Category: Children / Kids / Minors / Teens / Family
Incumbents beat DeSantis-backed candidates in Florida school board races
(My great- Aunt and Uncle lived in St. Petersburg, and my sister and I went there to visit. I got to hold a lime, and a grapefruit, attached to trees in their backyard, which was a big deal to a little kid.) Good news for Florida!
By KATE PAYNE Updated 10:28 PM CDT, August 20, 2024
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — School board candidates in Florida backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis were defeated Tuesday in several counties, results that opponents of the Republican say are a rebuke to his conservative education agenda.
Incumbent school board members in one of Florida’s largest swing counties appear to have held off a challenge from candidates backed by DeSantis, according to preliminary results. Activists had hoped that three challengers endorsed by the local chapter of Moms for Liberty would win a conservative majority in Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
But unofficial results show current school board chair Laura Hine and incumbent member Eileen Long have held on to their seats, after arguing that a political shift on the board could create turmoil in the district and distract from the mission of student achievement.
In a third race for an open seat on the Pinellas board, candidates Stacy Geier and Katie Blaxberg appeared to be headed for a runoff, after no one in the three-way contest cleared 50% of the vote.
With 100% of precincts reporting, Hine, the board chair, carried 69% of the vote over DeSantis-backed challenger Danielle Marolf’s 30%, according to preliminary results. Incumbent member Long brought in 54% of the vote over the 45% netted by Erika Picard, who was also endorsed by the Republican governor.
“We have got to stay focused on that work at hand and not be subject to the social political winds. Education is vital. And it has to be stable,” Hine told The Associated Press ahead of Tuesday’s elections.
In the third race for the board, Stacy Geier garnered 37% of the vote compared to Katie Blaxberg’s 34%, with a third candidate Brad DeCorte netting 28%, according to the county’s preliminary results. Geier was endorsed by DeSantis and the local Chapter of Moms for Liberty, while Blaxberg has argued parental rights activists have gone too far, with some equating books with pornography and labeling teachers as “groomers”. She found herself on the opposing side of the local chapter of Moms for Liberty and was targeted by conservative activists online.
“The misinformation that has been spread by this group of people and the intent to … place mistrust in our teachers,” Blaxberg said, “people are tired of it.”
Much of the political debate in the races had hinged on “parental rights”, a movement which grew out of opposition to pandemic precautions in schools but now is animated by heated complaints over teachings about identity, race and history.
Long, one of the Pinellas incumbents, said she sees the results as an admonishment of the governor.
“People want sanity. People want common sense. And people believe we should educate everyone,” Long said. “The people have spoken.”
Incumbents in Hillsborough County hold off conservative challengers
(snip-More)
Radio personality gets emotional while reading open letter to men by his female co-host
“To the good men out there, do something more.”
Jacalyn Wetzel 08.21.24
08.21.24
Radio host tears up reading open letter to men by female co-host
All across the globe, men and women have different experiences from childhood through adulthood. We are socialized differently which causes us to walk through the world differently. Since much of the world is still patriarchal, women’s lived experiences are vastly different than men’s. These different experiences can make it feel nearly impossible to understand what it feels like to move through the world as the opposite gender.
In Australia there has been an increase in violence against women. This prompted a popular radio show host, Carrie, from the “Carrie and Tommy Show” to write an open letter to men in Australia. But instead of reading it herself, she asked her co-host, Tommy to read her words.
“I wondered whether it’s time for you guys to stand up and speak up and speak loudly. And I think sometimes men don’t think about what it’s like to walk in the shoes of a woman. So I’m thinking if you read out the thoughts that I wrote down. I don’t know if it might mean more people will listen or if it might give a different perspective of what it feels like to be a woman in this country at the moment,” Carrie says to her co-host.
Tommy immediately obliges Carrie’s request and begins to read the letter. The co-host doesn’t make it too far into the letter before beginning to look visibly uncomfortable and before long he’s choking back tears.
“Not only do we have to sleep in fear of what possible man outside, or the man inside, or the taxi driver, the Uber driver, a former partner, a current partner, a man we’ve never met, we now have to be the ones to fix the issue too. No not all men are monsters but we live in fear of the ones who are. We change our behaviors for the bad men not the good ones because the risk is too high for us not to,” Tommy reads while attempting to hold back emotions.
The open letter is raw and full of struggles women face on a daily basis. Hearing it read by a man made some commenters feel appreciative of the way the two co-hosts used their platform to spread the message as well as being thankful that Tommy agree to read the letter.
“Thank you for using your platform to raise awareness of the severity of this issue,” someone writes.
“Extremely powerful.. I wish I had been more vocal… I wish I had left sooner, I wish I had him reported.… I wish a lot of things. I was scared, but I am alive.. and I will always protect and teach my daughters moving forward. Thank you for putting such a powerful message out there,” another person shares.
Turns out this moment was an amazing teaching moment for parents of boys, “my 14 year old son was in silence and almost in tears listening to your words. We had a fabulous conversation afterwards. Teaching our boys now, is such an important part.”
One woman is joining the chorus of asking the good men to help women advocate, “Carrie hit the nail on the head. I love the idea of having men we trust speaking for us to help us advocate even further. Us women worry every single day, multiple times during the day for our safety, without even realizing we’re doing it. Lock the car as soon as you get in it. Always making sure you’re not being followed. So so so many things we do for our safety that most men don’t even think about, ever. This video is so important.”
Peace & Justice History for 8/20:
| August 20, 1619 The first enslaved Africans brought to North America arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship. ________________________________________________________ August 20, 1964 A nearly $1 billion (about $5 billion in current dollars) anti-poverty measure, the Economic Opportunity Act, which created Head Start, VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America), and other programs that became part of the “War on Poverty,” was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.   Sargent Shriver & LBJ Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps, drafted the legislation and became director of the Office of Equal Opportunity which implemented the new law. The “Great Society” |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august20
Actually not that funny…
but it kinda is.
Close to Home by John McPherson for August 19, 2024
Uterus transplant trial ends with bundles of joy
August 18, 2024 Ellen Phiddian
https://cosmosmagazine.com/health/medicine/uterus-transplant-trial-dallas/
(This piqued my interest for a number of reasons. It also made me think of Sen. Vance, very briefly. But it is news-y.)
A US study of 20 people who received uterus transplants has found the process feasible, with 14 recipients going on to have live births.
Researchers said there were no abnormalities in the children born via transplanted uterus, but they highlight risks from surgery that affected both recipients and donors.
The study, which is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reports on a clinical trial run at the Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, USA.
Since the first successful uterus transplant in 2011, there have been about 100 transplants worldwide, from both living and deceased donors.
Recipients are generally women with “absolute uterine infertility” – that is, problems with their uterus that make them unable to have a successful pregnancy.
In the USA, there have been 48 uterus transplants since they began in 2016, with 33 of the recipients going on to have live births.
In this trial, researchers enrolled 20 people, aged between 20-36 years old, all of whom had absolute uterine infertility but at least 1 working ovary.
Participants received uterus transplants from 18 living and 2 deceased donors between 2016 and 2019.
Of the 20 participants, 6 had graft failures within a fortnight and lost the transplanted organ.
“During the study period, the technical success of graft survival improved with time and experience,” write the researchers in their paper.
All 14 of the successful transplant recipients went on to become pregnant via IVF, and give birth via caesarean.
Two of the recipients gave birth twice, resulting in 16 total live births. Some of the recipients had miscarriages, mostly early in their pregnancy, as well as having full-term pregnancies.
None of the 16 babies had congenital abnormalities, and none show any notable developmental delays to date (the oldest child the researchers have followed up with is 6). One child was diagnosed with autism at age 2 after missing communication milestones, and the researchers note his younger sister shows no signs of developmental delays.
Transplanted uteruses are typically removed again after 1 or 2 successful pregnancies, and this is the case with these 14 recipients. At the moment, 13 have had hysterectomies, while 1 still has the transplanted uterus in place for a second pregnancy.
Some of the surgeries in the trial – transplant donation, transplant reception, caesarean section, and graft hysterectomy – had complications.
Four of the living uterus donors had grade 3 complications – that is, they required surgery to fix – but none of them had experienced any long-term illness when they were followed up roughly 4 years later.
None of the successful graft recipients had severe complications from their transplant surgery, and while graft loss is a grade 3 complication, none of the 6 unsuccessful recipients had experienced long-term effects when they were followed up.
The researchers also point out that all recipients needed immunosuppression treatment to accept the donated organs, and the “long-term impact of immunosuppression in these otherwise healthy women remains unknown”.
In their paper, the researchers conclude that uterus transplants are technically feasible, but the surgeries involved carry risks for donors and recipients.
“The live birth success rate in this study suggests that a successfully transplanted uterus is capable of functioning at least on par with a native, in situ uterus,” they write.
But they also point out that the “currently prohibitive cost of uterus transplant” makes it difficult to tell how generalisable their results are.
Scientists saved crocs from cane toads by making them sick
August 17, 2024 Imma Perfetto
https://cosmosmagazine.com/australia/scientists-saved-crocs-from-cane-toads-by-making-them-sick/
(I know cane toads are an abhorrent, invasive species, being moved [by humans!] from their original place on the planet to another place, to try to control another species. However, there is a YA novel about cane toads that ended up being a “banned book” one year. The then-kid was really into banned books, so we bought it, and it was a bit of a tear-jerker and I have a tiny soft spot for them, since it wasn’t their faults they got transplanted; they were only doing the best they could. Anyway, here’s this.)
Scientists have successfully saved freshwater crocodiles from toxic cane toads invading northern Australia with an unusual new tactic – doctored cane toad carcases.
By teaching freshwater crocodiles (Crocodylus johnstoni) to associate cane toads (Rhinella marina) with a bout of food poisoning, they reduced death rates by at least 95%.
Across the dry season (May to October) between 2019 and 2022, Macquarie University scientists worked on the project with Bunuba Indigenous rangers and the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) in Western Australia.
They collected cane toads, removed the poisonous parts, and injected the bodies with a nausea-inducing chemical that caused the crocs eating them to feel temporarily sick.
It’s a behavioural ecology method known as conditioned taste aversion, and it worked remarkably well.
“The first three days we noticed the crocodiles were taking the cane toads, then they would go away,” says Bunuba ranger coordinator Paul Bin Busu, whose team set up hundreds of bait stations across 4 large gorge systems in the Kimberley region of north-western Australia.
The doctored cane toads were deployed alongside chicken meat control baits to monitor the effectiveness of the training.
“Then we noticed they would smell the cane toad before eating, and on the last day we noticed that it was mostly the chicken necks getting eaten,” says Bin Busu.
The team used nocturnal ‘spotlighting’ surveys and remotely triggered wildlife cameras to monitor crocodile and toad numbers following the intervention.
“Our baiting completely prevented deaths in areas where cane toads were arriving and decreased deaths by 95% in areas where toads had been for a couple of years,” says Macquarie’s Dr Georgia Ward-Fear, who is lead author of the report detailing the findings in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Ward-Fear says these effects continued in the years following.
Some populations of freshwater crocodiles in tropical Australia have fallen by more than 70% due to ingesting cane toads.
“Freshwater crocs can be heavily impacted as their river systems dry out during the late dry season,” says Ward-Fear.
“They end up congregating in large numbers with very little food, and as toads begin to use these waterbodies for rehydration, the two come into contact and we see large numbers of crocodile deaths over a few months.”
Now, conditioned taste aversion interventions can be planned both ahead of and behind the cane toad invasion front in areas with similar ecology.
Jess Piper went to a Harris-Walz rally in Omaha-here’s the scoop on the ground:
Chili, Cinnamon Rolls, and a Tim Walz Rally
Ope! A Midwestern Meetup.
Jess Piper Aug 18, 2024
You will be bombarded with folks reporting from the DNC in Chicago in the next few days, so I wanted to tell you about a rally in the heartland first. A rally that included so many rural and small town people. The Walz rally in Omaha. A midwestern meetup that made my day and gave me the hope that will sustain me until the election.
I was raised in the South…in Arkansas. It’s funny because the folks in the deep South always called into question the southerness of Razorback country. Now that I’ve been in Missouri for almost two decades, I notice that people struggle to define Missouri as a midwestern state or a southern state. That is likely owing to our past history with enslavement.
Missouri has an identity crisis. The southern half of the state seems to belong to the south…the northern part, where I live, is most definitely Midwestern. My neighbors use Jell-o and sugar and mayonnaise in so many recipes. That’s a dead giveaway.
Like Northwest Missouri, Nebraska is quintessential Midwestern. And so is Governor Tim Walz.
I had no trouble understanding the idioms and language of Tim Walz at the rally I attended in Omaha on Saturday. Friends, the rally felt like a big potluck. It was familiar and friendly and folksy and all the small-town adjectives.
It was just the feeling I need to get through the next 70-some-odd days…
The Astro Amphitheater in Omaha at capacity for the Walz rally.
I had a friend send over an email with the Walz rally information a few days ago, so I applied for a ticket and I made the list. I was told they ran out of tickets within 18 hours. And, you can see why…Tim Walz is from Nebraska and his home state was more than happy to invite him back.
The amphitheater had a chyron that said, ‘Welcome Back, Coach!”
I know Omaha fairly well as it is less than a two-hour drive and my family really enjoys visiting Old Market and downtown. I left my house around 7:30, but I didn’t get to Omaha until almost 10 because I stopped for gas, coffee, and some breakfast pizza at Casey’s. I had on my “Dirt Road Democrat” t-shirt which can garner some looks in small towns, but the lady at the Casey’s counter read my shirt and smiled. No comment necessary.
I drove to the amphitheater and found parking and then started the walk to the event space. I ran into a few folks who said, “Wait? Are you Piper for Missouri?” I kept thinking that I wish my kids were with me so they would know that I do more than Tik Toks for a living. This isn’t much of a flex…there aren’t many outspoken rural progressives so I kind of stick out.
As I stood in line, I talked to so many who had stories of the fear that red legislatures can instill and that the fear has simmered for years. The anxiety that comes from living like that is remarkable, but so is a new-found feeling of hope.
Hope in the man they were waiting to see. Governor Tim Walz.
The doors were to open at 11am, so I would be waiting for a while in the long line that was beginning to go all the way back to the field I had parked in.
While waiting in line, I was able to talk to a Nebraska librarian. She worked with others to gather signatures to keep vouchers out of the state and she spoke at length about the books legislators planned to ban — the pervasive feeling of fear when thinking about shelving books in Nebraska public schools. And then she beamed when talking about the feeling of hope that the Harris/Walz ticket brought.
I was able to meet a woman who was with her Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense group. I told her I was a member in Missouri and even started a rural group in which many of the members are gun owners. She said it was hard to keep folks interested in the cause and I know that first-hand, but the fact that Tim Walz is a sensible gun-owner who has a F-rating from the NRA, and stands proudly with those of us who just want to pass common sense gun laws, is a huge help. Common sense includes safe-storage and universal background checks. These are things that most gun owners agree with.
I talked to teachers and hospital administrators and union members and nurses and stay-at-home moms. There were t-shirts representing so many viewpoints. There were ally shirts and rural shirts and public education shirts and pro-choice shirts and Walz shirts.
There were smiles in line. There was no hate. There was no fear. There was hope.
I made it through security and my way inside the theater. The place was filling up quickly. I found a seat and the woman next to me told me she followed me on Twitter and lived outside Mount Ayr, Iowa. I drive through there all the time and even met with a group of about 30 Democrats there last year. She said she had to work or she would have come. She had on an “I’m Speaking” t-shirt. She’s rural. She’s an Iowan — you know the folks who are all supposed to be Trump voters?
I bumped into a friend working with the NE Dems who told me I could stand on the stage behind Walz. Yay! So, I got up and walked by lots of people with guns to the backstage where I could be one of the folks holding the sign, doing the smiling, and getting excited about everything a politician says. Well, I didn’t have to pretend to be enthusiastic. When Tim Walz came onstage with his wife, Gwen, and a former student, it was electric.
Governor Walz talked about rural spaces. He spoke about small towns and small schools. He introduced us to a few of his former high school classmates. He graduated with 24 people.
Walz told a joke about JD Vance likely thinking a Runza is a Hot Pocket. If you know, you know.
Walz talked about the midwestern school delicacy of chili and a cinnamon roll. We all laughed because it is a combination that we all ate in public school cafeterias. It’s a shared experience that we can all smile about.
Walz then spoke on the hurt that we experienced during a Trump presidency that seems like it was just yesterday. He talked of the hate and the discontent that oozed out with every policy and press conference. He reminded the crowd that we don’t have to go back. Trump can slip away into irrelevance. That Nebraska can return its progressive roots and elect Democrats up and down the ballot.
He spoke on abortion rights and feeding kids and health care and union wages and folks who have been left behind. Omaha could not get enough of his passion and good sense. He could barely speak at times because the theater was literally pulsing with cheers and applause.
He then spoke on something that I think about daily — public schools. As soon as he mentioned how important our educational system is to our country, the crowd erupted into a chant…
Teachers! Teachers! Teachers!
The place exploded and this is where I have to tell you that I nearly cried.
I was a teacher for 16 years and the last few were rough. I miss the kids, but the fact that everything became “political” was too much. Everything I taught could be deemed political…I taught a protest lit unit that was Board Approved and in my literature book, but I felt under the gun with each lesson.
The fact that this theater was filled with Nebraskans and Missourians and Iowans all chanting for public schools and teachers was heart-warming. I am called a “groomer” or a “pedophile” on social media at least a dozen times every day for opposing book bans and for my years in the classroom. The fact that there was so much love for teachers was uplifting. I am positive the current teachers in the theater left feeling they could start this year with something that has been missing in red states…hope.
My aim with telling you about this rally is to help you understand what is happening in small towns and rural parts of the country right now. Omaha is not a rural space, but most of the immediate surrounding areas are. I drove through two hours of cornfields to arrive at the event and so did so many others.
I wrote in another post that the vibes have changed since Joe passed the torch…it remains true and even more so.
I’ll leave you with this: I passed a homemade sign in Ringgold County, Iowa the other day. The entire county has less than 5,000 residents. The sign was planted in the yard of an old farmhouse next to a cornfield. They put duct tape over “Biden” and had written “Kamala” in Sharpie on an old Biden/Harris sign. I travel this route monthly, and have for years, and I never saw the original sign in the yard. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have it out in 2020.
That means something, friend. It’s enthusiasm. It’s hope. It’s rural and small town folks coming around. LFG.
~Jess
Teacher says contract wasn’t renewed because he wouldn’t use trans students’ preferred names
The Wisconsin English teacher, Jordan Cernek, argues in the suit that the district violated his freedom of religion and free speech in mandating the use of the students’ preferred names and pronouns.
This’ll be something to watch. Here’s a snippet:
A high school English teacher is suing a Wisconsin school district, alleging it did not renew his contract last year because he refused to use the preferred names of two transgender students.
Jordan Cernek’s federal lawsuit alleges the Argyle School District violated his constitutional and civil rights to be free of religious discrimination and to be able to express himself according to his religious beliefs when it did not renew his contract because he refused to abide by a requirement that teachers use the names or pronouns requested by students.
“The district policy would force me to go against my conviction and commitment to God,” Cernek said in a statement from his lawyers. “I did everything within my power to accommodate the needs of my students without compromising my faith.”
The suit, which argues that the non-renewal was tantamount to firing the teacher, repeatedly cites the 1964 Civil Rights Act and its Title VII section prohibiting workplace discrimination.
Filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin last month, it seeks undisclosed damages, attorney fees and a declaration that the district violated Cernek’s First Amendment rights and his rights to nondiscrimination based on race, religion, sex or national origin.
School Superintendent Randy Refsland said in an email Tuesday night that he could not comment because the matter was being litigated in court. (snip-More)
Scottie's Playtime 