After a summer of network expansion and the problems it entailed I’m only a week or so behind where I hoped to be at this time. As I went from place to place getting computers to work as intended eight hundred and some returning and new students lined up with mom and or dad to get their schedules and books.
This is one of the best things about being part of a high school faculty. My how they’ve grown and even having a parent tagging along can’t totally suppress their excitement at seeing classmates, comparing schedules and beginning to catch up with friends as they stuff books in their lockers. When they come back next week for orientation there will be no parents standing by making suggestions about how to arrange the locker and the excitement level will go up considerably as they reconnect with classmates with no censors standing by.
Each school year begins with hope, promise and excitement. Student concerns are for the most part very local - what you’re wearing, what you did over the vacation, where your boy/girlfriend’s locker is located, what’s up for the weekend. Freshmen are especially “precious” as they repeat patterns of behavior that I’m sure their parents followed when they began high school. We adults wonder who will be the leaders, the stars, the dropouts while the students limit their scope to where homeroom is and how to get from there to the first class. Their anxiety is covered with a thin veneer of bravado but shows itself in the loud conversations and the many near collisions as they navigate the corridors.
When seen in light of all these young people with their immediate concerns that I know will expand as the years pass I know all the work I did was worth it. Their world is not simple or easy no matter how they limit their focus. They need the best shot they can get to feel safe and secure as they test their strengths, find their weaknesses and learn how to stand on their own and be part of a community at the same time.
So let’s get on with it ladies and gentlemen. Tuck in that blouse and pull that tie up. For your first assignment, answer the even numbered questions on page six. It will be collected next time we meet. Click on the first link in the learning unit document to begin our exploration of the Greek city states.
Like the mythical Veg-O-Matic Food Preparation System the Iraq War is the Bush-Cheney-GOP answer to all of their needs. It slices, dices, purees, mixes, grates and blends half-truths, innuendo and lies to suit the Republican Party’s lust for power.
Last week we moved troops into Baghdad to help quell “secretarian violence” and stop the “insurgents” from killing each other. This week we are capturing and killing “terrorists” who are trying to destroy “democracy” in Iraq. The change is due to the victory of an underdog candidate, Ned Lamont, in the Connecticut Democratic Primary. Even the defeated Senator Lieberman joined Bush-Cheney-GOP in attacking Lamont as a “friend of Iran” and an encouragement to the British citizens who were planning to blow up U.S. airliners as they crossed the Atlantic. Now is that vile or is it vile?
According to the feckless leaders in the shrub administration we started the war in Iraq to protect ourselves from a nuclear/biological holocaust. Then they told us it was necessary to remove the evil Saddam from the world stage. Then they decided we were really fostering democracy in the Middle East. Then they said Iraq is the front line of the war on terror.
None of the reasons above have anything to do with reality. Bush-Cheney knew that Iraq had no nukes, no biological weapons. They knew that Saddam hated the Al-Queda terrorist leaders. They were ill equipped to foster democracy because they have shown themselves to be autocrats who want to rule, not govern. They warp reality to fit their immediate needs and are viscously vindictive toward any and all who question their views and actions.
On the home front Bush-Cheney decreed that they could throw people in a detention camp forever and remove all their human rights. It was okay to torture them and the prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. They revealed that an American citizen was a CIA agent in order to get even with her husband for opposing their lies about Iraq’s nuclear abilities. They began tapping the communications of Americans indiscriminately and in violation of U.S. law. They refused to tell anyone, including Congress, what they were doing and when called on it declared that they were the “deciders” of what they would do or not do and fuck Congress, the Constitution and anyone else who thought otherwise.
I voted for Ned Lamont. I am against the war in Iraq. I want us to use our resources to guard against terrorists and to remove from the world the conditions that foster such murderous and evil people. I do not want 100 to 150 Iraqi citizens to be killed EVERY DAY FOR SEVEN MONTHS.
I want a government that obeys the law and tells the truth. I want a Congress that acts first and foremost to foster the goals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans.
I am a good American who loves this country, who believes the American dream is for all citizens and that governments are meant to serve not rule.
To those who attack and vilify me for voting for whom I please - fuck you.