Tuesday, January 27, 2015

I Do My Job-Why Can't Other People Do Theirs?

A valid question.
I'm a high school teacher with all the job responsibility and paperwork that entails. I make lesson plans,  grade projects, call parents, go to meetings, make arrangements for competitions, collect permission slips, and on and on and on. I do this year in and year out.

We got a coordinator that we share with theater and dance.
She's handsomely paid.
For what I am not sure.
I call and she's never in her office. She allows her pet teacher to run meetings which means every event is designed to fit nicely with that teacher's schedule and not necessarily ours. This year, because this teacher wanted to win all the top places in our district show, they had the once a year, district, high school art show in late January. Never mind that we just got a new crop of classes and kids. Ignore that our regional show is coming up shorting. Forget that we have GRADES due-and all of that in the same week.

Fast forward to now. Teacher in question did win all top prizes-I'm not sure how when my kids got first in painting and first in drawing, but whatever. And Monday is Open House and Eighth Grade Roundup where we talk kids into taking art-and our "art coordinator" decided it would be a good thing for us to take down the show in the 90 minutes between school getting out and the event. We physically cannot do it. It takes 30 minutes just to drive over there and another hour or so to take down the art then 30 minutes to get back. That means no break from 7:30 am until 9:00 pm.

I already have high blood pressure. I simply cannot continue doing this kind of thrill kill schedule.

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Here We Go Again

So once again radical Islamist decide that they are the arbiters of what free people can think, feel, write or draw. That this happened in France should be no surprise-they've been trying to remove all religion from their midst becoming a secular society by banning religious jewelry and only consolidated Islamists into a unified force. The moral of this story is appeasing bullies does no good.

This is not the first attack in Europe. A bus was targeted in London. A British soldier butchered by Islamist terrorists on the street. A bombing in Madrid. The thing that is different is that in every case the European response was to cower and allow sharia to grow. It is the same sick liberal mentality that refuses to see the Boston Marathon Bombing, the Ft. Hood shootings or the Navy Yard shootings for what they are-raw Islamic terror attacks.

It is deeply disturbing when I see Islam growing in suburban areas. While I would love to think these mosques are innocuous as the local Presbyterian church, I don't see the members of that synod throwing firebombs at shopping malls, Indeed, no other religion right now has exhibited such unbridled and unwarranted attacks as those who claim Muslim heritage. From Somalia to Indonesia random acts of violence on innocent people for the sole cause of not being Muslim make this appear to be the actions of some type of delusional madness.

Is that what Islam preaches? Violence? Hatred? Death?

And what is more, have the apologists in Europe-and here in the U.S-FINALLY gotten the message that the only way to end this is to seize control of these Muslim nations and take away their power? It's either that or somebody is going to end up flat and glassy and glowing.