a goodie from Henri JM Nouwen

Imagine yourself as deeply convinced that your kindness to your friends and your generosity to the poor are little mustard seeds that will become strong trees in which many birds will build their nests. Imagine that, in the centre of your heart, your smiles and handshakes, your embraces and your kisses are only the early signs of a worldwide community of love and peace!Imagine that your trusting that every little movement of love you make will ripple out into ever new and wider circles -- just as a little stone thrown into a small pond. Imagine, imagine! Could you ever be depressed, angry, resentful or vengeful? Could you ever destroy, hate or kill? Could you ever despair of the meaning of your short earthly existence? -- Life of the Beloved, pp. 123-4.

November definitely a time for a change

The more I read from pro-challenger and pro-incumbent blog posters and commentators, the more I am convinced things cannot change. No one yet made any predictions. I won't name names but here's my prediction action plan: Look for a frickin' job that can cover private school or moving expenses to Shoreline, Bellingham, or a small city in BC. # of Seattle School Board seats up for re-election: four two will be replaced with vote spreads over 5% one race will take days to certify, and a lead will erode by 3% one will be a major disappointment It just takes one or two new faces on the Board (probably two) to make a change. I want all of them in, but for that to happen 52% of the Seattle citizens filling out ballots for School Board directors have to agree with me. if all four incumbents get back in I am leaving SPS. Maybe even the city. If three incumbents get in I am homeschooling People have had umpteen opportunities to give reasons for supporting the incumbents beyond "they're my friends" and "they have experience." When he was interim King County Executive the Seattle Times endorsed the no-experience candidate Susan Hutchinson. Yet four people, three with corporate management experience, show few signs of understanding or performing their duties as elected officials and they're endorsed because they have experience. Others' rationales are "I don't have to explain why I am voting for them." Isn't that convincing? My son has a right to a decent public education. I may have to spend a lot of money I don't have to either spruce up the house to sell it, or to put him in private school, or to buy a car to drive him to another school district. Systemic and managerial failure account for the ills plaguing our school district. I don't see how privatizing public education will help, but I obviously don't think like an American.

Useful educational websites

I am indebted for reasons public and private to the Save Seattle Schools blog for cluing this Seattle Public Schools parent into resources and portals for building on my child's skills and education. This post from Seattle Schools' Information Technology in the Classroom blog shares some online links for math facts practice: http://it.seattleschools.org/blog/2008/04/learning-math-facts/ http://www.aaamath.com/index.html The child also likes Subtangent and IXL I am digging Khan Academy for its wide range of subjects and their levels of mastery. Also, in a selection of most-commonly understood languages among the Seattle Schools community, grade-appropriate toolkits for families to use in their responsible participation of helping their children achieve core common standards and passable proficiency in Reading and other subjects.

Loading up on education for the next school year

Testing the new blogger.com interface. I borrowed three education-related books: Math Coach, Winning the Math Wars and School Reform. Math adoption is important to me. Although my son has done fine in math, he is in a minority of third-graders who met the Measurement of Student Progress standards. I don't blame the teachers, nor the students: I blame the curriculum. It is Everyday Math and it did not serve my son's class. Out of 31 third-graders, fifteen passed (how many of these were in the Advanced Learning Opportunities group), sixteen did not meet standards, and of the failing sixteen, ten performed miserably. How many of those ten are English Language Learners, or economically disadvantaged? School Reform is an Opposing Viewpoints® Series book. It's meant for a young adult audience but it was the simplest and most straight-forward pros & cons offering about school reform. Winning the Math Wars I don't know much about yet, except the back jacket states "The authors focus on four principles for improving math teaching and learning: fidelity to reform efforts by all involved; an emphasis on instruction and instructional tools; the critical nature of mathematical knowledge; and the need for transformational change." So maybe it is pro-reform. I will read it anyway to learn. I don't yet know why "fuzzy math" is needed. I don't like the term "fuzzy" applied to academics, and particularly not to mathematics. It makes me think of derivatives, collateralized mortgage obligation securities, credit default swaps and other fuzzy financial math crapstunts that Enron and mortgage bankers liked to pull. In America, entrepreneurs push to have an education reform that results in bigger profits for them. Their ideas of reform are not about improving education to make American students globally competitive.

it never rains but it pours

T's new glasses, fresh problems with the car, $100 to tide us until Friday.
what happened in the interim: soccer for C, chess for C, radio station donations, donation to RWF's Attorney General run, Visa payment, HELOC, library restitution, silver purchase. It goes fast.

I have some meat in the freezer, so that's good. And lots of vegetables, with some lentils and buckwheat. I can get some eggs, sardine and flank steak and voila! Kasha!
I'll probably have a lot of vegetable soups between now and Friday. I'm not so freaked out.

Listening to Heaven 17 podcast. Two members, Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware, have excellent taste in 1980s and 2010s music. Just heard Lykke Li, and now Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines" is playing.

Sunburned after a bus trip down to Terminal 25 in South-of-the-Dome-That-No-Longer-Exists, to see the naval ships as part of our town's annual Seafair. The Canadian Forces craft "Whitehorse" was not giving tours when we were available, but the US Marine Corps took us onto the USS Bonhomme Richard, where we saw some Zulu, Osprey and CH-53 aircraft. We explored them, walked onto the flight deck, got a great deal of sun. We walked for miles, literally, so our feet are beat. C was looking forward to asking the "Whitehorse" crew to take him up to CFB Esquimalt on Vancouver Island.

Gold is up at $1690 USD, not bad. I should just use my account for everyday expenses and stock up on precious metals.

When I post my moments of financial weakness, understand that I have an emergency fund, bonds, Certificates of Deposit, money market account, stocks and precious metals. But my short-term $$ is leaking out fast. When I borrow from my emergency fund for things like roofs, escrow accounts, car repairs, it takes me a long time to replenish it. I'll probably just live on my credit card.

I am still doing the Temporal Tap, and the Three Thumps. I need to select just one affirmation for the right side of the brain. The left one is easy: "I am no longer broke." Right one: a set salary? Infinite riches flow freely into my life? I joyfully receive abundance? I would like to earn more money than my spouse.

I feel a breakthrough

I read through most of don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements book this weekend. Almost immediately I felt a shift in consciousness, a marked improvement in attitude and dare I type it, a return to joy.
I hope I can keep it. Spiritual renewal is a gift of grace, and it's been a long time coming for me. I had been praying almost every night, but someone else prayed on Saturday, and the good orderly direction found me.

Tuesday I went to our neighbourhood Block Watch Night Out, made a fine chicken salad that was perhaps too much for people (there is always a lot of food at potlucks, yet the food banks have low number of rations). Several families in our community need food: my neighbour's on crutches and is living on TV dinners, so I'll make some food now that we have funds.

Yesterday was book club summer social, and I made some Capilano Chocolate Bars. I drove up on the scooter. Other women brought fruit and booze, and I had only the fruit and bars as I do not drink at all when I ride the scooter. I brought kombucha which only one person tried. I choose not to take this personally.

I had a terrific time at the coffee house, as I met a woman who was eager to discuss her breakthroughs and spiritual path/renewal from reading The Four Agreements. I also did some Energy Medicine: in addition to tracing meridians, I have been performing the Temporal Tap and Three Thumps throughout the day. How is it that I was unaware tapping the K-27 points would bring energy to the eyes?

escape from despair is always legitimate.

I am horrified at the death and cruelty one man delivered in Oslo, Norway. If you can't persuade with logic and reason people to understand and adopt your political views then open fire.

We are on very limited means right now, until the 29th of July. I blame myself of course, having initiated a refinance that required a cashier's cheque of the amount equal to three weeks' living expenses. I liquidated two silver coins and did some creative rearrangement of funds, shopped at a very low-cost grocery for vegetables, and started pulling food from our garden. We're also using two-for-one coupons and searching for money in the house. Again, this is only for another week, but it's $20/day. It'd be a lot worse if we didn't have a full freezer, and had to take the car out everyday.

We'll see how far $27 takes me. I imagine there'll be many lentil and bean, soba and udon dishes this week. On the plus side, we won't have a mortgage payment until September 1 at the earliest, and an escrow refund cheque by September 15.

I've read The Pope's War by Matthew Fox, and recognized several names on the "Wall" appendix, theologians, clerics and women religious who have been silenced or deemed dissident. Contrarian/perverse that I am, I am interested to read the works of the dissenters. All I need is a stamp and the will to walk to the post office to send a postcard to an eighty-three-year-old professor emeritus telling him how lately I came across his writings: he is one of the dissidents. I am always a dissident of counter-reformation and corrupt hierarchy. How out and proud I am about being a dissident, well, obviously not much. I can't say that the current antics of the Vatican, nor learning that while Jesus was interested only in reforming the spirituality and rules of his Jewish faith and appointed twelve MARRIED JEWISH MEN, to represent the twelve tribes of Israel, the Catholic Church decided two of those three qualifications had to go a thousand years after Jesus abandoned preaching exclusively to Judea and started traveling and introducing Gentiles to the Word of God. But not all three of them. As the original Gospels get translated and reinterpreted to suit church powers, a New Testament reader can't be at all certain what was originally meant. And if the qualifications for preachers and Eucharistic ministers changed, who's to say that no books now apocrypha were included in earlier versions of the New Testament?

Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear by Srinivasan S. Pillay

The Tao of Abundance: Eight Ancient Principles for Living Abundantly in the 21st Century (Compass) by Laurence G. Boldt

I am reading Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut. Fascinating. Vonnegut and Murakami are almost always out of the libraries I frequent.

Five minutes later edit OH YEAH I am now on Google+.