Laura Lee notes that she usually starts decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving, but that this year she hasn’t gotten around to it.

I am hereby giving her one. Anyone else who needs one or knows someone who needs one is welcome to use the little envelope icon on the bottom of this post to email the post, or you can just right-click on the image, choose View Image from the pop-up menu, and print the resulting page to give to someone… {then use your browser’s back button to come back here!}
[Update: in IE7 right-click and choose Print Picture…]
Have Fun!

Right Click and Choose View Image

My personal thought is that your child should go to his or her neighborhood school. The school that the student can walk to. The school where the neighbors go.

If you live in a homogeneous neighborhood then you will probably have a homogeneous school.

If you live in a diverse neighborhood then you will probably have a diverse school.

A child was denied a place in his neighborhood school because he was white and by going to that school he wouldn’t maintain the diversity that the school board was attempting to maintain.

In my school district, all the children go to the same school for kindergarten. There are five elementary schools (1st-6th), one middle school (7th-8th), and one high school. Children are generally assigned to their “neighborhood” elementary school unless the child is registered late and there is no more room at the closest school. If a child lives within 1.5 miles of his/her neighborhood school, the child walks, otherwise the child is bussed. In our district children aren’t assigned by race or first language spoken at home.

I think that’s the proper way. People segregate themselves all the time. The school districts say that some of this “self segregation” is caused by affordable housing or lack thereof. That may be so. But people still have a choice of where to live. People could choose a more diverse neighborhood. They can choose a more homogeneous neighborhood.

The school districts in the cases before the SCOTUS want to balance the number of white and black students at the schools even though some students may spend an inordinate amount of time traveling from home to school and then back again. The school districts maintain that diversity is more important for the early grades, kindergarten, first, second grade. This means that a 5-, 6-, or 7-year-old may be spending from 1-1/2 to 3 hours daily on a bus. That seems a high price for the child to be paying.

You’d also think that parents might want to make that decision for themselves.

Update: I just heard one woman (on Fox) from the protests today at SCOTUS saying “we can’t return to segregated schools”.

That reminded me. Weren’t segregated schools specifically designed that way? Weren’t children bussed to a school for ‘their color’ no matter where they lived? Isn’t this almost the same in reverse?

Quite a while back I read St. Patrick’s Gargoyle by Katherine Kurtz. The story of a Gargoyle named Paddy for the Church in Dublin that he guards, stolen alms basins and a roughed up verger, and the desecrated grave of a Knight returned from the Holy Land.

The gargoyles of Dublin meet once a month, on a moonless night, to discuss what’s happening with their various charges (the churches) and what may be happening in the city. The gargoyles explain (both to one another and Paddy to a human, Francis Templeton – an elderly Knight of Malta who helps him out – that gargoyles were once avenging angels. In the Old Testament avenging angels were seen frequently, but they aren’t around in the New Testament.

Templeton sees Paddy’s reflection in the black door of a Rolls Royce…

Reflected briefly in the car’s polished black door, just as his visitor ducked back into the sheltering shadow of the shutters, was not a darkly menacing shadow-shape laced with fire, but the stern, majestic figure of an armored warrior, with a diadem of stars across its noble brow and dark pinions sweeping from powerful shoulders to trail rainbows behind. And what its strong hands were cradling to its armored breast was not a radiator mascot but a tiny winged cherub.

“Oh”, Paddy said apologetically, as Templeton gave a wondering little gasp, slack-jawed with awe. “I guess your car door’s a black mirror. You weren’t supposed to see that. That’s the only way mortals can see us in our true form — unless, of course, they’ve really pissed us off. Then you don’t wanta know. Like I said we used to be avenging angels.

“Not anymore, though. We don’t get to kick ass like we did in the old days. The Boss has mellowed a lot, since the days when He was a Old Testament God. I think it started when His Son joined the Firm. The Son was human for a while, you know, so He’s inclined to be a little softer on sinners.”

The advent of Christ does obviate the need for avenging angels. The Old Testament God punished. After God gave us his Son, there was no need for avenging angels. Through Christ, we are forgiven and saved. Let us remember this as we come into this most Holy season.

Merry Christmas to one and all.

cross posted at The Anchoress

Today the Little Guy is making snow angels and the Shih Tzu is shorter than the snow…

Minneapolis radio station KDWB‘s host Dave Ryan asked if people would trade a baby for a PS3. He didn’t expect that he would have any takers. He was mistaken.

The station received many calls offering to trade a baby for the PS3 system.

The station started with just the offer: trade a baby (for a while) for a PS3. Then, after they received such a high response, they started an “auction” to get the youngest baby for the longest time… The parents were told that they could not check up on the welfare of the child and they were also told that the station did not have a child safety seat for the car.

These parents were still willing to trade their child. The “winner” was a one month old baby for three days (no children or PS3’s were traded).

Fox News played a recording of one mother this morning. She said she had a one month old baby named Alex that she would trade for a PS3. The host asked if the baby’s father agreed. She said he was right there with her. The host asked how old she was. She said she was 22. The host said that Alex was probably her first baby then. She said the baby was her third.

Trading your child to strangers for a period of time for a video game system. What is this world coming to?

cross posted at The Anchoress (where I am guest posting for the weekend – Thank you Anchoress!)

If you aren’t, DJ Drummond has the future if the Democrats win this election cycle.

Be afraid.

Vote GOP November 7^th

For the second Halloween in a row, the Democrats have taken over the Right Place blog. Go check it out.

Can you guess who I was?

I must say that I had a great deal of fun doing this again this year. Thanks Mr. Right!

This is a wonderful program that supplies voice activated laptop computers for wounded soldiers from all branches of service. As I am an Army Vet, I have joined with Blackfive on the Army Team.

Each branch is competing with the others for donations between now and Veterans’ Day, November 11^th.

Use the link above and donate today!

Da Bears slam the 49ers 41-10! Da Bears are 7-0! The last Superbowl they won was 21 seasons ago. Go Bears!!

The Anchoress says it’s like eating Christmas. She’s right. I took the recipe she posted and added some Sunmaid Goldens and Cherries, and some frozen mixed berries and frozen peach slices in addition to the dried cranberries. The other change I made to recipe was replacing half the cinnamon with pumpkin pie spice.

With my oven I can set it to start and run for however long so I cooked this while we were at church this morning. I will set it to start a little later next time, maybe so it’s just done when we arrive home or a few minutes after instead of earlier. Holding it in the warm, turned off oven, dried it a little bit more than it should have been, but this was just wonderful. Warm, creamy/crunchy, fruity. I warmed some milk and poured a little over each serving. The house smelled so good when we arrived home…

I think you can take the basic recipe and add whatever you want for fruit, or nuts. Dried apricots would probably be great as would figs.

Here’s what mine looked like this morning: