Archives for 2010

I watched Sarah Palin on Jay Leno, and I have to say, I don’t find much of what she said to be controversial. A key difference between her life and mine might be that when my dad advises me on what ammunition to use, it’s figurative, not literal. Plus I got in big trouble for writing on my hands back in the day. Other than that, tax cuts, energy security, revitalizing the American spirit? Really, who can disagree with that?

(Time for Brigitte to put her crusty old goat hat on again.)

I’m not even that old yet (really, I’m not), and I remember when people thought school should teach kids things like reading, writing, geography, math, history, physics, that sort of thing. Well, pfft. That’s too dull. Now they want to teach the kids how to change the world.

Toronto District School Board students will be expected to contribute more to their communities under a new ”social justice action plan” unveiled yesterday by education director Chris Spence.

The initiative will see every school in the board take on one local and one global social justice issue — such as poverty, equity and environmentalism — in order to “create awareness of how students can be empowered through their leadership to make a difference in their world,” according to Mr. Spence.

“When I visit schools and talk to kids and staff, they’re all engaged in this kind of work. Now we’re raising the bar in terms of expectation and saying this is part of what we want to stand for as an organization,” he said in an interview with the National Post. “When you put these kinds of issues in front of kids, they will run with it and go places.”

That will make for fun dinner conversations, no?

When women gather in New York to talk about women. Reminds me to mention a tremendous film I recently saw–U.N. Me. 

That’s all I’ll say about that for now.

I used to take large rocks out to our backyard and pound them with a hammer to see what was inside. When my parents found out they made me put on safety goggles but the exploration continued. Good times.

This article talks about letting your kids live a little:

The book’s title is “deliberately provocative,” Tulley says, and it’s meant as both a guidebook for fretful parents who want to loosen up and a “call to action for over-protected children,” with instructions on safe ways to experiment with dangerous things. “We create a false impression in our minds that children are in peril all the time and everywhere, when in fact, according to the most recent studies, this is the safest time in history for children,” he says. “There couldn’t be a better time to be running around outside playing.”

I agree, however, I have to ask–with two parents working, who takes care of the kid when the garden gate gets slammed in your eye? (This because you are chasing someone in tag, who rightly thinks, aha, I’ll slow her down by slamming the gate behind me…Yes, this also happened to me. Hello major black eye.)

So I agree and disagree–it is a safe age, and our kids could run around outside but empty neighbourhoods with no one home aren’t super conducive to that. Kids may well be coddled these days but they also don’t raise themselves and many neighbourhoods are empty after school. That doesn’t feel safe to me.

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Brigitte adds: I was chatting with someone last night who was saying how difficult it was for kids to find friends to play with outside, since everyone was at some kind of supervised and organized activity, not just outside like we used to be way back in the dark ages (aka the pre-1995 era). I refrained from asking him what connection, if any, he saw between that phenomenon and the fact that most adults, including him and his wife, work outside the home so much.

A poignant piece about the risks of having children in Uganda by the founder of Save the Mothers, one Jean Chamberlain. Then there’s this in the Hill Times (subscriber access only) suggesting the Liberals will push Harper to include abortion in his maternal health mandate for the G8.

At bottom, I think Canadians know that maternal health involves what Chamberlain describes and that including abortion is deeply political and actually irrelevant when women are bleeding to death after delivery.

More soon, by the way, on my discussions with World Vision vis-a-vis maternal health and abortion… Stay tuned.

Abortion takes the lives of blacks disproportionately. And reported in The Times, no less. All the very horrifying news that’s fit to print:

Abortion opponents say the number is so high because abortion clinics are deliberately located in black neighborhoods and prey upon black women. The evidence, they say, is everywhere: Planned Parenthood’s response to the anti-abortion ad that aired during theSuper Bowl featured two black athletes, they note, and several women’s clinics offered free services — including abortions — to evacuees after Hurricane Katrina.