Saturday, March 12, 2011

Friday, March 11, 2011

Mary Katherine Goddard (1738- 1816)

Mary Katherine Goddard, printer, newspaper publisher, and postmaster, was born in Connecticut on June 16, 1738. She lived in Baltimore, Maryland from 1774 until her death at age seventy-eight, in 1816.

Mary Katherine proved to be a steady, impersonal newspaper editor and during the Revolution she was usually Baltimore’s only printer. From her press, in January 1777, came the first printed copy of the Declaration of Independence to include the names of the signers. Mary Katherine Goddard was also responsible for issuing several Almanacs, while in Baltimore, which now hold a place in the Maryland Historical Society.

In 1775, Mary Katherine became postmaster of Baltimore, probably the first woman so appointed in the colonies, and certainly the only one to hold so important a post after the Declaration of Independence.

Moronic Bob Cook Doesn't Know Squat

I guess it was to much to ask that Bob Cook get his facts straight regarding homeschoolers.

Frankly I don't think athletic programs belong in the public schools in the first place. Just think if public schools didn't have to fund athletic programs (especially football) they could spend their money on things like textbooks and teacher's salaries and provide little Johnny with a top notch education, instead of giving a small minority of public school students a chance to play football.

But I digress.................According to Cook
The Home School Legal Defense Association itself shows how homeschooling organizations — still overwhelming evangelical Christian, even as homeschooling has spread beyond its population (insufferable liberals instead call it “unschooling” to separate themselves from the conservative rabble) — try to play both sides of the high school football field chain-link fence.

First off the Home $chool Legal Defense Association does NOT represent all homeschoolers. Homeschooling is NOT overwhelming evangelical Christian (80% of homeschoolers, homeschool for non-religious reasons), and Liberal Homeschoolers DO NOT call it unschooling to separate themselves from the conservative rabble. Unschooling is a homeschooling method employed by both Liberal and Conservative Christian Homeschoolers.

Yes — only the contact that homeschool families choose to have, the kind that makes up for what homeschoolers lack, without exposing them too much to bad things like cooties, street gangs, and Catholics.

Moron, plenty of Catholics homeschool.

And one can only wonder why public school parents are so opposed to homeschoolers being allowed to play on public school football teams. Are they afraid their precious little public school students can't compete with athletically gifted homeschooled and private schooled students and will wind up sitting on the bench? Do they secretly believe that private school and homeschool students are receiving a superior education but justify sending their children to public schools by telling themselves they wouldn't be able to play football otherwise?

Apparently writing one article bashing homeschoolers wasn't enough for Cook, he followed up with this.

You might not know this if you’re not a football fan or an evangelical Christian, but Tim Tebow was a home-schooled student who playing actual high school football in Florida, then won the Heisman Trophy and two national championships at the University of Florida, then became a first-round pick of the Denver Broncos. You’ll know they are evangelical Christians not just by their love, but by their “Tebow 15″ Broncos jerseys.

What is it with this guy? All homeschoolers are not evangelical Christians, all Tim Tebow fans aren't either. Next time Cook takes it into his empty little head to write about homeschoolers maybe he should try doing some research instead of sticking with the outdated stereotypes he seems hung up on.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Karola Ruth Siegel (Dr Ruth Westheimer)

Karola Ruth Siegel was born in Germany on June 4, 1928. When Karola was ten years old, shortly after the infamous Kristallnacht, her father was taken to a detention camp. Her mother and grandmother then sent the little girl to Switzerland, where she lived in an orphanage for six years. After the war, unable to find any other members of her family, sixteen-year-old Karola went to Palestine and started using Ruth as her first name. Eventually she emigrated to the United States.

In 1983, Westheimer published her first book, Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex. Since then, she has written twenty-six others, including her autobiographical works All in a Lifetime (1987) and Musically Speaking: A Life through Song (2003).

In May of 2000 Westheimer received an honorary doctorate from Hebrew Union College-Institute of Religion for her work in human sexuality and her commitment to the Jewish people, Israel and religion. In 2001 she received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Leo Baeck Medal, and in 2004, she received the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from Trinity College. She is an adjunct professor at New York University and an Associate Fellow of Calhoun College at Yale University. Ruth Westheimer is the president of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) of Washington Heights.

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Amelia Earhart (1897–1937)

Amelia Earhart's name became a household word in 1932 when she became the first woman, and second person, to fly solo across the Atlantic, on the fifth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's feat, flying a Lockheed Vega from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland to Londonderry, Ireland. That year, she received the Distinguished Flying Cross from the Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Hoover.

In January 1935 Earhart became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean from Honolulu to Oakland, California. Later that year she soloed from Los Angeles to Mexico City and back to Newark, N.J.

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

While Emily Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886.

                           Two Butterflies went out at Noon— (533) 
by Emily Dickinson
 
Two Butterflies went out at Noon—
And waltzed above a Farm—  
Then stepped straight through the Firmament  
And rested on a Beam—  
   
And then—together bore away 
Upon a shining Sea—  
Though never yet, in any Port—  
Their coming mentioned—be—  
   
If spoken by the distant Bird— 
If met in Ether Sea
By Frigate, or by Merchantman— 
No notice—was—to me— 

Monday, March 07, 2011

Madie Collins ( b.1950s)

Madie Collins ( b.1950s)
Founder of P.A.W. Animal Sanctuary
Belize

In 2003,
Madi gave up her corporate job in New York to return to her native community of Caye Caulker, Belize in 2003. Beginning with caring for one, sickly, abandoned cat, Ms. Collins became determined to help all the island’s cats. Facing mountains of obstacles, lack of funds, and opposition from people, she was able to accomplish her dream of establishing a cat sanctuary. www.pawanimalsanctuarybelize.com

Sunday, March 06, 2011