The End, Part I
It is finished. I bound off this evening and blocked it and it’s now folded up and stashed away ready for delivery tomorrow.
I’ll post pictures tomorrow; I have to go to bed now so that I can work a 6-8 a.m. volunteer shift at Herberger’s Community Day in the morning! If you’re looking to get a head start on your holiday shopping, check out your local Herbergers/Boston Store/Younkers/Carson Pirie Scott and get a coupon booklet for the sale tomorrow. The money from the sale of the coupon book goes to support local charities and you save money on your holiday shopping!
Rain, rain, go away..
Several days later, city administrators and home owners affected (effected? I never remember when to use which..) by the flooding in southeastern MN are exhausted. For as quickly as the damage was done, the clean up and recovery is slow, tedious work, made all the worse by the seemingly ceaseless rain that’s still falling daily.
The grey is simply draining; one could wish the water itself would drain so well.
Twin Creeks Golf Course, Hokah, MN
Hill s(l)ide, first house in Hokah heading east on Highway 44
Bottom of the hill in Hokah, near the Junction Inn
A flooded field outside Hokah, MN
Flooded farmland outside Hokah, MN
Flooded pasture between Hokah & La Crescent, MN
Approaching the Highway 26 bridge over the Root River & marshlands
Highway 26 bridge over the Root River & marshlands
Wednesday morning clean up continues in La Crescent, MN
Train tracks in La Crescent, MN, Wednesday morning
A small train bridge in La Crescent, MN, Wednesday morning; the flooding left the bridge intact, but sluiced away the ground supporting the tracks on either side leading up to and away from the bridge
As a woman in Rushford said this morning on Minnesota Public Radio, this isn’t the worst tragedy the nation has seen, but it’s still pretty bad. Many families are homeless and, due to the loss of many small businesses, without a means of income to support their families. Most of these homes are not in a flood plain and therefore weren’t covered by flood insurance. It’s unclear yet what, if anything, FEMA will be able to do to assist. If you want to help, you can donate money or time to the Red Cross. If you’re in the area, you can donate any of the following items to Nicole Wilkes at Houston County Women’s Resources (114 Main Street, Hokah, MN) for distribution to families in need:
- Cleaning Products
- Blankets/Bedding
- Personal Care Items
- Non-perishable Food Items (With Minimal Preparation)
- Gift Cards for grocery, department, and hardware stores
OUTRAGE!
I.. just..
Words can’t describe the level of outrage and anger and .. no words ..
I’ll just have to borrow Stephanie’s. Please. Go read this. And then, once you can form a coherent sentence again, call your legislators.
I’ll try to come up with something more coherent on this later this afternoon. Something about how “murder” seems to be a word like “rape” that might be construed to make the defendant sound guilty but that no judge in their right fuqing mind would consider banning the use of the word from their courtroom during a murder trial.
This is one of those occasional “educational policy” posts..
Last Spring, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) and the National Association for State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC) convened several task forces to begin working on bringing their proposed Voluntary System of Accountability(sm) (PDF) effort into reality. The VSA(sm) task forces now have a preliminary draft template (PDF) that’s up for comment and feedback as to the feasibility of what’s been created.
There were a couple of guiding principles the Student & Family Information Task Force used in creating this (preliminary draft) template which are pertinent to the data contained in the first two and a half pages:
- The first was that the data should be based off common, pre-existing sources of data. To accomplish this, when ever possible, the template is built on data from the Common Data Set and/or IPEDS and uses formulas and macros to pull the bulk of the data for the first two pages directly from the Excel version of the CDS.
- The second guiding principle was that the data should be presented consistently from institution to institution. The draft of this template includes a uniform set of tables and charts that will auto-generate when inserted into the Excel CDS file. There will be some points of customization (e.g., the use of the school logo in the first page header and the ability to imbed links to institutional web pages), but the idea is for each institution’s VSA(sm) to have the same information in the same place so that (for instance) pages from several institutions can be printed and placed side by side for comparison by prospective students and parents.
The data and elements that are not from the CDS/IPEDS (mostly on pages 3 & 4) are still under discussion by the VSA(sm) Task Forces and may change. You may also note that the Undergraduate Success data are not simply the typical IPEDS graduation rate; the VSA(sm) teams are working with the National Student Clearinghouse on a means of providing this expanded set of success rates to institutions.
If you work in higher ed - or are a parent or prospective student who will be trying to decide which institution to attend - please take a look at the draft template and provide your feedback to the task forces; AASCU is hosting several public forums on their website specifically for the purpose of gathering input and feedback from others. Please take a moment to voice your opinion on what is increasingly becoming an urgent issue in higher education.
Visible support.
Sorry to disappear for a bit only to reappear briefly with another no-knitting content post (that will come pr’bly tomorrow), but I think this is important.
You’ve got to watch this video. Thousands of people are attacked every year because of their sexual orientation, and there’s still no federal hate crimes law to protect them. This video is a very powerful statement on hate crimes, and I couldn’t help but pass it on. I think you’ll see why.
There’s a bill in the Senate right now that would address this heartbreaking problem, and we only have a few weeks until the vote. It would mean a lot to me if you could take a minute to watch the video and write your Senators, and then please, please, spread the word. I really believe none of us can sit this one out.
I wear two of those little silicone bracelet things regularly. The blue one is for the National Urea Cycle Disorders Foundation in honor of my niece who was diagnosed late last year with Ornithine Transcarbamylase Deficiency (OTC). The purple on is for the Matthew Shepard Foundation because I believe that it is important to take some visible and daily stand against hate crimes. I can’t solve the problem of hate crime, but I can do some small things to make it a visible one, one that can’t be ignored or hushed up. Writing and calling my elected representatives and asking them to support the Matthew Shepard Act is one of those things. Won’t you please do it, too?
Edited to add: I received the following response from Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman and I thought I would share for those who might be interested in where he stands on this important legislation (and yes, I’m fully aware this is likely a form letter, but it still states his views and confirms that he does intend to support the bill):
Dear Me:
Thank you for taking the time to contact me concerning the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 1105 ).
Minnesota already has similar laws and it does not appear that there have been problems in its application or enforcement. Accordingly, I am inclined to support this at the federal level.
As you may know, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 (S. 1105) was introduced by Senator Kennedy (D-MA) and referred the Senate Judiciary Committee for further consideration. This legislation would provide resources to law enforcement officials to enhance prevention and prosecution efforts of hate crimes. Companion legislation (H.R. 1592) passed in the House on May 3, 2007.
Thank you once again for contacting me. Please do not hesitate to contact me on any issue of concern to you and your family.
Sincerely,
Norm Coleman
United States Senate
This post is not what it seems.
We returned from the cabin yesterday. I already miss it - and not just because the breeze off the lake made the mid-80-degrees days not just tolerable but actually quite pleasant. Our house is hot and sticky and even though we get periodic breezes through the upstairs open windows, it’s still too hot and sticky to contemplate knitting anything with wool or spinning anything with any possibility of sticking to moisture in my hands (like the baby camel & silk tends to).
My Fiber Swap box arrived while we were out. It’s quite lovely and has lots of fun things to play with - including samples of cotton and soy silk and flax which I’m unwontedly gleeful about (or will be once it’s not a sauna in my house) - and I will take pictures and post in more breathlessness about it all soon, but in catching up on the headlines from the last several days, I came across an article stating that the number of persons living with HIV/AIDS in a county near us went up in 2006.
Which is a bit of an understatement; the number nearly tripled. (Which, in and of itself, is somewhat mitigated when you realize that the total number of persons living with HIV/AIDS is in the low 20’s, but the rate of increase is still somewhat of a shock.) According to the article, a large portion of the increase is due to an “influx” (can 2-3 people really be considered an “influx”?) of people to the area who were already diagnosed - so it’s not a three-fold increase in the incidence of HIV/AIDS infections, but rather an increase in the prevalence of persons living with HIV/AIDS in the region.
And then I read the comments to the article (if you do this, read from the bottom up as the newest comments are added to the top). And as is not all that uncommon when I venture into the comments, I was rather horrified at the ignorance and prejudice displayed therein. But that’s not really my point either; rather, I was reminded by something someone mentioned in passing in one of the comments of a rant I’ve been wanting to write for a few weeks.
It sums up to this, in short: If you trust the security of your blood supply to self-disclosure of potential risk factors, you’re negligently naive. (I warned you this post wasn’t what it seemed.) While the FDA’s policy of “self-deferral” to keep men who have sex with men (MSM) from contributing to the nation’s blood supply *may* reduce the 1 in a million chance of someone contracting HIV from a blood transfusion (which is not insignificant given that there are, in an average year, about 20 million blood transfusions in the US), it relies on the self-identification of MSM as such.
And.. well.. even with the change in terminology and the targeting of MSM who do not identify as gay or bisexual in media campaigns, there is a relatively substantial population of men (apparently especially African American men) on the down low - substantial enough that they are believed to be the primary reason that the incidence of HIV/AIDS among heterosexual women has been on the rise. So.. knowing that, I fail to understand how a policy of self-deferral - which will undoubtedly succeed in keeping a large number of HIV-negative self-identifying MSM from attempting to give blood - is going to do anything to protect the blood supply from the uncounted (but believed to be large) population of MSM who don’t identify as such.
It’s a farce. Rather than admit that the blood supply is at risk of contamination, the FDA would rather reaffirm the stereotype that homosexual and bisexual men constitute the only population with significant enough risk of spreading HIV to warrant the prevention of their contribution to the blood supply - in defiance of the facts that the proportion of new female HIV cases has been steadily rising over the past decade and that 80% of new female HIV infections are transmitted through heterosexual sex. By playing on the fears of the uneducated public, the FDA is knowingly contributing to a false sense of security regarding the US blood supply.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not advocating for the abolition of the maintenance of the US blood supply, or for more stringent restrictions as to who is deemed worthy of contributing; rather I’m arguing for an admission of the actual risk inherent in the system and an abolition of restrictions that are based on fear and prejudice.
Let’s round out the week with some righteous indignation..
This is why gay and lesbian couples should be afforded the same legal marital rights as heterosexual couples.
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Minneapolis woman should have visitation rights with the two children she and her now-estranged lesbian partner adopted when they were still a couple.Nancy SooHoo had faced losing all contact with the 11- and 6-year-old girls, whom she said still call her “mommy,” and her attorney said the court’s decision is good news for gay parents who have struggled for legal parental rights.
SooHoo and Marilyn Johnson had been a couple for almost two decades when they adopted the infant girls from China in 1997 and 2001, but Johnson became the sole legal guardian because the Chinese government wouldn’t allow gay couples to adopt.
When the couple split in 2004, Johnson was left as the only legal parent of both girls.
Yes, Ms. SooHoo will still get to see her kids. No, even though she and Ms. Johnson adopted the children together after having been “a couple” for “two decades”, a legal technicality means Ms. SooHoo doesn’t actually get joint custody. She’s not, in the eyes of the courts or the law, their mother.
Yes, divorce is ugly, even moreso when there are children involved. But even though the divorce rate is reportedly down from a peak in the early-80’s, it still seems to be that around 40% of first-time (need I even state that these are only heterosexual?) marriages end in divorce. The courts would never think to consider one of the adults in those families not legally a parent to their children, even if the children had been adopted. Not one, not ever.
Because marriage and civil union is not legal for most of the country, there are no similar statistics for gay and lesbian families, but the law of averages being what it is, my guess is that it’s about the same. It might even be lower because of the strength of will and determination it takes in many areas of the country to declare yourself married to someone of the same sex - arguably you’d think about jumping into a gay or lesbian marriage maybe a little harder than it seems some heterosexual couples think about it - but again, no statistics, so all we can do is speculate. (I won’t even really go off on the whole “if it were recognized, we could actually track things like this and make decisions based on *gasp* actual data” line..)



