I just finished my sub assignment for the week. It was a good week in many ways. I just wish I could get [ahem!] compassion-challenged members of conservative parties to come listen and watch for a couple of months in these schools....
WYFP Midweek Open Thread is our community's chance to blow off steam from our jobs, our job searches, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie and woozle pictures, favorite comfort foods and decadent desserts, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
For reasons of privacy, I'm not going to say exactly where I was or which group of students I had today. Let's just say that this was a particularly vulnerable population and leave it at that. More than that is unimportant.
What is important is that there are a couple of kids in there whose needs are pretty intense. Those needs will remain intense all their lives. In this economic and political climate, with rapacious greedheads the Republicans and even some conservaDems squawking about cutting spending on entitlements social programs and the S&P downrating the US government's creditworthiness and the austerity buzz currently roiling the cocktail hour conversations in DC, something very important is being utterly neglected: who the hell is supposed to help our most vulnerable children get the care they need when they age out of the public education system? Do these clowns really think that working poor families or local churches and charities will be able to meet all the needs of these fragile children all their lives? Or do they just want them to wander homeless, jobless, without food and medical care like wild animals until they meet a premature death?
There's a saying that makes the point that a society's goodness can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Well, I say we can judge a politician's ethical and moral core by the kinds of expeditures he or she is willing to cut. And every single elected official who's currently spouting austerity nonsense needs to take a good hard look in the miror and ask the questions "Am I really a good person? Am I treating others as I would want to be treated?" Hint to any such heartless bastards clueless wonders individuals -- if you have to ask those questions, the answer to both is NO!!!!!!
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A quick reminder of our Saturday evening schedule for the next several weeks:
April 23: asterkitty
April 30: Purple Priestess
May 7: JustJennifer
May 14: Zoskie
May 21: CayceP
May 28: boofdah
June 4: blueyedace2
June 11:
I will be checking the group membership list to ensure everyone who needs to be added will be added in time to queue their diaries.
And yes, this is doggie-obedience night. I'll see everybody later this evening. Enjoy your midweek stress relief!