School Daze and Other Monday Musings

Is this the perfect attire for a brand new middle schooler?  I pray the answer is no.

Here it is again!  School Daze are here!  For some of my Michigan friends, and friends in other places outside of Georgia, this may seem extraordinarily early to start school, but here it seems to creep ever earlier and earlier.  Conversely they stop school in mid-May.  I'm not sure what the reasoning is.  You would think if they were trying to save money, the sweltering month of August and its associated air conditioning costs wouldn't seem like a first choice.  But regardless of the reasoning, school time is once again here.

And this year, to add to the excitement and fun, Benjamin will be starting middle school.  He is a sixth grader at a brand new school.  He will have to cope with a kaleidoscope of changing classrooms and a wider variety of subjects.  He hopes to be in band, preferring the trumpet.  He is looking forward to participating in Drama.

We have other friends and family faced with this same opening day.  Our good friends Ken and Kimberly Beck will have their daughter, Elizabeth in middle school, sharing the same homeroom as Benjamin, while meanwhile Emily continues at the elementary school.  Karissa and Jeff Cook also have their children going to diverse places, Noah to elementary and Eli to daycare, and have to figure out their transportation options.  Dean and Leslie Crane will have both of their two in the public schools this year.  Alison's step-sister Chrissy, will be starting to teach Social Studies this year at the high school.  And this is just the very tip of the people we know who are effected by this big day.

Sadly, as important as public education is to the lives of so many, it is under constant siege by the conservative right-wing majority that dominates the state.  Pierce county has enjoyed one of the finest school systems in the state, but is under relentless pressure to do more with less.  The good employees are doing every thing they can to answer the challenge, but it gets more difficult each year.  Georgia will never be the growing, dynamic state that it wants to be unless it works to restore and nurture a first-rate education system.

I attended a family reunion Saturday, a group on Alison's father's side.  I don't think this particular group met often, and I did not recognize 97.85% of the people there.  But there was some good food there, and it was free.  They had a great corn souffle that was fantastic, and reminded me of the Strait reunions and Thanksgiving from when I was a kid.

My father is in the course of getting more care at Independence Village in East Lansing.  This is being done through the auspice of hospice care.  This does not mean what I thought it meant - I thought that was a service for the terminally ill.  But what they're going to do is make him feel more comfortable staying in his own place.  Should another health crisis come about, they're going to do everything they can to make sure he can stay where he's at , instead of being shuttled to different hospitals and rehab centers.

We finally saw The Dark Knight Rises Saturday.  It was better than I expected, and I have a full review under the blog entry Ripping Good Yarns: The Batman Horizons.

With the new school hours, my opportunity to blog shifts a little, but I will do my best to accommodate it.  The blog continues to grow in page view traffic, and I thank all of you who visit, and even if you don;t like everything, that you can find something that suits your individual interest.

Until next time,

T.M. Strait