Toddlers and Tiara's

Ok, this weekend my mother and I were flipping through tv channels looking for something to watch and we came across a show on TLC (I believe that was the channel) titled Toddlers and Tiara's. Since my daughter is 3 I thought this would be something cute to watch, little girls wearing fancy dresses and shoes, with cute little pig tails in their hair. Wow, was I in for a surprise, lets say fancy dresses and shoes was about all I had right.
I have to admit I did not watch the whole episode, I turned it off because I felt like it was just not right. Now, I do not have a problem with beauty contests, especially if a person is old enough to make the choice to participate or not. I also do not object to things such as cute baby contests. What I do object to is the glamorization of small children.
In the episode it was not just cute clothes and perfect hair, things went to the extreme. Parents were putting wigs, fake fingernails, makeup, teeth covers and of all things, fake eyelashes on children as young as 3 years old. These children competed in categories such as beauty, talent and even swimsuit. Yup, a swimsuit competition for 3year old. I cannot believe that parents actually put their small children through this stuff, and that someone actually thought to make a tv show about it.

A hard case of writers block.

Have you ever been so tired you can just not think? That is me today, I am just not feeling this. Normally I have some sort of idea for my blog in mind, and if I don't something on Yahoo's homepage usually gets my attention and brain in thinking mode. Even checking for prompts on thoughts for a blog is getting nothing.
I am chalking this up to a very long weekend. A lot of running around, playing, cleaning, homework (I have a 4 credit online class that runs for only 7 weeks online and it is killing me, I have never had this much for a class ever!), and of course learning to cook empanadas for my experience essay. I am tired, I have a headache and just want to go to bed, which I almost did but thankfully the other day I set a reminder on my phone to do my blog, must have been fate.
As I am sitting here, trying to come up with enought thought to make my required three paragraph, three sentence requirement my mind drifted off to class on Thursday and the essay by E.B.White and how I did not know what Moxie was. So I decided to do a Goggle search and see what turns up. It turn out it is a soda that is still produced today, according to Wikipedia (I know not the most reliable source, but there are ads and photos of the stuff, so I believe it is a soda)it was one of the first mass produced soft drinks, and is still regionally popular today.
There, now that everyone is a little more educated on the Moxie, and my requirement is met I can go to bed. Goodnight fellow bloggers.

alien existence

I love the news blips on the homepage of Yahoo! There are usually 32-40 of them and they can be scrolled through at four at a time. They range from funny to serious, heartwarming to information, and some are just pure strange. Strange is the word for the blip that caught my eye today.
The title on the blip spot was "Scientist: ET go home". My first thought was are they finally admitting to area 54? Aliens are already here! Since the only movies I find to be scary, and to give me nightmares, are alien movies (watch Fire in the Sky it is based on a true story) I was quite intrigued. When I clicked on the link the actual title of the article was "Aliens may exist but contact would hurt humans: Hawkings" I have to say it was no where near what I expected.
The article basically said that we should not want to make alien contact because chances are that "the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans" and stated that they would most likely happen upon us as the looked for another planet to live on as they sucked the resources on their planet dry.
I thought to myself, is that not what the human population is doing to the earth? We use and use and consume and consume and there is no way to replace much of the resources we use, eventually we will have sucked this planet dry and I have a feeling that the aliens will have to watch out for us.

Finally rules for the library

I have not had much travel into or through the library at UW Sheboygan this semester until just recently. I can not tell you how very happy I was to see that students are expected to be quiet in the library. I have been waiting for library rules for years.
I do not know if any of you will remember the old library which was located where the UW Extension is now located. I used to try to use the library to study for tests between classes, but it was useless. There were always people talking nearby, breaking my concentration. The library had even sent around surveys one year asking about the noise level and policies of the library, but there was never any change. I was sure hoping for change when the new library was opened. When it did I had mixed feelings.
I was happy to see all the study rooms the new library had. These were great and at first hardly anyone ever used them. They were quiet and they faced out over the lawn. They were a great place to study for a test or do group work. Now they are usually much more occupied and sometimes unavailable, but still a great choice. The computer lab was a disappointment, I figured being in the library there would have been more regulation. And even though there was a sign posted that it was a quiet work area it was highly disregarded. Sometimes it seemed like it was the new hangout place instead of a quiet work area.
All in all I hope that the new library rules stay. Not to say that I do not feel bad for any students who have group work to do and need technology, because I do, especially if the cyber cafe is still dominated by the yelling video game players it used to be. At least the library should now be a better place for individualized work.

open when needed.

I just love a nice day, I think most people do to. 65 degrees, no wind and lots of sunshine. Even if you prefer really hot or really cold I think you found today acceptable.
Why do I think that way? Have you ever been to the store on a really hot, really cold, rainy, or snowy day? On days like that it seems like everyone is crabby, no one smiles, checkers seem like they hate their job, other customers gripe about how long the line is and heaven forbid if they need to move their cart over a half of foot so you can pass down the aisle. And have you ever been in line where the person behind you is complaining under their breath, such as the store needs more checkers, or they are just breathing in an agitated way?
Well I had to do some shopping at Piggly Wiggly today. We decided to grill out, and from listening/talking to others in the store, it seems as though a good portion of the people in Sheboygan decided to also. A friend of mine that works in the meat department said it had been crazy busy. Even with the store being so busy, everyone seemed to be in a great mood. No one seemed to mind waiting their turn to make their pick from the fresh meat. People were chatting, smiling and in an overall great mood. Even in the checkout lanes, people seemed overall in a great mood, including the checkers who were at work on such a nice day.
Point being is that when the weather is perfect, not extremely hot or extremely cold people just seem to be more comfortable and in a better mood. It is to bad there is no way to bottle this great and open it when needed.

How we assign responsibility.

On Friday I had a nice long drive down to Chicago to pick my husband up at the airport. Even though I hate traffic, and at times it was heavy, I found the ride to be pleasant. My daughter amused herself with her books and toys we brought along for the drive and I found myself thinking about the article about Wisconsin's drinking and responsibility we had discussed in class on Thursday. Mostly I thought about how we try to pass the blame, depending on our view of the situation.
I thought about the student mentioned in the article who drowned after a night of drinking. I thought about other articles I have read over the years about people who died drunk driving. I thought about what I learned in the responsible beverage servers class, how it is the alcohol servers responsibility and judgement to stop serving an intoxicated person. So, who really is to blame when a tragedy happens? Usually blame is passed around. Blame the bartender or bartenders who served the alcohol, blame the friends, blame the city, blame the store, blame the car, etc. It always seems everyone is to blame except the person who died. Of course that is human nature, who really wants to blame the dead for their own death. Very rarely do you ever hear a parent saying my child died because of their own fault.
This brought me to thinking about a very close and dear friend of the family that passed away many years ago. He was 14 years old and he died after being flung off a car while car surfing. For years it was the drivers fault. The driver should have done this, the driver should have done that. And in an essence, the driver was irresponsible, he never should have drove the car with someone sitting on it. But in the end, it was our friends fault for car surfing. No one made him do it, he knew it was dangerous and still he chose to do it.
How this relates back to the drinking is if a person chooses to drink they take on the responsibilities the come with drinking. There are always risks and dangers, and the choice to drink is one's own choice, no one is pointing a gun to your head making drinking the safer option. The sad part is that many drinkers think themselves or their friends can handle their alcohol, think that they are ok to drive, think that the bad stuff will not happen to them. It is this lack of understanding of the true dangers of alcohol that cause tragedies to happen. If you chose to drink, drink responsible, drink in moderation and drink with respect for others in you community.

Why can people not pick up after themselves?

It bothers me to no end when people do not pick up after themselves. I am not talking about my husband and his sloppy habits, after almost 9 years I have gotten used to that. I am talking about people out in public places leaving messes for others to clean up.
I have seen people leave their trays full of garbage sitting on the table at fast food restaurants. I have seen used paper towel on the floor in the women's bathroom, right next to the garbage can. At the Children's Above and Beyond Museum I have more than once seen the destruction a parent has let their child leave behind. These are usually things I see after the fact, after the person has left. However, this past Friday when I was at the museum I witnessed a father move his daughter from location to location through out the museum, and not once did he make her pick up before they moved on.
Now, I always give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that was the way they found it so that was the way they left it or maybe he thought because other kids were around that they did not need to pick up. Since we were at the museum for a play date, I didn't let myself dwell on it. As we went around the museum the mother of my daughter's friend and myself made sure the two girls cleaned up each area as we went along. We are both members of the museum and we like to keep it looking nice for others to enjoy, and for the most part we made it a game so the girls were mostly cooperative.
When we reached the third and final floor at the museum, the father and his daughter were up there also. We spent a great deal of time up there and eventually found ourselves at the arts and crafts table. We ended up sitting by a nice old lady who is a paid volunteer through a program that helps find senior citizens jobs. As we were sitting there chatting we watched as the daughter took off the play clothes she was wearing and leave them in a pile on the floor. The father asked her if she wanted to go downstairs, she said yes and he walked over the pile of clothes and continued down the stairs with her. The old lady at our table told us that he is at the museum on a regular basis and he never has his child pick up nor does he pick up after her.
By this time I am highly irritated with the whole thing, not only because I find it rude to let your child make a mess and leave, but these are habits that my child is seeing. Children are little sponges and they notice everything and they mimic what they see, that is called modeling. As hard as I try, I can not seem to make cleaning up after ourselves a fun activity every time it needs to be done, but normally we get it done and my daughter know that is the way we treat the museum. This Friday when she said to me, "well that other little girl did not have to put away her toys" I was stunned. My friend Deb is the volunteer coordinator for the museum, and I told my daughter that the little girl who did not pick up her toys was being mean to Deb. Deb is an awesome woman, who is great with children and whom my daughter simply adores. This worked well for an explanation and I got no more grief from her. I was thinking to myself, if I ever seen that father again I was going to give him a piece of my mind.
Soon it was time to go, and as we made our way back down to the first floor to let the girls have a couple more turns down the slide, there was the father and daughter getting ready to leave. And guess what I did? Yup, that's right, nothing. I am not a confrontational person, and I know the museum has volunteers to help keep the place tidy in case they have customers like this father and daughter. But I vowed to myself if I ever seen them at the museum again I would find a way to be subtle and let them know they are expected to pick up after themselves.

Change in education

I always try to write about something that interests me, something I can connect with, something that I care about. I am aspiring to be an elementary teacher, in fact, I should have been student teaching this semester had UWO not messed up my progress report. So, I am invested in what is going on in the world of education, both personally and professionally. I have written numerous papers over the last three years and a great number of these have focused on the Bush administration and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
NCLB had the best of intentions, to make sure that every student received a good education and that teachers worked at providing this education (accountability). However, there are many many pitfalls of this act. Just a brief and rough look at NCLB. NCLB is based on improvement and proficiency of students based on standardized test, tests which are only provided in English and which no help is allowed to be given. The tests focus on English and Mathematics, not taking in to account that students possess a vast amount of knowledge, talent and skills (see Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences for a little more info http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_overview.html this is a great overview site) Schools are required to make annual progress, and this progress is based on the results of the standardized tests. If annual progress is not met, schools can lose valuable funding (usually after so many years on non-progress). Some category's such as those of English Language Learners (ELL) never show improvement because as a student becomes fluent in English they are removed from the category, creating a never improving category.
I was extremely happy this morning when searching through Yahoo highlights I came upon an article for the associate press titled "Obama promise: Focus on getting kids to college". Myself and many other have been waiting for this. Some positives of the reform are taking other subjects into consideration during testing, provide rewards for performing schools (especially in the areas of ELL), and focusing on preparing students for either college or a career. This is going to take a lot of pressure off the teachers to teach to the test and provide students with a well rounded education.
I am not saying that this reform is perfect, nothing ever is, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Is it really ok?

For some reason I recently started getting Glamour magazine in the mail. I did not order it, and have not received a bill for it, but regardless I have received two issues so far. It seems to me that they should name it Ad magazine because it seems that over half the magazine is ads and at least 1/4 of those are ads for prescription medicines of some sort.
So I just flip through it quick and then put it in a pile to send home with my mom next time she visits. As I was flipping through the recent issue, April 2010, a one page article caught my eye, it is titled Hey, its Ok! and appears in the Men,Love & Life section and is the 100% guilt free page. I believe the point is to provide some comic relief. Two of the entries are "Hey, its ok to dress all in black on opening day because Derek Jeter get engaged" and "Hey, its ok if your mom still gets you an Easter basket-because you ask her to." Funny, but realistically harmless. However, one particular entry that caught my attention, it was "Hey, its ok to despise a name because some girl who tortured you way back when had it." My question is, is it really?
I don't know how many of us have heard someone say "I would never name my child ( ) because there was a kid in my class with that name and I hated them." I know I have. Or better yet, have you ever heard someone put everyone with the same name in the same category. Such as "All Greg's are assholes. I dated one when I was 18 and he turned out to be the biggest jerk ever." Is this fair to the Greg that lives down the street and is hard working, nice and generous. I do not think so.
I know the article is meant to be funny, a little satire on the authors part, trying to point out how immature and prejudicial such a notion can be, but unfortunately it is all to real. Hopefully soon we can come together as a nation to end prejudice and stereotypes for all.

Happy endings are always worth the story.

With still trying to fight this pneumonia, I spent the majority of my Saturday sitting on the couch reading and watching TV. Something I normally do not get to do, but my mom and step dad were nice enough to come visit and entertain my 3 1/2 year old daughter. My daughter has just gotten over a double ear infection and a cold, which is great, however I need some rest now and she just wants to go go go.
I turned on the TV to CNN to catch up on what was going on in the world. Imagine my surprise when it was coverage of the earthquake in Chile and the tsunami that was going to hit Hawaii, particularly Hilo where my brother's girlfriend is from. I called my brother, he and his girlfriend Leslie live in Arizona, to let them know what was going on and send Leslie my best wishes that her family would be safe.
As I watched CNN my concern grew rapidly. I watched as people in Hilo were evacuated. I watched as they showed pictures of a previous tsunami that hit Hilo in the 1960's that caused wide spread damage and death. My concern turned into an obsession, I needed to keep watching the TV. The best I can describe it is it was like reading a suspense novel, I needed to know what was going on, what was going to happen, how it was going to end. As the time for the climax neared, so did my obsession. My heart started racing, everyone was ordered to sit down and be quiet or leave the room, and heaven help them if they stood in front of the TV. And then it happened, nothing. Yup that is right, nothing.
I sat there feeling a multitude of emotions. I felt relief and joy that Leslie's family was not in danger. I am also ashamed to say that I felt a little disappointment that the climax never came. I have read comments out there in cyberspace, comments made by uneducated people who say that there is no cause for such wide spread panic, that in this day and age we should be able to better predict what is going to happen. These people need to learn to enjoy the story and take a ending where no destruction was caused and no one was hurt for what it is, a happy ending to a truly great story.

Smoke Alarms, how many is enough?

Over the past two weeks or so the Sheboygan Press has run numerous articles about a proposed ordinance by the City of Sheboygan that would make it mandatory to have a smoke alarm in each bedroom. There was much public outcry with this, resulting in a few opinion letters sent to and then published by the Sheboygan Press. The opinion letters that I read all stated that they believe that the government is basically overstepping its boundaries once again, and I tend to agree.

It is not that I do not believe in protecting my family, we have 2 working smoke detectors in our apartment, one in the hall between the two bedrooms and one at the other end of the hall between the kitchen and living room. I am a responsible adult, and know how to maintain my smoke alarm. I know that there are people who do not routinely change the batteries, remove the batteries, or destroy the alarm itself (I have had to replace one personally from damaging it with a broom during a cooking gone bad session) and then never replace it. These people are the reason behind this new proposal, requirements and fines, making it unfair to those of us who are responsible.

Since the original proposal, and the outcry, there has been a change to wording of the proposal from making it mandatory to making it recommended that each bedroom have a detector, which is more reasonable to me. There are still issues surrounding the proposal, such as requiring homes to use lithium or hard wired detectors versus the traditional 9volt in most homes, making the detectors more tamper resistant and/or with a long lasting battery. Great idea, especially when dealing with irresponsible people, however forcing responsible people to make changes to their homes or apartments, when the detectors they are using are operational, is unfair. This is another issue, perfect for another blog.

Who should be allowed to use Wisconsin circuit court access?

There has been an ongoing debate surrounding access to the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access, a website that allows anyone with a computer and to view court records. There are many concerns over how the website is being used, what is displayed on the website, who has access to the site, and if users should be required to create an account and be required to log in (which does not occur now). I do agree that there should be some changes to the site, however, I believe that open record access online (any of this information is available at the circuit court records) should remain available to everyone.

As a former employer I used the site on two separate occasions to check out employees who were not performing as expected. I would have used the site for a pre-employment check, however the home page of the website states that "It may be a violation of state law to discriminate against a job applicant because of an arrest or conviction record". If I would have used the site prior to hiring I would have saved myself a few headaches and as much as that would have made life easier for me, I have to stand by state law. Even though I know how to judge what I read, taking into consideration things such as the offense, severity, date, relevance to their job and of course if the charge was dismissed; not everyone else does.

The ability to have access to such information is a very helpful tool for employers to have, and as previously stated I believe access should remain public but not without changes. I would like to see that records of offenses that have been dismissed be removed from online access. I am not against registering for use of the site and stating purpose of use. To complete registration persons should be required to complete a responsible user survey. If intent is responsible, then there should be no issues with registration.