shut down can be coined "Carmageddon", we deserve to refer to the storms we just had as "Snowmageddon". When the East Coast has a freaking earthquake they're allowed to freak out a little too. And by the way, I hear there were recently freezing temps in Florida! Shit happens. Ahem.

I just don't understand why she needed to write something critical. Why couldn't she simply report the facts?  She apparently complained on a radio show that her email inbox was being "abused". Aw, I wonder why?