streets with dwellings

you just never know what's going to happen around here!

I have to laugh. Sometimes justice living takes on the funniest forms. You always picture this life sort of like a Mother Teresa existence. But for a family of five, it's actually just more regular living with some pretty crazy people at times! It doesn't feel heroic or abnormal. You just say, Hey, I have a house, and people are welcomed here. Putting yourself in a downtown neighborhood is what can make it unusual.

Jackie lives around the corner. She deals with a lot of medical issues, and is a little bit mentally challenged. She loves the Flintstones.  This morning at 8:15, I found myself surfing the internet, looking for Flintstone coloring pages while she chatted with Will in the kitchen.

Is that a hoot or what?

pax christi,

lisa

what's got to give?

I'm a little miffed this  morning.  We put Jake in the local public middle school this year. It's a magnet school, good math program, disciplined classrooms, strict dress code, overall we're extremely pleased. Never having put a child in public school before, this is quite new.  A lot of the teachers are people of faith and there's a high amount of parental involvement.

While it's a magnet school, it's also the neighborhood middle school. So there are kids from the surrounding neighborhoods (ours included) and we are right downtown. In other words, this is one of the city schools. Every once in a while something will happen with Jake that makes me think that this justice stuff we're talking about is crucial for the church to worry about as well.

Last Friday Jake was home with a fluish/cold sort of thing. You know, you wake up with a stuffed-up head, headache, and you think, "Nope, getting out of bed just ain't gonna happen."  It's been going through our house, lately. Even our lovely houseguest came down with it. Well, we do like to share.

Monday, he went to school with his note, excused absence and all, and in his Language Arts (English? Remember when it was called that?) class his teacher refused to give him a spelling packet handed out on Friday. (Due tomorrow [Thurs.]. Worth 100 points.) I wrote a note yesterday. She still wouldn't give it to him saying she didn't have one. Sorry.

Will's calling the school this morning.

Now this is what I'm wondering about. Jake has the luxury of coming from a home where his parents care about what happens to him in school. We have the education and the backgrounds to help him succeed. I'm sure there are a lot of inner city parents who just plain don't care (as found in any other geographical area as well) and others who care, but don't have to tools necessary to guide their child in this way, because their parents didn't have the tools and so on and so on.

What happens to the kids in Jake's school that are refused the spelling packet and they simply lose the 100 points and their grade slips further and further down. After a while, you'd just give up, wouldn't you? Can you just picture a little boy or girl who faces this sort of thing? What do we think is going to happen to them? And so yet another generation is lost.

The educational system is so royally screwed up.

lisa

Supreme Court: 'Partial Birth' Drama

Link: Supreme Court: 'Partial Birth' Drama - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com.

In light of Tuesday's election, the quote by pro-choice activist in the linked article is something I hope our new leadership in both houses won't take to heart.

"And Naral Pro-Choice America announced that there were 20 new pro-choice lawmakers elected to the House. 'There’s a mood in the country,' NOW president Kim Gandy said on the steps of the high court after the arguments."

No, Kim.  What I see is that a lot of Christians who have forsaken their usual voting patterns pretty much held their nose and pulled the lever "in spite" of the abortion as usual plank of the Democrats not because of it.

I've said this before, if the Democrats became softer on peripheral abortion issues, such as partial birth, parental consent, regulation of clinic, we'd not only have a lot less abortions in this country, they'd have a lot more people willing to vote for them.