I was going to write about Oklahoma, but Cecily did it for me

Go read her post.

Now go read Mary Alice Carr's post on why allowing doctors to lie to their patients is bad law generally.

I summed up what Oklahoma's saying in a Tweet:

Shorter Oklahoma: If knowledge == less likely to abort then knowledge = good. If knowledge == more likely to abort then knowledge = bad.

Knowledge is power.

Women can be trusted to make the right choices for themselves.

"They raped her as she lay dying"

Read it.

Good news for Jeff Barnett!

The LCRC leadership seems to have gone heavily for the pro-developer and pro-religious-conservative factions rather than the moderate factions.

I hope that, along with Wolf's most recent record of voting against our area's interests, the now very visibly non-moderate LCRC will demonstrate why Jeff Barnett is such a good choice for our county.

Nevermind

On the same day that I put a link to a particular blog in my blogroll, the moderators of that blog, instead of just deleting a nasty comment aimed at them, escalated the fight in comments. Mean, disrespectful comments by commentors are facts of blog life. Moderators have the power to delete those comments. Not doing so is a choice. Retaliating by using personal, not publicly available, information is also a choice.

They are not choices I agree with. My blogroll has one less blog on it today.

Joe.My.God on The Man in the Orange Hat

Seems ED is getting attention everywhere. Not my doing this time!

Edited to add: The comments on both sites linked to above are pretty hateful, and most speculate about ED's sexuality, which is disrespectful and beside the point. I don't recommend reading them.

A Change to the Blogroll

Nevermind

Dispatches from a busy weekend

Saturday:

• I helped move the LCDC into new offices! Look for us now in the old Leesburg Today building on the corner of S. King and E. Market! It's an accessible space, with an elevator and a by-god accessible bathroom. I don't know when the Grand Opening will be, but the executive meeting a week from today will be held there (I am the only member of the Loudoun or VA CSBs on LCDC's Exec. committee).

Sunday:

• Had a lovely b'fast at Joe's Cafe on West Church. They serve terrific (and plentiful!) food at reasonable prices. Open for b'fast and lunch 7 days. Go give them a look-see. This is not a paid endorsement, I am simply a very happy customer.


• Went to the Earth Day celebration at Clyde's Willowcreek Farm. Saw Erica Garman, Tammi Marcoulier, Oya Simpson, and many, many other friends. It was a fabulous festival and I already can't wait for next year!


• Finally, went to a fund-raiser for Marty Martinez in Leesburg. Lots of excitement! And had fun playing with one of the world's sweetest two-year-olds. Turns out, I've got the same phone as her papa. Our son had fun playing with the other kids who were there.

In between and after, our family had a blast together. We admired our garden. Our son kicked our butts at Uno. We read books, told jokes, paid bills, and just enjoyed spending time as a family both at home and at events.

Adjectives

Do you have a race?
A gender?
A sexual orientation?
A gender identity?
An abled status?
A religion?

When you watch people of your gender play sports in a professional league, is the league's name preceded by an adjective specifying the gender playing that sport?

When you read a story describing someone of your race, does the writer mention hair color first or skin color?

In this country, the generic person is a white man who is straight, identifies as male, and has no disabilities.

This generic person represents fewer than 22% of people in the US. But it is he who is considered typical for medical purposes. He who is considered typical for advertising purposes, he who is considered typical for manufacturing purposes, he who is considered typical for writers of all stripes (including me).

So, an exercise for the reader (h/t my Small Group Communications Professor): Describe yourself using 20 sentences beginning with the words, "I am".

I'll start.

I am a woman
I am white
I am Jewish
I am straight
I am happy identifying as a woman
I am not currently disabled
I am a mother
I am a wife
I am a daughter
I am a sister
I am a (recent) college graduate
I am a reader
I am a blogger
I am a knitter
I am a Democrat
I am a member of several boards
I am a grand-daughter
I am a cousin
I am a niece
I am a friend

Your turn!

Awwww....

Sincerely, I can take snide remarks by The Man in the Orange Hat. After all, if he's clown enough to embarrass himself on NBC's cameras so that I could hand the video over to my friend who was teasing me about living in a state governed by an anti-gay Governor and AG, then it's just amusing that he blames me for that embarrassment.

I think it's adorable that my spouse got all Papa Bear about it. He's taken a lot of guff from TMitOH over the years and not gone off on him. I totally understand that this was one comment too many. Since I wasn't there to call him out myself, it's totally appropriate for my spouse to do it.

But, hey! I have this blog. I'm out here and I can take criticism. And, O Orange-hatted One? If you're sitting on that dais, or if you're talking your anti-gay crap to the cameras? You'd better be ready to take some criticism too. 'Cause guess what? No video? No being laughed at on The Daily Show.

On the other hand, looks like getting national attention isn't something TMitOH is trying to avoid, what with getting involved in the fight against gay marriage in Iowa.

Does anyone have a link to the local tv news video of TMitOH protesting outside Obama's message to school children last year?

Lastly, can anyone make heads or tails of TMitOH's latest fundraising letter?

And just because I LOVE IT, here's that segment again:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Gaywatch - Virginia Edition
http://www.thedailyshow.com/
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

From my Inbox

Dear Elizabeth,

We need your help right now.

While we were celebrating the creation of the pro-choice license plate, Gov. McDonnell acted with utter disregard to women’s health by offering an amendment to the budget last week.

He wants to restrict Medicaid funding for abortion in cases of severe fetal abnormality and when a woman’s health is severely jeopardized.

How dare Gov. McDonnell play doctor and suggest that he knows what decisions are best for a woman’s health and family!

Please email your senator and delegate RIGHT NOW and ask her/him to vote NO on the Medicaid Abortion Amendment.

All women should have access to reproductive-health care regardless of their economic status, but discriminatory restrictions on public funding like this one make abortion services an unavailable choice for many low-income women.

Both legislative bodies will vote on this amendment on Wednesday; we need your help urgently before then! Just one vote in the majority will make all the difference.

Your voice as a constituent can have a huge impact. You can change the outcome of this situation and ensure reproductive-health care for all Virginians, not just those who can afford it.

For choice,

Tarina Keene
Executive Director

School budget

School Board Chair John Stevens has written several posts about the school budget on his blog. He also included a link to At-large School Board member Tom Reed's survey looking for what people think should be cut.

I think Reed's survey is disingenuous at best. Where are the cuts to technology spending? Where are the cuts to grounds maintenance? I do like the increase to walk-zones.

Now that the Board of Supervisors has given the School Board a chunk of money, remember that it is up to the School Board to decide how to spend it. If you have strong feelings about what should be saved and what should be cut - especially if you spoke at the BOS public hearings - make sure that your voice gets heard by the School Board.

Mazel tov!

Paradox13VA just welcomed a new child to his family! May you have all the joy in the world, my dear friend!

h/t Dave, since I missed the announcement on FB.

Supervisor Andrea McGimsey started a blog!

Streamline Loudoun. h/t School Board Chair John Stevens

My thoughts on Bob McDonnell

Head, meet desk. Desk, head.

Ow.

His mother must surely be so very proud of her little rebel. I wish I could say that this here is a Macaca moment for our Governor, but I know it isn't.

Changes

Over the Spring Break, some electronic white boards were permanently installed in a few classrooms in my son's school.

I do not know if these boards were bought by LCPS or by the PTA, so I will gloss over whether this was a good use of money.

I'm not even going to talk right now about whether this is a good use of technology in the classroom.

What I will talk about is my reaction to their actual installation:

The permanent boards are larger than the temporary boards that were flitting from class to class during the year. They take up less floor space (though they take over a foot deep of floorspace), because the projectors are mounted above them, but they take up more wall space than the teachers expected. In fact, the board takes up a substantial amount of space in the front of the class where there used to be room on a regular marker board.

Another regular marker board has been installed on one of the side walls, but it's not a convenient location for writing and it would have probably been a better place for the electronic white board to be installed instead.

The focal-point of the classroom before was the regular marker board. The marker board is magnetic, so it also held displays of the students' work from time to time. Kids and teachers could write on it, and it was not distracting if they stood in front of it to teach or to present reports.

Now the electronic white board is the focal-point of the room. I haven't seen it in use yet, but where it sits makes it the thing that the kids are focusing on all. day. long.

I don't WANT my son focussing on an electronic screen all day long (says the blogger, and computer tech worker). We work pretty hard at my house about limiting what we call screen-time. Our son plays his DS when we bring him along to meetings, but otherwise his DS is limited to an hour on weekends. TV time is limited, too. As is playing Wii games.

Limiting screen-time is why this blog goes so quiet on the weekends. I'm spending time with my son looking at stuff other than a screen, although sometimes we're looking at screen together.

School should not be a place where the focus is on a screen all day. Computers at the sides and back of a room? Sure. A TV mounted at the back of the room? Sure. But a computer monitor the size of a projector screen mounted permanently in the front of the classrom? Emphasizing the importance of what appears on a screen? I'm not so sure about that. I'm feeling very uncomfortable with it.

I will be writing more about what changes the board brings to the classroom, if any, and I promise that I will try to keep an open mind about it.

I live the Amendments, Part III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

I thank the Third Amendment, the least litigated one, for Griswold v. Connecticut, where it enjoyed a cameo appearance. Also, I thank it for the fact that most people don't remember what it says. I'd say it's working rather well.

For more information on the history of, and reasons for, the Third Amendment, go here. Quite fascinating, actually!