National

Well, sort of, in a way. Professionally I worked for the Coastal Commission in the 80s, and you had to know a lot about a lot technical and legal areas. Afterward, as a consultant, I was a field biologist and negotiator on projects involving endangered species and critical habitat preservation and restoration. I wrote the Resource Management Plan for the Foothill Ranch Planned Community, and among the habitats I had in the plant species palette included brambles (blackberries) and poison oak, to discourage hikers and equestrian riders from creek area so that they could revegetate with native species (the land had been grazed for over a century). I actually met someone up here years ago who complained about the poison oak and berry thickets! Guess it worked.

When my kids were 7 and 5, we began going on camping trips in the Mojave Desert to collect rocks and fossils. Unfortunately, my extensive collection of rocks, minerals, and fossils was destroyed when the kids and I lost virtually everything we owned in the Old Fire. Since then, I've trying to rebuild the collection.

I've been selling fluorescent rocks specimens on eBay that I've collected from abandoned mines and quarries, and I'm going to use the money to establish a traveling natural history museum, bring the collection to inner-city kids in gang war-zones in San Bernardino, something I did before the fire. The state has approved the nonprofit corporation, and I'm about to file the Franchise Tax Board and IRS materials to obtain the museum's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Once that's accomplished, I'll sell rocks through it -- The Lake Arrowhead natural History Museum, Inc. -- and apply for a National Science Foundation grant. Such a grant would give me the money to prepare classroom materials, provide every classroom in the SBCUSD with its own rock and mineral collection, and provide teaching material and tests for each teacher so that THEY don't have to use what little time they have for preparations. The program will be based on the California state standards and will teach kids the science that they aren't getting taught. I kick it off with a 90-minute assembly, wrapped around a mid-afternoon 15-minute break -- and do an incredibly funny and entertaining show, complete with inhaling helium, tearing pure metal with my bare hands (aluminum foil) and licking fossilized dinosaur turds (that ALWAYS egts 'em!).

I show the kids what many of our everyday common household and school items are made from and what the original minerals look like. They'll see 100-lb. boulders of crystals I've collected, see incredibly beautiful rocks, fluorescent rocks, even a radioactive one, complete with a Geiger counter. Instead of looking at black-and-white photos of boring rocks, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, being taught by someone who knows little or nothing about the subject, they learn experientially.

More importantly, they GET IT. They GET IT. I give each kid a few beautiful rocks I've collected -- pretty agates and jasper, and stunning deep green crystals of actinolite from Wrightwood. I show these kids that there is a wonderful exciting beautiful world out there, and I give them the encouragement to go out there and escape their drug-infested 'hoods.

I know -- I was one of 'em. Despite being a straight-A student with a freakishly ridiculous IQ, I was raised in a gang war-zone town south of San Diego, and it never EVER occurredd to me that I could have been a doctor or scientist or lawyer (OK, at 24 I spent a year in law school). If a smart white kid like me couldn't get any encouragement from the educational system, how the hell is some poor Hispanic or African-American kid with average or even above-average intelligence ever going to get the message?

Schools in SBDO struggle mightily just to teach these poor kids how to read. My ex taught in one such school, and it was there that I did my first assembly. With the help of an NSF grant, I will write the curriculum, prepare the materials, including PowerPoint demonstrations and other interactive and experiential methods and materials, and make it as self-teaching as I can.

But my real agenda is to give these kids some hope. Most of them have never seens the ocean. Most of them have never been to the mountains they can see from their school and home 18 miles away. Their world is their ten square-block craphole of a neighborhood. If I can just get through even a small handfulof kids a year, I'd do it, but I hope to reach far more than that.

Wow. WAY more than you were expecting, but that's what I try to do in my spare time, when my lousy back permits me to function. I'm facing some risky and potentially serious reconstructive surgery on my lower spine in an attempt to rid me of enough nerve damage pain that I won't kill my liver with meds. Despite that, I struggle to do as much as I can for as many people as I can, starting with those kids.

Boy -- is THAT gonna be a thread-killer!

And yeah, I'm supporting Barack Obama. I haven't seen a campaign that inspired people the way he has since Bobby Kennedy. When RFK was assassinated, a huge part of our hope as a nation died as well. Viet Nam, Watergate, and other political scandals turned off Americans to politics, and we MUST have a vigilant and aware populace in our system of government. When we don't, we end up with idiot butt-wipes like George W. Bush, who has almost singlehandedly destroyed the Republican Party, bankrupted the nation, and slaughtered our reputation in the world.

It won't just take electing a person of color to the presidency, although I am stunned that we as a nation could actually do it. The majority of Americans who want change are going to have to work for it. WE have to put pressure on Congress to do the right things. WE have to hold Obama to his promises. And WE have to help, each and every one of us, to work toward repairing the deep divides that exist.

If you listen to an Obama speech carefully, THAT is what he's saying: Merely electing him won't be enough. WE have to insist that our government get its collective head out of its rectum and work FOR the people. He will need public pressure to get Congress to enact the reforms necessary. And if we don't, if we really don't want it badly enough, then we don't deserve it.

"WE have to insist that our government get its collective head out of its rectum and work FOR the people."

Pete - I agree with you. That's why I'm voting for McCain.

... how would voting for a guy who helped put the head there get the head out???? Sounds illogical, Gem.

It is illogical. Most of those who used to support McCain, and I was one of them are noticing that he is making statments on subjects he has not addressed in public during his entire career. He has been given a laundry list of issues he has to establish a record on or a policy statement for in order to run a viable national campaign. As a result the few areas he has a record on reveals the flip flops and inconsistencies. There are many already displayed for all to see and ponder. Those areas of complete blankness must be regarded with some scepticism. If he never cared about a particular topic during his many years in the Senate, why should we accept a position some speech writer/political consultant has crafted for him? When he misspeaks in public on a topic he clearly is unfamiliar with and had to be corrected by Joe Lieberman on the spot because the error is so aggregious, what does that say for the image being displayed, over the substance we should demand of our candidates?

There are no such concerns with Obama, because he is not spouting manufactured positions for the campaign. He is portraying his lifelong practice and belief in ideals with practical implementation incorporated in every grand idea he is promoting. He is not the novice he is portrayed to be which is what his vast army of supporters are so excited by him.

"When he misspeaks in public on a topic he clearly is unfamiliar with and had to be corrected by Joe Lieberman..."

Ron - Give him a break. McCain is entitled to a senior moment once in a while due to his age.

Pete,
Thanks for the info on yourself. It sounds like you have and are accomplishing much good. Sorry about the problems with your back and hopefully the docs will be successful in easing your pain. The very best to you!

I suspect McCain had a senior moment about who went on these GW junkets with him and who co-sponsored his legislation on global warming. Those kinds of things are pretty hard to remember. Oh, I know! I bet Joe L. wasn't there to whisper those forgotten factoids into his ear.

COLD SHOULDER ON WARMING
John McCain has selective memory about global warming efforts
He forgets that Clinton accompanied him on trips and that Obama cosponsored legislation.

May 15, 2008

As he rolled out his plan to combat global warming this week, Republican John McCain jumped at the opportunity to remind voters that he'd flown nearly to the ends of the earth to view the effects of global warming. But apparently he wasn't willing to give that same credit to his Democratic rivals.

When a reporter in North Bend, Wash., asked McCain why the average voter concerned with climate change should support him over Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, his reply was tart. "I have been involved in this issue for many, many years," the Arizona senator said. "They have never, to my knowledge, been involved in legislation, nor hearings, nor engagement in this issue," he said, adding that he'd "traveled around the world and seen the impacts of climate change."

What he didn't mention was that on two of those trips, Clinton was there alongside him. She joined him on a 2004 congressional delegation to Svalbard, a group of Norwegian islands in the Arctic, and on a 2005 trek to Alaska and Canada's Yukon Territory, where they viewed shrinking glaciers. McCain mentioned both trips in his speech but not the New York senator.

And McCain enjoyed the support of his Democratic rivals in the Senate chambers too. Clinton and Obama cosponsored global warming legislation proposed by McCain and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

--

Maeve Reston

Ron - Give him a break. McCain is entitled to a senior moment once in a while due to his age.

Thanks for the reminder, Gemini. Of course, you know how us liberals are, we are kinda dense sometime. Some of us might forget how old he is, so you might want to keep saying that over and over. I am sure it will help elect John McCain.

Les - As long as McCain doesn't have a senior moment when he has his finger on the button, I don't have a problem with his age.

As long as McCain doesn't have a senior moment when he has his finger on the button, I don't have a problem with his age

Oh GOOD point! He will have his finger on the button! We sure HOPE he doesn't have a senior moment at that time! Maybe they will have to give instructions to the guy with the football to "Ignore him, if he is having a senior moment."

Yeah, that will work. His finger will only be on the button for four years. He can hold off having senior moments for that long! Piece of cake! Piece of birthday cake! With a LOT of candles on it.

You know, Gemini, you might want to stop feeding me straight lines.

Let's hope his flash anger is also absent when his finger is on the button. He is a fighter jock and is predisposed to macho displays of his former male testosterone filled demeaneor. He has already threatened Hamas as their worst nightmare. This about a group who lives in the shadow of Israeli Mossad agents and Palestinian rivals. We need cooler heads and more rational thought processes in play that McCain is capable of offering.