As we put finishing touches on family and friend gatherings, we need to pause and remember the tragedy of five years ago. We should send our prayers, good thoughts, and regrets to the families of Sand Hook Elementary School and the community of Newtown, Conneticut.

Twenty children were slaughter with six adults that taught and cared for them. A person who should never possessed a gun shot his mother, then the children, then himself.

The last prayer we say today should be for ourselves, to help understand what we have become through our inaction.

We could have done better, didn’t and still haven’t.

 

This is my take on the recent reports of sexual misdeeds involving every level of our society.

Sexual misdeeds(all levels of it) are about power, who has it and who doesn’t.

Women did not have power or perceived that they didn’t. Now we do.

One woman and the sixty-six million people who voted for her changed that.

Thank-you Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Do we have the grit to enact the changes that are needed in the United States to address this.

I heard Diane Ravitch on WPR talking about public education. She is a research Professor of Education at New York University, she was an Assistant Secretary of Education from 1991-1993. I am very interested in the education of our children, so I read her most recent book book, Reign of Error , published in 2013. It is details what many nationally prominent educators got wrong in the 1990s into today. “Public education is not broken.”

She further states that the problem is: “Our urban schools are on trouble because of concentrated poverty and segregation”

What follows is a  delineation of her solutions:

-Pregnant women should see a doctor early in their pregnancies and have regular care and good nutrition.

-Children need pre-kindergarten classes that teach how to socialize, listen, learn and communicate well.

-Children in early elementary grades need teachers who set appropriate goals. They should learn to read, write, calculate, explore nature, and have plenty of time to sing, dance, draw, and giggle. Class size should be small.

-A balanced curriculum for upper elementary, middle and high school should include: reading, writing, match, sciences, literature, history, geography, a rich arts program,physical education every day.

-Staff for these schools should include: librarians, media specialists, nurse, psychologist, guidance counselors, social workers.

-After school program should be available.

-Teachers should write own tests while using standardized tests only for diagnostic purposes.

“Public education is a basic public responsibility. The future of our democracy depends on it.” –Diane Ravitch

I agree.

Nightmares of her rape had faded to the point where Lieutenant Maggie Redmond could control them. She never reported it, she never saw her attacker again. Until she was assigned to investigate his murder. What a dilemma!

If she takes herself off the case, she’ll have to report the rape, then she’ll become a person of interest in the case.

If she stays with the case, can she overcome her revulsion of the dead man to see that justice is done?

And as one dead body leads to another, those nightmares resurface.

Low Tide is a good read. Character and setting are wonderful. At the end, I needed to know the rest of the story. Riptide, the second book in the Forgotten Coast series, did not disappoint me.

 

Recently, when asked what type of books I like, the reply is “a good one.” But it is hard to pass up a good adventure story. I liked Life on the Loose by Cari Taylor-Carlson.

After college, Taylor-Carlson settled into a life expected of her: work in merchandising, marriage, family, a home. But what came next? She found it for herself–adventure.

She lived a life outdoors by offering guided tours into the wilderness through her company Venture West. Some of her tours were: Teton Pass to Driggs, Idaho, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Gila Wilderness in New Mexico, Green River, Three Sisters Wilderness in Oregon.

She tells some good stories of the good and the bad of leading a bunch of “city folks” out of the concrete jungle and into the wilderness, even if that wilderness is in Switzerland.

Hope you have a chance to read it.