Teachers cheat in Atlanta; to keep their jobs and their funding...who is really responsible?

By Steve Osunsami and Ben Forer, ABC News, July 6, 2011
More than 150 teachers and administrators from 44 public schools across Atlanta were caught changing answers on standardized tests used to judge student performance and rank schools, according to a state report.

"Many of those cases could lead to criminal prosecutions," said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.
Eighty-two of the teachers flat-out confessed. The 800-page report said the cheating has been going on for nearly a decade. It first came to light when the state noticed an alarming number of erasure marks on the answer sheets.
Teachers and principals were erasing the wrong answers and filling in the right ones, the report said. At one school, the faculty even held weekend pizza parties to correct answers before turning them in. Over the course of a single year, scores at the school jumped 45 percent.
"We were told to get these scores by any means necessary," said Sidnye Fells, a fourth grade teacher. "We were told our jobs were on the line."
Any educator, teacher, administrator or even parent who might have been asked, when "No Child Left Behind" was inaugurated, would have been able and willing to foretell this tragedy, if they had been asked. What is truly surprising is that is took this long to uncover.
If you tell a bunch of educators that you job is on the line, unless the results of these tests are high enough for this school to qualify for  further funding, you know that, come hell or high water, those scores are going to be high enough. And the price?....a 45% increase in test scores, did not come about because these teachers suddenly improved their teaching strategies, tactics or motivation by nearly 50%.
The scores came as a result of what is now being considered "criminal" behaviour or at least potentially criminal behaviour.
Whoa! Not so fast! Talk about a rush to judgement!
Let's look, finally but not for the last time, at the people who set the rules for the "game".
Let's hold people like President George W. Bush and his administration accountable, responsible and up to public ridicule and scorn, if nothing else.
This scheme, to puff up the ego's of politicians, to play to the base of voters, all of them parents across America,  was nothing more than an "instant-fix" for the "instant gratification" of the political masters who laid it on the system.
Schools are failing:....oh that means the shortest route to change is, like the bullets and bombs and missiles sent into Iraq by the same people, a template of tests imposed from on high, in the same belief and mindset that dictates, "democracy at the end of a bayonet, or a drone, or a cruise missile".....and such a mindset never works.
And then, tie the results of those tests to the funding of those same schools, and, "Damn it, we'll show those lazy bastards the teachers just who is boss....and we will drive the lot of them out of our schools. Their unions have protected them for far too long, and it is time we took our schools back! The kids are learning anyway, so let's get busy."
It is the criminal minds and the actors that possess them that sets out with such a purpose and such a plan that need to be held accountable.
And not the teachers.
But they have no, or at least very little public support, because they have enjoyed tenure, and pensions and a loose, at best, form of supervision and adminsitration, where few wanted to really rock the boat.
Now, the lid has come off the system. Now the kids are being short-changed, to put it mildly, and the teachers are going to pay, with the loss of their licenses, and perhaps even their careers.
Not only does such a scheme put the emphasis in the wrong place, on objective, multiple-choice tests, that can basically test "content" or facts, and not perceptions, observations, opinions, or nuanced reflections. These tests are, as demonstrated through numerous research projects, a form of reductionism on the complextity of the learning process. They also focus on the objectivization of the students, and the achieveable empirical performance of the teacher, when there are multiple variables at play, in every student, in each situation, including those required for homework, homestudy, classroom attention, test preparedness, test/achievment anxiety and these tests at best will prove only one thing: that success on them is a likely predictor of success in future similar testing in an academic setting.
The tests do not predict ethical behaviour, social attitudes, social integration, collaborative behaviour, domestic compatibility, spiritual growth, financial success, professional achievement or any of the other so-called important values that constitute the glue that gives culture is cohesiveness and its stability and its capacity to generate compassion.
Perhaps, rather then wringing their hands, and publicly screaming about how awful this behaviour is, educators and politicians and even law enforcement will step back, take a deep breath and ask some really hard and poignant questions about the underlying and implicit erosion of the educational opportunity that attends such a testing program, and begin to rethink the needs of the students as those that must always trump the needs of the political masters.

America: a mixed report..enlightened on suicide condolences, dumb on taxes

By Dan Lothian, CNN, from CNN website, July 6, 2011
The Obama administration has reversed a White House policy of not sending condolence letters to the next-of-kin of service members who commit suicide, a senior administration official confirmed in a statement to CNN.

The move comes nearly six weeks after a group of senators -- 10 Democrats and one Republican -- asked President Barack Obama to change what they called an "insensitive" policy that dates back several administrations and has been the subject of protest by some military families.
In the statement Tuesday, the White House official said a review had been completed, and the president will send condolence letters to families of service members who commit suicide while deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other combat operations.
"The president feels strongly that we need to destigmatize the mental health costs of war to prevent these tragic deaths, and changing this policy is part of that process," the official's statement said.
"Unfortunately, perpetuating a policy that denies condolence letters to families of service members who die by suicide only serves to reinforce this stigma by overshadowing the contributions of an individual's life with the unfortunate nature of his or her death. It is simply unacceptable for the United States to be sending the message to these families that somehow their loved ones' sacrifices are less important."
This is just another example of an enlightened U.S. president governing in the middle of a headwind from the political right. It is the Republican resistance to tax hikes as their line in the sand for raising the debt ceiling that is so appalling.
Everyone knows that corporate leaders and large investors, those with incomes over $250,000 can both stand and do support a tax hike for their income group. Nevertheless, in their stubborn, headstrong defence of their political base, the Republican leadership continues to resist removing the Bush tax cuts for this group.
And for Republican John Cornyn from Texas to say that corporations are 'sitting on cash and not hiring because of the uncertainty about future tax policy' is nothing more than a duplicitous and deceptive ruse.
In Canada, yesterday, both federal and Ontario governments announced significant contributions to Toyota to refurb and refit two Ontario car plants, as part of a renewed incentive to support another ailing automaker.
There is no reason why the Republicans do not publicly insist that the government incentives be immediately spent in job creation
The fact that the corporate sector holds the unemployed as hostage to their greed has to stop and a first step to unlocking that stash of cash would be to require it to be moved from the vaults in the basements of the nation's banks to the hiring tables, where there are literally millions starving for both food and a decent job.

Music for Immigrant and impoverished children...researched in Toronto

By Anne McIlroy, Globe and Mail, July 4, 2011
 El Sistema (is) the wildly successful Venezuelan initiative that offers instruments and lessons to thousands of children, most from impoverished families.
El Sistema offshoots are sprouting up all over the world, including Canada. There is one in New Brunswick, another in the works in Winnipeg and one scheduled to start in Toronto in September. Advocates see El Sistema as a way to counter many of the negative forces in the lives of youngsters who grow up in poverty. The idea is that intense musical training improves a child’s self-confidence, concentration and motivation and that this can translate into greater academic achievement and, ultimately, a healthier, happier life.

But it is important to move beyond the anecdotal evidence about the transformative power of El Sistema, says David Alter, an epidemiologist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto. He and other researchers, who all happen to have musical backgrounds, have applied for funding to track the 55 children expected to start the Toronto program in the fall. They want to evaluate its benefits and learn if El Sistema helps some children more than others.
There is growing evidence that learning to play a musical instrument may help children do better at school, that it can improve memory and the ability to focus and may even modestly boost scores on intelligence tests. But researchers are also starting to look beyond IQ.
“People focus so much on cognitive benefits. I think there are some, but I don’t think they are as large as people would like them to be,” says Laurel Trainor, a scientist at McMaster University in Hamilton who studies music and the developing brain. “I think the social and emotional benefits are just enormous and we are just starting to comprehend that.”
Documenting those benefits will be essential for getting government funding to expand El Sistema programs, says David Visentin, a string musician and former associate dean at the Royal Conservatory of Music. He and Robert Eisenberg, a businessman, are working closely with the Toronto District School Board on a pilot project that will offer 10 hours of music a week after school to students from Parkdale Jr. and Sr. Public School.

It is and will be important to document the social and emotional benefits of any new program, in order to successfully secure long-term government funding. However, there are other examples, with funding provided by Texaco, for example, that bring music studies into schools were it had previously been removed. And there is a considerable evidence that the study of music, under the optimum conditions of support and encouragement and appropriate pacing and timing, can profoundly enrich the lives of people of all ages.
Those at the Royal Conservatory already know about these benefits. Having the neurologists and the scientific community find, document, publish and confirm those "anecdotal" reports will add considerably to the public's confidence in and activism to restore music studies to Canadian classrooms.
The Royal Conservatory already has a program in many schools that is showing signs of a similar phenomenon and any of us who had the privilege to study music in our early years will attest to its many life-long enrichments of our lives.
One of the more meaningful shifts will come when the public generally comes to accept that music, and drama and poetry and the literature of the imagination plays a crucial role in human development and demands its continual inclusion and enhancement in elementary and secondary curriculua for the long-term leaven of our community.
So we need not only the scientists who concentrate on individual development to study this program and others like it; we also need the sociologists to examine the impact of programs in music and the arts to substantiate their importance in the larger society as well. We are confident that such studies will continue to disclose, through academic research methodology, the infinite gift of the arts to those fortunate enough to have them presented in creative and inspiring teaching.

Kingston: no time to meet deadlines on Basketball League....pity!

By Jake Edmiston, Kingston Whig Standard, July 2, 2011
Kingston officials said they weren't able to complete an evaluation of the proposal before the deadline.

City commissioner Denis Leger said the franchise proposal required the city to purchase a basketball floor, nets and shot clocks for the K-Rock centre-- an estimated $100,000 investment.
The proposal for the franchise was submitted to city officials on June 13, leaving less than a month to assess the risks involved, negotiate a lease and have the lease agreement approved by city council.
Officials also needed to consult the K-Rock Centre's primary tenant, the Kingston Frontenacs.
"We didn't have sufficient time," said Leger, adding that the tentative price of a lease for the franchise wouldn't have covered the cost to convert the ice rink to a basketball court on a regular basis.
"We've left the door open. We've indicated to the league and the prospective franchisee that we'd entertain another proposal for the 2012-13 season or future seasons."...
The league's inaugural season is scheduled to start in October. Teams are expected in Saint John, Quebec, Halifax, Oshawa, London and Moncton.
While the public does not know all the fine print details, on the surface, the city has lost a golden opportunity, to be on the ground floor of a new basketball league operating in small and medium markets, starting in the fall of 2011.
With respect to the $100,000 for floor baskets, clock etc. there would be no reason to expect the initial value of the lease to cover those costs, in the first year, however, the purchase would open up the K-Rock Centre to many basketball tournaments by local area high schools, potential college and university tournaments that need additional floor space to the Queen's facility and the St. Lawrence facilities.
Additionally, the city could, with the purchase of a new floor, hoops and clock, invite the Toronto
Raptors to play an exhibition game prior to the start of each NBA season, thereby filling the 6000 seats with basketball enthusiasts.

The Syracuse Orange are a mere two hours away from Kingston, and there is no reason that their coach, Jim Beoheim, an inveterate champion of the sport, (pictured here) could not be persuaded to bring his troops here for an exhibition game at the start of each season, once again providing motivation, encouragement for potential players at both high school and college levels not to mention another sold-out gate of revenue.

While the current Frontenacs of the OHL are a long-standing tradition in Kingston, as is hockey in every Canadian village, town and city, there is considerable interest in and enthusiasm for both boys and girls basketball across the province. It is an exciting game, with many individual and team skills for participants at all levels, and as one who has coached the sport for well over twenty years in various Ontario towns and cities, at the high school level, the latest decision, whether by council itself, or by the Director of Administration, who claims not to have had enough time to meet the deadlines, is disappointing.
While everyone in the city applauds the purchase of a $125,000 9 foot Steinway grand piano for the Grande Theatre, there is no reason why a similar purchase for the "new" sport of basketball (for Kingston) would not serve the youth and the many parents and teachers whose knowledge of the sport now rivals the knowledge of most hockey fans for their favourite sport.
This is one purchase that need not wait "to see" if the league is successful, so that the city can then board a moving and viable train.

Shia/Sunni Clash in Lebanon, over Hariri indictments

By Nada Bakri, Globe and Mail, July 3, 2011
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, vowed Saturday that four members of his group indicted by an international tribunal in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister would never be arrested. He dismissed the charges as a conspiracy to sow sectarian strife in the country.

The comments, Sheik Nasrallah’s first since the indictments were issued Thursday, appeared to cast Lebanon into familiar territory: another period of waiting as a UN-backed tribunal that Hezbollah dismisses as a tool of the United States and Israel prepares for the next step if the men are not arrested.
The long-awaited indictments again brought to the fore the assassination in 2005 of Rafik Hariri, a former Sunni Muslim prime minister admired by supporters for his reconstruction of Lebanon after its 15-year civil war and criticized by his detractors for corruption that has seemed to infuse most aspects of public life here.

“No Lebanese government will be able to carry out any arrests whether in 30 days, 60 days, one year, two years, 30 years or even 300 years,” said Sheik Nasrallah, whose Shia militant group fought a fierce battle against Israel in 2006. “What will happen is a trial in absentia, a trial in which the verdict has already been reached.”
According to legal experts, Lebanon has 30 days to carry out the arrests. The court may then issue a public call for the suspects’ detention. Failing that, proceedings for a trial in absentia may begin after another month.
While the names of the suspects were leaked, the details of the indictment remained secret. Before Sheik Nasrallah said all four were members of Hezbollah, only two were thought to belong. He described the men, at least two of them senior members in the group, as brothers “who have an honourable history in resisting Israel.”
Hezbollah has denied any responsibility in the killing of Mr. Hariri in a bomb blast in which 22 other people also died.
After Mr. Hariri’s death, the country was hurled into years of conflict and discord that divided Lebanon over questions as broad as the role of foreign powers in the country and as narrow as the relative weight of Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims in decision-making.
Talk about a power struggle. With Sheik Nasrallah defying the indictments, and the potential court proceedings, and the UN's obvious discomfort, this case is going to keep on giving to the journalists and the historians and the diplomats whose job it is to stay on top of the case, from their unique perspectives.
And, to those of us outside the borders of Lebanon, (but who can really be outside any borders of any country any more?) it would seem that we might be witnessing the next chapter in a long-standing conflict between Shia and Sunni, whose origins and whose motives and whose future we do not comprehend.
Nevertheless, it is this struggle that has taken the world by storm. It is this struggle that wears on the rather thin tolerances and the thinning nerves of the international community and that could erupt anywhere at any time, without warning.
If the UN tribunal's findings can be and are dismissed as nothing more than the work of the forces of the U.S. and Israel, then which of the world's conflicts will not be reduced to such a formula, for the purposes of people like Nasrallah?
If the world faces a choice between the combined forces of Israel and the U.S., and the combined forces of Shia/Sunni, and such a stark choice is neither warranted nor necessary, then we have gone too far along the road to a binary universe. Nasrallah's dismissal of the findings of the UN tribunal, while continuing to protect those responsible for the Hariri murder, does little to enhance the reputation of Hezbollah and the potential for the government of Lebanon to comply with the UN findings.
In such a case, is there a way for the International Court in the Hague to bring down indictments against these men whom Hezbollah protects? Is there any leverage available to the UN to bring these men to justice? Is there an alternative route to justice, in this case, or are we going to watch the story drift off into a few dots of irresolution in the history books, and more drops or perhaps large gushes of wasted blood in the aftermath of this tragedy?

Welcome and "Thanks for Coming" to William and Kate...

Royal Protester in Quebec City   (photo, Toronto Star)

Signs like the one above and shouts of "abolir la monarchie" say much more about the people doing the protesting than about the institution they want destroyed. In fact, the signs and the shouting and the banging on whatever noise- makers to get attention demonstrates a kind of insensitivity to the changes that are before the eyes of these protesters, if they would only open them.
"It is an honour to inspect the VanDoos," and a full speech in French by William, as one would expect, are indications that the "royals" are far more in touch with their hosts than some of those hosts are in touch with their guests.
Protesting that it is not "against Kate and William" that we are protesting, but against the monarchy as an institution is no excuse. It may provide cover and a little less danger for police and security while the royal guests move from car to building, and to city hall and from car to boat, given that the protest is not specifically directed at these two newly-weds, one of whom will likely someday be monarch.
But it is the word "parasite" that demands a rebuttal.
Parasite is an organism living off another. The parasite is unable to survive without the life-sustaining "juices" of the other. The parasite makes no contribution to the host organism. The parasite has no value except as a "drain" on the host, and as a model of how not to live.
Clearly, this so-called parasite would do more than survive without the host of the government of Great Britain and the Commonwealth countries, although, unwanted, there would be little reason to continue. Furthermore, both William and Catherine are making more of a contribution to the people of Canada that some would like to admit. They are showing deference, respect and gratitude for the hospitality they are being shown. They are honouring the people of this country, albeit the "official" people first, their formal hosts, and then the ordinary people, by their attitude, their words, and their very generously extended presence.
It may seem trivial to some that literally hundreds of hands have been shaken, thousands of pictures have been shot and hours of both camping out and watching in person and on television, not to mention the sick children that they visited, or the cooking lessons they absorbed, or the content of the private conversations.
And in a world that worships only money, when the job description of a Duke and Duchess defies the Human Resources department's capacity for "objectively measureable" data, one can easily see how cutting to the quick of the fiscal "waste" and the "non-contributing" factor in the relationship would generate signs like "parasite go home."
However, for those still in touch with poetry and symbolism, for those whose reading in secondary school has not been reduced to "how-to manuals" because of a dearth of imagination of the so-called educators who could not design a curriculum for dog training, let alone for fertile imaginations like those of adolescent males and females, the monarchy is re-inventing itself, right before our eyes.
Those hand shakes, in a time of ever-present terror and the danger of sabotage by terrorists, are a monumental gift of connection, of making oneself vulnerable, of offering to actually "touch" another human being, (something that has become almost completely off-limits in many schools) and they demonstrate a kind of courage and compassion and empathy and humanity that is literally eroding from our body politic and being excised from our social discourse. We are being reduced, and are permitting ourselves to be reduced, to a kind of robotic, objective professionalism that defies both our nature and our needs.
The story of this royal visit bears reflection by all Canadians if for no other reason than to remind ourselves that ideology and political issues, as defined by a party in power, are not ultimate reality. These young people, as symbols of an institution that does not take sides in a political debate, (unless one considers the legitimate controversy surrounding Princess Diana's long-standing fight with the paparazzi a political debate). They are not scarred by the headlines depicting their "stand" on a tax hike, or a jet purchase, or a prison construction project. In that regard, they remain detached from such debates, and because of that they can remind us all of a larger and more important truth: that there will be other issues for other people at other times in the life of any country or town or city. These debates do not and must not be our only connection with the body politic; nor must the body politic be reduced to such mundane goals and objectives. There is, and there always has been, and there always will be a different and a more inspiring and a more symbolic and a more transcendent reality...and if it takes a few million dollars to sustain the symbols of that truth, then who can legitimately call such spending "parasitic" or useless or dangerous.
Who would want to have had a last twenty years of the last century without Princess Diana, her children and her tragic marriage and death? They are stories that mark a period in our lives, and in history generally, that speak to the emptiness of a marriage triad, that will never work. And when we learn that, when asked if the Prince of Wales were to come on bended knee seeking her permission to re-enter the marriage, after the divorce, after a very long pause, Princess Diana answered, "Yes," we learn about the humanity of a woman whose tutelage of her sons, and specifically of William, will be a gift that continues to give to him, to the people of his realm, if and when he assumes the throne, and to the world.
And, clearly from the reaching out of hundreds of thousands of people to catch a glimpse, to touch, to take a photo, just to be in the presence of Catherine and William, we can see explicitly and implicitly, just how hungry those people are/were for some of that "royal dust" to become a part of their family's history. And it is that bridging of the realities of humdrum and fairytale, of mortgages and fantasy, of budgets and romances, of mundane and meta history, of this finite moment and the infinite possibility both past and future, of modes of transportation and flights of dreams...that come with such a visit.
And while Canada and perhaps other countries in the Commonwealth have struggled with the "colonialism" of their state, as compared with independent nations, there is nothing either evil or cheap or debilitating or redundant in a royal family whose brokenness lies on the front pages for all to mourn, and whose hopes and dreams can and have been passed to a new generation for everyone, for all faiths, for all classes, for all languages and for all ethnicities.
And any who call such a gift "parasitic" have lost sight of the blessings and the graces that attend compassion, empathy and connection...in a world becoming nearly devoid of all of that.

Happy 144th Birthday to Canada! Welcome to Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

                                                                    
              Canada Day, 2011, the country's 144th birthday!
Who are we? Where do we fit in the world of nations? Whose picture of reality best captures our identity?
These existential questions have beset our best thinkers and writers for the full century and a half that we have been  a country.
Creating something like a nation, an abstract concept to be sure, from the 'chaos' of the land and the native peoples whose presence here predates our country's birth, while it is not mean feat, is still and always will be a work in progress. Try as we might to hang the official portrait of our country on a wall in an art museum, it continues to leap off the canvas, out from the frame and demand another 'version' or another 'take' or another movement, as if it were an evolving jazz concerto, being constantly played through both improv and the skeleton of a manuscript. (Talk about a mixed metaphor....ugh!)
Yes, we are a northern country, relative to the southern hemisphere, and that has historically meant that our temperatures and our climate generally demands some fairly serious skin covering in the coldest months. It also means that we have found ice and snow and ponds and lakes and mountains and forests 'our playground'....and there is something to the notion that where and how a people play reflects something about their spirit.
So hunting and fishing and something organized like hockey are part of the core of our nature. We need to eat, and we also need to engage with others and we have some conventions that help to shape those needs.
We celebrate "the land" and include in that hymn all parts of that catch-phrase..our rivers, our lakes, our oceans, our glaciers and fields and mountains and more recently our towns and our cities. And there is a large amount of all of those parts, to the land. Our writers will often help so to hold firm to our picture of ourselves as a "people of the land"....in the belief that there is a kind of intimacy that we share with the land.
It is not that our relationship with the land is better or more sacred or more dedicated than the relationships other people in other places share with their land, but more that we come from, return to and sign the praises of the land as a national anthem.
And so , as part of that theme, we also are a people who talk incessantly about the weather. We always have, and likely always will. The weather is so instrumental in our day's activities, whether as farmers we can plow, or seed or fertilize or harvest has much to do with the weather. And even those working in glass towers at digital tablets share an intimate relationship with the elements. And yet, while we talk and moan and smile and shrug and run or walk or drag ourselves across the floor, the weather is a part of every movement and every greeting.
And as it grows seemingly more extreme, with more floods and more fires and more hurricanes and tornadoes and more melting of our polar icecaps, we talk of it in more intense terms. We are confused, irritated, worried and even quite anxious, sometimes even frightened about the extremes of nature.
And we also see extremes in the way the world's economy is shifting, as if we are watching underground tectonic plates come to the surface, no longer hiding from view, only to appear as a shock 'of the century'...now these plates seem to be grabbing us by the throat and pinning us against the wall as we watch another kind of drama play out among the rich and powerful.
So while our focus is often on the weather reports, our unconscious is skittering across the floor in a kind of angst that comes from knowing that much of our anxiety is generated by human actions and human insensitivity and human carelessness and human insouciance and we seem adrift on a sea in strong winds, with no one hearing or answering our call for help, although we have all the latest devices to make our shouts clear and audible.
And so, we rely more on a menu of what we call 'entertainment' in the forms of digital games, large concerts, select movies and our perception, significant to our pioneer ancestors, that we are our brother's keeper, erodes on a local scale, and seems to take on more import for countries with little or nothing to sustain them.
Relatively, their need trumps what we consider the level of need at home even though both continue. Yet, teaching for two months in Africa has more appeal to young teachers on holiday than Frontier College once did for our college students, in our own North.
We are known as a hospitable people, and in crisis that is generally true. However, we have become a nit-picking, scab-picking, irritable and irritating intolerant people, especially of the slightest social 'zit' like a faux pas made on a public stage. We are becoming like the mother who beat her adolescent kid because his jacket sleeve ticked a note in a piano recital and scarred an otherwise perfect performance. And we have also become far more rigid and unforgiving than a pioneer culture dependent on the vagaries of climate and weather, and needing the comfort of neighbours. We do not even know our neighbours. Since we have tamed so much of our days and nights in heated and cooled luxurious comfort of car, office or condo, we have forgotten our shared dependence on each other and move from task to task, from instrument panel to instrument panel like airline pilots in an eternal simlulator, never having to venture into the real stratosphere and into her storms.
And we gather around our plasma and LCD screens to watch 'national events' like a first visit of newlywed Prince and Princess of Cambridge, and celebrate their youth, their vigor and their elegance and poise, trained as they have been to represent the 'crown' in a near-perfect performance...and we listen as twin nineteen-year-old girls from twenty-one hours away in Illinois proudly claim, "I want to be just like them" as sales of the princesses fashion choices fly off the hangers in stores around the world. Or we watch those same screens as thousands of temporary thugs riot in protest of a loss of their hockey heroes of the coveted Stanley Cup, or thousands of ordinary people flee their homes from floods and fires across the continent and around the world.
And we wonder how to help the people in New Mexico, or Haiti, or  North Dakota or Manitoba or Australia or New Zealand or Japan as the disaster list and the devastation-drama moves around the planet. Now, we are all neighbours, and while we may not, and likely do not, completely understand the nuances of the various cultures in other countries, we do recognize disaster and pain wherever it strikes and continue to 'want to help' in however small a way...and today, we give thanks to a universe that planted us in this land, with these people at this time and hope against hope that we can leave something worth protecting and preserving here for our children and our grandchildren, as our parents and grandparents did for us.