More Long Division

In a comment on my previous post, Long Division, my friend Wendy brought up some good points that I would like to talk about. This is mostly intended to be a response to Wendy, but since it’s a bit too long for the comments section (and since I'd also like to post a letter my sister recently received from the school district I mentioned) I’m posting it here-- so if it interests you, please read on! However I do suggest you first get the context by reading my original post, Wendy’s comment in response to it, and the facts behind the lesson plan controversy (including PDF’s of the lesson plans in their entirety) at factcheck.org.

And if you're sick to death of my political banter, instead of clicking "read more," click here to watch a cute video that will make your day ;)

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Check out my new blog!

One of the questions I like least in my daily life is "What's for dinner?"  I have serious issues when it comes to being the CEO of my family's day to day menus.  The hardest part about feeling this way is that I absolutely LOVE to eat.  If having a great meal every day wasn't so darn important to me, I could slap together just any old tasteless mess from a box and life would be so much simpler.  But that's just not the case.  I have to have flavor!  I have to have nutrition and variety!  I have to be able to prepare it in a kitchen the size of a coat closet!  And I have to have all this without too much mental exertion!

That's a pretty tall order when you're staring down the barrel of a blank shopping list.  And thus we come to the heart of the matter: My answer to "What's for dinner?" is "I really have no blankity-blank idea."  I've tried searching the recipe sites for ideas.  I've tried reading other people's recipe blogs.  But the land of virtual menu planning proves to be much too vast and overwhelming for this little lost soul.  I need something more focused.  I need something from people like me who shrink from the idea of making meals containing 30 obscure ingredients and require kitchen gadgets you'd have to go to a Pampered Chef party to acquire.

So as necessity is the mother of invention, in the midst of this culinary stymie an idea has been born, the ingredients purchased and mixed, and a solution baked to perfection.  I have started a new blog that invites desperate meal-makers within the sound of my voice to share dinner ideas and meal plans with each other (and thus by gloriously brilliant default-- with me)!

I now invite any of you who have not already been taken in by this wonderfully self-serving plan of mine, to join with the rest of us for the sake of improving our collectively impoverished palettes.  And so, without further adieu, I give you... 

Pimp My Dinner Plate! 

Long Division

I didn’t plan for my first blog entry after our summer hiatus to be a political one. However, for quite a while now I’ve been feeling very strongly about the political turmoil in our country. It seems to me that the division along party lines worsens every day, and the more it does the more appalled I become. The recent controversy over President Obama’s desire to speak to our nation’s students as they begin a new year has effectively tipped my vocal scales. I cannot stay (publicly) silent about it any longer.

This morning, I learned of my 16 year old niece’s experience with the opposition to the President’s speech. Apparently, her school district banned the speech from being shown. Her history teacher expressed his disappointment with that mandate and told the class he intended to let them see it anyway. However, when he turned on the television at the appointed time, they discovered the school had closed the circuit and thereby removed any possibility of disobedience. When she returned home and related the experience, her mother posed a very insightful question: “What kind of country does this make you feel you are living in?”

I must ask us all some similar questions: What kind of country are we living in? When did our country become so blinded by partisanship? When did we decide that if one’s political views differ from our own, they should be avoided, disrespected, and denounced? When did we begin to let the biased, sensationalizing media become our main source of information? When did we start refusing to listen to anything or anyone that may challenge our comfortable, traditional beliefs? When did we become so afraid that a charismatic speaker could lead our children astray that we decide to shelter them instead of exposing them to differences and creating opportunities for discussion and learning?

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