Is our government smoking crack? Seriously, I really struggled with a headline for this story, because the insanity of what I'm about to relate defies any snappy encapsulation. KeeMay went to bed tonight in a shaking rage over it, and it all boils down to a bunch of kids who want to run a race.

Here's the thing: our annual Bluewater East Elementary Cross Country Championships are traditionally held at the Meaford Land Force Central Training Centre, a plot of stubbly land we affectionately call The Tank Range, and normally we just sign the usual permission forms and the kids board a bus and off they go and very often some youngster from Amabel-Sauble comes home with the big prize, only this year the permissions package contains an ominous new document that carries the doubly ominous bold and bordered banner warning

"Note: This document creates legal obligations for you once it is signed"

... and the legal rights it strips from the signers are not just sinister, they are positively frightening.

Now, I can almost justify the clause allowing spontaneous and unexplained personal search and detention, given we're at war, but just for example, and maybe I'm wrong here, aren't we here in the modern civilized world already indemnified from financial debts incurred by our parents? Didn't that go out with the Great Depression? Well, no, apparently it ain't so if your dad had been the unlucky young boy who strayed into our Government Land today ...

I am going to take this time and opportunity to publicly thank Carol Poucher-Urbshott for her efforts. On her short time as a trustees she personally went to bat for me and I believe, and feel awful, that she ran into the same brick walls that I have suffered from running into. I think it was ironic and with some personal vindication when the Mended went public with its concerns.

I am remaining as quiet as my fingers will allow me too to keep my issues between the Board and myself just that. But post Carols resignation I was told by the Board that I cannot contact the Board or its Trustees any more regarding issues I have as a parent.

For those of you who missed the show, and especially for those of you who didn't buy Polaroid in the 50's, IBM in the 60's or Eric Clapton in the 70's: A sneak peek at tomorrow's local Guitar Monsters in a fuzzy and loud bootleg tapped from their annual year-end lunchtime concert. The players are all students in May's guitar programme, and range in age from 7 to 14, showing off for their friends here in the lunchtime show:

Click to Download:
2007 Amabel-Sauble Guitar Concert (MP3)
(recorded live, at The Pit
june 21, 2007, sauble beach)

Is there lead in the water-supply over at the Ministry of Education, or are they all just plain daft? Lock-down drills? My mind reels at the endearing brainlessness of this exercise, and while I was already in a fit of giggles over it still thinking this was an Amabel-Sauble thing of innocence, or even a Bluewater District thing, I learn from a colleague that no, it's not, it is an across the province tarantella with not one among them brave enough to tell the Ministry that their ignorance is dangling.

My kids took it in fair stride, I guess, who can tell the inner fears of young children when told their perfectly secure world is festering with bloody violence; they were freaked out a little. A GUNMAN IN OUR SCHOOL?? Yes. That's the drill: The bad bad badman Terrorists have invaded kiddies, and you and I are all about to have our bellies slit chin to stern by some ideologically charged madman who is HERE ... NOW ... looking for you, looking for me, hunting for our blood boys and girls! Now class, hands up, who knows ... what shall we do?

Say what? No, not that Southampton U, I mean our own local near and dear Saugeen Sunset shoreline one. Set to site a university you say?

Seems so: Details are sketchy to say the least and about all I can really say is there was some kind of meeting over at the Bruce County museum last week that I learned of a few days too late, but the buzz on the wire says there is some sort of partnering afoot pairing the University of Western Ontario and the Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre

That bright object in the west night sky appears to be Venus. Several other planets will be visible through the year but Venus has taken over for the time being.

read all about it at EarthSky.org: Venus in the West

Dan O.

rumour alert! rumour alert!
( insert Star trek Red Alert sfx here )

It has come to my attention, through sources which, when sober, which isn't often, are considered to be suspicious but entertaining:

Dean Currie of the BWDSB will be making an announcement regarding the future of Amabel Sauble Community School on March 30th ...

Now ... where are those "the sky is falling" people now? We made need them to get involved fast to get a jump on this.

cheers
wt

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this news, because, yes, it is sad to see our hard-won public education forced into trimming the fat even more. News comes down the wire today how our Blue Water District School Board is having to search out even more places to cut-back on the costs of public education ...

Superintendent of Business Dean Currie announced to the Board yesterday that the Business Committee has developed a contingency plan to address the fiscal problems the Board is facing.
Currie says he is concerned about the pattern of expenditures over the last two years.

He says the Board should consider reducing 1.8 million dollars in expenditures from the budget.

Currie says he has met with all managers, principals, and union representatives in the last month and is getting good cooperation from them.

Currie is asking all departments to look over their respective budgets once again and see if non-contractual obligations can be deferred or eliminated.

Some of the non-contractual items include small capital stuff like furniture and equipment.

He says the cuts would not affect staffing or teaching-related programs.
Currie says he'll meet with the Business Committee on February 6 to update on the contingency plan.
[ via Bayshore Broadcasting Corporation ]

Quite apart from the obvious argument that, whatever public education may cost, it is cheaper than no public education, this is a tragic situation and rightfully grates our sensibilities, but it is far more tragic when we recognize how an overwhelming bulk of money annually vanishes uselessly and, let me stress this, NEEDLESSLY.

So where does the money go? Into teacher wages? Hardly. Into fuel costs? Keep guessing. A massive, a staggeringly massive chunk of the annual BWDSB budget is voluntarily poured directly into the pockets of corporate opportunism, the greatest part of which is paid out not for inflated public-speaker fees or outrageous overcharging on those precious laptops -- the vast bulk, enough to buy the kids dozens of completely stocked libraries of new books, enough to pay the wages of whole schools-full of teachers or fab full free gourmet hot lunches for everyone, is spent not on any service, not on any product, but entirely for software licenses.

This is one is for the birders, and anyone else with an interest in knowing just who it is that is greeting their campsite ears every morning.

A good resouce for bird idenification / watching: USGS's Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter includes calls, photos and population coverage maps and seasonal birding checklists. And on a completely unrelated note, they have a sweet guide on the morphology of tadpoles.
[ via birds! tadpoles! unicorns! ]

Scroll down that Metafilter comments page for tips on other info-sites on birds, critters, and yes, even unicorns ...