What is the matter with people? And how many posts could I begin that way? As many ways as roads Bob Dylan never lets you know there are, and dangers lurk at every corner.
So my first thought was not this is the silliest programme I have ever heard of, it was this is one of silliest names for one of the silliest programmes I have ever heard of, the Walking School Bus. It pains me to link to their website, lest you also feel your intelligence seeping out your ears as you plow through sentences like this one:
This represents the first step towards the creation of a new School Active Transportation Support Network that will strengthen collaboration with the City of Ottawa and Green Communities Canada to support active travel initiatives (walking, cycling, skateboarding etc.) while making the journey to and from school safer and more convenient for more families.
I live in a rich neck of the province, and a cold one, and we have an extensive wheeled school bus system that picks up kids who live further than 1.5 kilometres from their school right up through Grade 8. In high school it is 3.2 kilometres. [Let me digress for a second, or a hectasec, about Canada’s conversion to the metric system when I was a dyslexic 12 year old, and suddenly short measured two different ways. It was a lot of work. And 1.5 kilometres turns out to be just under a mile, and 3.2 kilometres is just under two miles. So we didn’t exactly convert the distances, just the way we named them so it is really inconvenient. Why not 1.5 and 3 kilometres? Because it is fresh European paint on an old rusty colony and it has cultured up our world with decimal places.]
But back to our little fat campers. Now it turns out that those kids will all still be riding their happy school buses. This new initiative is the brain child of a modern nitwit who rediscovered the joy of walking to school with her little one while on maternity leave, and wanted him to still walk to school after she went back to work. So she convinced the city to spend $44 thousand dollars to train people to walk children less than a mile to school, because she didn’t want her kid getting fat and lazy when she dropped him off at school as she drove to work.
Here dear, a healthy person I have got the taxpayer to pay for is going to take you to school while I get in my SUV and drive to an office tower where I convince people to create green initiatives. Have a lovely time sharing your thoughts with the paid stranger, enjoy after-school care with the nanny, and daddy and I will see you after the fundraiser for troubled youth.
Oh, sorry, let me let her tell it in her own words, with a little context from the fawning news story:
The family lives about a kilometre from the school, so the walk took about 10 to 15 minutes. But Boyd says it was often the best part of the day.
“I really liked the time in the morning to connect with him,” she says. “It was the best time to hear what was going on in his life. If he was practising for a test we could talk about it on the way to school….
But this year, Boyd has returned to work. And like so many parents, she doesn’t have time to walk with Malcolm and Farley, who is now in junior kindergarten, then walk home and leave for the office.”
I guess little Farley [he will hate you for this] doesn’t deserve what little Malcolm got, the best part of the day.
Walk your kid to school. Get a neighbourhood kid to walk your kid to school. Do anything other than this. I thought my first born was too young for the school bus, and I was too encumbered with her siblings, in and out of utero, so we skipped junior kindergarten. Then we skipped all the rest of the years up to when she was 11, and asked if she could go to school. But that’s just me. However, I sure got my kids to school every morning, even if we didn’t have to leave the house.
Here’s a thought for the mum who came up with this: set an example by doing with your child the things you want him to enjoy. Set aside forty minutes in the morning to walk him to school. They do what you do, not what you say.
And here’s a thought for the namers of the programme: it isn’t a walking school bus it is a person in an orange vest paid to guide children through the perils of suburban Ottawa, perils probably created by those kids’ mums dashing off to lawyerland, while leaving their kids with strangers.
We used to let kids play at school before school, in the yard, but apparently these schools have locked yards and the kids can’t get in before a certain time. Maybe these paid city employees could just supervise the school yard?
Do we really have to have more money than brains here so often? In a rich city with public housing riddled with bed bugs?
Who will hear about little Farley’s day? Not me said the little rich mum …
Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit!
Deutschland einig Vaterland!
um, yeah, i know. a day late and a dollar short. but as you know, i have been a little preoccupied.
good post today – but i will let some one else go off first. i don’t want to hog such a rant worthy post.
I made Roast Duck for Mrs. O tonight. With stuffing, spaetzle, and gravy. Why? Because “when Mama’s happy, everybody’s happy.”
I also got 2 cups of duck fat out of it. I can swap that right in for regular lard in my oatmeal cookie recipe.
Dinner music:
Sorry, didn’t have a rant ready about walking to school. Son was a trooper, and walked or biked his whole career, through any weather. Daughter would rather die. So I guess it depends on the kid.
Note, she’s stuck walking all over UW-Madison campus now, so maybe it all evens out.
For those who haven’t been keeping up, there’s been something of an earthquake over at Turdville recently. No comments on Main St posts, non paying members limited to the forums, which have also been revamped. So, a lot of people are pissed, lol. There’s been some discussion of it at Dan’s. I’ve been mostly quiet, just a snicker here or there.
But Turd decided to invoke my name again, so I felt I had to respond.
At Dan’s:
http://traderdannorcini.blogspot.com/2014/11/soybeans-and-shortened-life-expectancy.html?showComment=1415842352278#c4508402811423089224
what an idiot Turd is. every time he pulls this revisionist crap, more of the back story comes out.
i won’t let this stuff go unchallenged. i said enough though over at Dan’s.
nice looking dinner EO. i’d eat all over again tonight if i could have that. 🙂
Fire Stephanie was advice TF needed to take many moons ago. My email history with her is fabulous, and her multiple personality disorder … well let’s just say I don’t think too many people realise how many hats she wore, admin included, at that site and around the web.
She also felt that Dagney “I piss on your common good” T, was somehow my equal, and I took that quite personally.
I mean really, a girl has standards.
But misleading people for personal gain is a very bad thing to do, and for that and that alone both TF and the woman who runs him have a lot to answer for. I am now glad he never took my advice about how to make the site better and can only hope for a quick and painless slide into obscurity for them.
And good morning to the rest of you who are able to see the world in all its colours, not just white and white, because they didn’t much like black over there, and black was something that caused dissension between me and the bosses, since I alone apparently felt that IRB’s comments needed to be removed for sheer repugnancy. That argument in private I often won, btw., so though I wasn’t the evil censor that people feared, I was the catalyst in the sense that very occasionally I was able to appeal to what was left of tf’s better nature, and he would remove the offending post, not I.
I know we are rehashing s&^t that we have for the most part left behind, but I agree with EO that if they want to make things public, the truth is the truth and it will come out.
Like a cleansing shower
I was hoping DP would get around to telling us a little bit about that particular piece of concrete that he posted. I don’t give a hoot about Russia, but most of my German ancestry happens to come from areas within the former East Germany. So my interest is rooted there. And the Polish too, a related issue.
And…Good Morning!
Seems like a nice day for the tea song. I think I’ll go make another cup.
She clearly likes that fireman, you can see it on her face. Mrs. O does too. 😉
I am having a second cup of tea, finally. And I made raisin bread toast and added cinnamon and sugar. I feel like I am 6.
6 was awesome. I loved being 6.
And with the tea song comes the Caravan playlist
Me too. It was great. We lived in a nice downtown neighbourhood with lanes behind the houses and this cool little enclosed park called the Pump because it was in the middle of a fairly big hydro installation. It was sort of blocked off by a busy 6 lane road at one end, and a railway line to the south, one street down from us. And I had two older brothers so my freedom was extensive, and parents had very regular habits as well as being philosophical Utilitarians. The neighbourhood seceded from Canada sometime in the sixties and we had a queen.
http://joshmatlow.ca/ward-22/past-events/1174-the-battle-between-canada-and-the-republic-of-rathnelly.html
We even made it to this Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secessionist_movements_of_Canada#Republic_of_Rathnelly
Oh and re walking to school – our eldest, who is eating up life’s opportunities, would refuse a drive even if I was going to drive her brothers, even though it was a forty-five minute walk or half hour bus ride.
wow, pretty cool visuals on this. hi all. love Pete &
Yes, it is a little mossy around here too and much love
yo EO, check this out.
too baked? maybe, likely, . tune for Xty.
yikes, tried to edit. thanks for hosting the place.
Jerry and Cartlos..just some favo(u)rite tunes: Carlos doesn;t look spelled right. anyway.
Pete “the jukebox” Maravich, nice to wake up to, and DP too.
That was more salacious than I intended.
But I am up way too early …
for some reason I particularly liked the *Wildflower* tune. Good morning! It is friday after all.
Any port in a storm so to speak, and Friday is an excellent reason for many things.
My brother is back in the hospital again. He has a list of chronic problems as long as your arm. The immediate issue is severe pain in an ankle from gout. I never even knew gout affected ankles, but if you google it, sure enough.
Every time he goes into the hospital, we are not entirely sure he will ever come out.
Very sorry to hear that. Allow me to ask a terrible question but what is his quality of life like?
Pretty miserable. He is morbidly obese. 550 pounds, give or take. Mobility is a problem. He gets out of breath just getting from the house to the car, or back. He fell last week at home, on that bad ankle. Can’t get up on his feet by himself. He got himself sitting, and waited until morning, when his wife found him and called 911. They had a dozen people there getting him on his feet. They have this ridiculous multilevel home, where both bathrooms are a flight of stairs away from the main living area. Not good for him, or his 95 year old mother in law. He has atrial fibrillation, diabetes, and recurrent infections. Just barely coping financially. If he goes on disability, they won’t be able to make it, but I don’t see much choice here soon. but one school of thought is, if he stops working, and has no reason to leave the house, or even get out of bed, he won’t last long. 61 years old. His wife basically spends her life on death watch, either for him or her mom.
I guess that’s about enough for one post.
Have they done any end of life planning (non-resuscitation versus ICU and ventilator if things take a turn for the worse)? I feel compelled to ask, because without a plan in place people can end up in facilities for ages, in very uncomfortable circumstances. A terrible topic that people hate to think about but if he needs an operation he will be at very high risk. How very sad.
one need not look too far to find someone worse off than themselves. i have had that experience, or maybe i have simply sought to understand that lately, when i start feeling sorry for myself.
someone did something for my wife and i this week that was incredibly kind. this person has her own serious challenges, yet she thought of another person’s problems first.
i am trying to say something, but i suppose i’m just rambling again.
so thank you all for sharing your thoughts, listening to mine, and especially for letting me be an extra cheesy cornball today!
Other people sing this, but these girls sing so dashed well I almost wish I believed in an afterlife. But I do believe in living in the sunlight …
Mmmm…cheesy cornball. Recipe please!
http://pachakam.com/Recipes/Cheesy-Corn-ball-Step-by-Step-Photos-9628
I absolutely immediately searched for cheesy corn balls – many many fabulous looking recipes. And it is that kind of season.
These caught my eye though they cheat by using portobello mushrooms: