Stormy Weather

I spent Saturday been binge watching Mozart in the Jungle. It ain’t great but it’s fun to watch a soap opera about an orchestra. Plus, there’s the fabulous sound track. Next I’ll binge watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, about an entertainer. This is how I pass Fall/Winter alone in the country while I wait for eye surgery.

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Tonight through until Tuesday morning we’re expecting our first real storm of the 2018/19 season. Chances are good there’ll be a power failure.

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A Good Reason to Live on Gabriola: 

Two thousand schools in the United States use textbooks from Abeka,BJU Pressand Accelerated Christian Education(ACE), including tax-funded charter school. Students who learn from these texts are taught that:

• God wanted Protestantism to flourish in North America; 
• Catholicism is not a true faith;
• It was better Africans to be enslaved and come to "know Christ" than to be free but not Christian;
• Evolution is untrue;
• Humans and dinosaurs lived together (and that Noah brought baby dinosaurs on the ark)
• The Loch Ness monster is real;
• "Abortion, gay rights and the Endangered Species Act" are part of a "radical social agenda;"and
• Students of colour are inferior. (60% of the tax-funded scholarship students at charter schools come from minorities and are thus taught that they are racially inferior to their white schoolmates).

The materials are created for people without teaching credentials—many charter schools do not require teacher accreditation. All instruction is delivered through easy worksheets that standardize the educational experience. In Florida, students who attend charter schools on scholarships are not required to take standardized exams that might uncover gaps in their education.

This is “fake news” at its worst! No wonder America has so many sociopolitical problems! They’re perpetuating ignorance.

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Another Good Reason to Live on Gabriola: 

American John Allen Chau. His story is all over the Internet: He traveled to an isolated sanctuary island, North Sentinal Island, that’s off-limits to outsiders. Its primitive residents are isolated because they want to no contact with the world and to protect them from Western diseases. But that didn’t stop John. He wanted to convert the island residents to Christianity. Oh please! I loathe the arrogance of Christian proselytizing so I can’t help but like the irony of the ending of this story: The Sentinelese killed him. It was an outcome everyone with knowledge of the islanders expected.