Today, the US Senate has confirmed Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court.

Read these links to learn more about a man who is the appointed hit man on women’s and other minority rights.

Samuel Alito – Wikipedia entry
Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the dKosopedia
Samuel Alito’s America on Think Progress

Think it cant get that bad? Read The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood), she foretells the future the Religious Right is fighting for.

If you want to get a good vision of what Bush wants for our future (he is doing the Hard Work for this as we speak) read 1984 (George Orwell) and you tell me you dont see the course he wants to “stay”.

We are moving into a time that will be historic for the losses of so many gains in a civil society.

Make no mistake, this man does not walk alone, he will not proceed with his decisions alone, he represents the desires of the Religious Right that wish to curtail the right to choose and devolve so much of what makes America great into a christian state filled with state-sponsored hate. We are already a good way there, Alito is an important milestone.

When will these people ever learn to mind their own business?

Pshaw you say? What about this great news for the Religious Right, this morning:

Sweeping anti-abortion laws proposed – Washington Times

With the goal of challenging the Roe vs. Wade ruling that ensured a woman’s right to an abortion, lawmakers in Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennessee propose banning all abortions except when the woman’s life is in danger, Stateline.org reported.

Read more at StateLine.org

Light a candle, think on what you and your family has to lose, and then think about how you can help the cause.

Ok, I admit that when I was in high school I wanted to be in all the clubs (just to say I did and it was a contest between me and my best friend – from what I vaguely remember, that was so long ago!). I joined just about everything. Science, Pente, Latin, Spanish, French, German, etc. I also joined Math club because 1) it was a club, and 2) I thought it would be good to buck up my math skills (also had several friends in it).

Anyways, the first thing the Math Club advisor does is give me a timed math test, a sheet filled with simple arithmetic and I realized that I was not going to like it. That sheet was so intimidating! I kept up with the club and went to competitions but those reminded me too much of swim team (on which I LIVED in high school and that was just a bit much) so I was not a long term Math Club member :-/.

I find myself now working with Q on sheets of math practice that are just as intimidating (but not timed!)

She has additional challenges that make it even more overwhelming than for me so we came up with a solution that is working for us, it might work for you!

Its simply a matter of cutting a small window out of a sheet of black construction paper and using that to mask the other problems. Now she powers through pages that took all day of agony before.

This might seem like a gimmick but it works, Q doesnt feel like I am pulling the wool over her eyes, she knows that she was being distracted and she could not manage it. This way we both assert control!

We got almost a foot of snow and it was the wet sort, perfect for making things like forts! Q made a start, perhaps it will get a few more walls before the thaw comes or the plow guy thinks it needs to be plowed.

Tools

Details

Sunday was Q’s biannual piano recital. She enjoyed it very much, KD did also, sat very still and then got to play in the nursery! I have a bit of pictorial from the day. Our recitals are held in the Unitarian Universalist church in North Brookfield, MA.

Enjoy!

Outside the church.

Windows at the back of the church.

The nave.

Q waiting for her turn.

Q playing her two pieces.

There was also a reception after but I felt odd taking pics of people without asking their permission!

We had a bit too much excitement on Saturday. Just after our supper chicken was put on to bake, the power went out. Sometimes our power flickers and comes back but Saturday it was out. Q and I went down to the road and saw that a huge tree had fallen on our power line. For the next 8 hours we went without power, our poor chicken had to be pitched, and Q’s dad helped the police keep traffic from passing under the tree.

At 12 midnight the power came back on and the whole house sprang into bright light! We had to get up and turn them all off.

We are so very happy to have the power back!

Here are a few scenes from all of the excitement.

A picture, in the dark, of the downed tree.

We lit many candles to try to get some light so that the 2 year old wasnt too upset by it all.

The aftermath!

The tree was very large. As you can see where the stump is, the tree next to it was how big the fallen one was.

Q gets to do her Anatomy coloring as a break from other more demanding things (like multi-digit subtraction and fraction multiplication). She gets to choose which page she wants to work on and today it was the skeleton.

She has worked on the eyeball, the brain, the integumentary system, and other features of the human body.

This is always fun to do and fun for me to watch because she is relaxed about learning things which she might not have been exposed to until sometime in high school.

In our History Pockets, Q is learning about colonial schooling. Kids were homeschooled and also sent off to local “Dame” schools. Girls of wealthy parents were then sent off to Europe to finishing schools (foreign languages, wine and cheese appreciation, various arts) and boys were send off to schools like Harvard and Yale.

She learned how to make a horn book.

She also got to practice some of the cursive kids had to learn then.

Its not easy and her quill pen (which we got at Old Sturbridge Village) isn’t the easiest to control!

Here are some links to learn more:

• An amazing site on colonial America
• Map of colonial educational institutions

Education in the

• Northern Colonies
• Middle Colonies
• Southern Colonies
• Horn book replicas and cookie molds (?)
• Site on Children’s lives in Colonial America
• Reproduction of The Colonial Horn Book
• Some lesson plans around Colonial schooling

Q wrote the following, by herself, after today’s homeschooling which included reading Chapter 17 of Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History”, watching and reading the “I have a dream” speech, and after reading the entire Wikipedia entry on MLK.

“My mom let me make my first blog. Call me Q. (My mommy doesn’t want my full name on the internet.) I am going to tell you about Martin Luther King Jr. I listened to the “I have a Dream” speech. I was inspired by this quote:

“In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds”.” And this: “It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.”

I loved that part of the speech but you can read the whole thing here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/Ihaveadream.htm . MLK Jr. protested harder than anyone else. He led dozens of protests. He was very persistent and even kept doing it after someone bombed his house. He went homeless but still did it.

He was assassinated on April 4, 1968 at 6:01.

He was assassinated by James Earl Ray. James Earl Ray pleaded guilty because if he didn’t he would have the death sentence. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He tried all of his life to withdraw the plea and get a trial, without success. He died in prison. He said that his brother and 10 million dollars were involved. The court didn’t believe him and ignored him.

They had a memorial erected for MLK Jr. It is a large memorial. MLK won a Nobel peace prize. He is very famous. He is in the 20 most famous people. MLK was a good man and he made extremely long speeches just to convince people it’s not okay. I like MLK because he was a brave and a very much needed man in history.”

List of resources

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 – Democracy NOW
Wikipedia – MLK Jr. Day
Wiki – About the Man Martin Luther King Jr.
“Real Audio” online version of the “I Have a Dream” speech at the HistoryChannel’s site
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project
The King Center
Martin Luther King Jr.’s FBI file
“The MLK you don’t see on TV” from FAIR
Listen Live to MLK Jr. sermons (today only) – select a player and listen to web stream
Democracy NOW’s radio chat with Howard Zinn “Bush Represents Everything That Martin Luther King Opposed” (transcript on this page and also links to listen)

As you might well imagine, awareness of who Martin Luther King Jr. was, what he did, what he was fighting for, and how it was that he was murdered are all poorly understood and taught in our schools and society.

I have provided the links above for you to check out for yourself and to help you teach your children (homeschooled or not).

As a grad student at Emory, I would listen to radio broadcasts of the King sermon archives. He was electrifying and he must have been terrifying to those who were not interested in the change he sought.

Dont believe the hype, much of what he sought has yet to pass.

Its up to each of us to value his vision and to do what we can to nuture that vision in our children.

Truly, hope for a better society lies in the questioning and trusting eyes of a child who has not learned to hate, yet.

Our job as parents is to make sure that hate is not passed on, that love is shared, and that hope is invested.

Flu pandemic survival starts and ends at home.
[Visit the Flu Wiki - EXCELLENT source of info]

Latest news

Bloomberg is reporting that the H5N1 avian flu has spread beyond the initial 2 Turkey cases we heard about in the past few weeks. Now 14 confirmed cases (2 deaths, a third death is still in testing) have been reported and some 45 more hospitalized people are suspected cases.

From that report:

“It seems that the epidemic has been spreading among animals in Turkey for much longer than believed,” Klaus Stoehr, who heads the WHO’s global influenza program, told German radio, according to AFP.

These cases span Turkey and are not just in one small village.

For now it seems that the H5N1 strain remains B2H (bird to human), we are all just watching with trepidation for when it mutates to a H2H (human to human) strain. When that happens, it could be a matter of hours for it to go global, days for it to be apparent, weeks for it to devastate, years and years for it to settle down into an epidemic that is not so virulent that it kills a huge number of it’s hosts (millions instead of billions).

US Gov issues new report for preparedness

So the government has JUST released (January 6th) its latest busy work report. I have linked it to the right on this page and the link is here too.

This report is actually interesting as it is setting the groundwork for the Martial Law that they will institute once the pandemic gets rolling (if or when it does). Take from it what you wish.

They have a small list of things you should have on hand for the “extended period” of flu impacted time we may experience (html, PDF)

There is even a listing of Flu State Plans at this page. And this page has links directly to your state flu page.

I suggest you look at the PDF for your state. More importantly, call up your local health department officials and see if they have any info on how they are going to respond on the local level (it doesn’t matter what they will do in Las Vegas if you live in Portsmouth, NH). Our tiny town of 1500 held meetings on smallpox preparedness back in 2001 or 2002. That was instrumental in my realizing that there was NO plan or understanding of communicable diseases (i.e., you do NOT allow people to assemble in a location to get information, you disseminate it so that people remain sheltering in house.)

We may dodge the bullet on this and other diseases, who knows. Its not good for mental health to obsess about it but its also not good to ignore it. I think one huge take home message should be this: In a pandemic or biological attack where we humans are the vectors, YOU WILL BE ON YOUR OWN. You should have a stocked pantry, other house preparedness preparations (do NOT duct tape your house PLEASE) and understand how to keep from infecting yourself and your family.

Tamiflu resistance – evolution of a nightmare

Remember the great promise of Tamiflu, the nasally delivered anti-flu vaccine you could take if you thought you had very recently been exposed to the flu (it’s a broad spectrum medicine, not targeted to H5N1). As with other viral organisms, while the H5N1 strain is mutating and possibly picking up the ability to go H2H (human to human) it is also picking up resistance to what we use to try to kill it off (very basic concepts in evolution).

The December 22nd issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reported that resistance to Tamiflu has been detected.

From that freely available report (in PDF, in HTML) we have the following diagram on how the virus picked up the resistance (oseltamivir = Tamiflu):

The neuraminidase active site changes shape to create a pocket for oseltamivir, whereas it accommodates zanamivir without such a change (Panel A). Any of several mutations may prevent the binding of oseltamivir by preventing the formation of this pocket (Panel B); the oseltamivir-resistant viruscan nonetheless bind to the host-cell sialic acid receptor and to zanamivir. The pocket for oseltamivir, illustrated by key amino acids in Panel C, is created by the rotation of E276 and bonding of the amino acid to R224 – events that are prevented by the mutations R292K, N294S, and H274Y and therefore result in resistance to oseltamivir. An E119V mutation may permit the binding of a water molecule in the space created by the smaller valine, also interfering with oseltamivir binding. None of these mutations prevent the binding of zanamivir or of the natural sialic acid substrate.

You can even see a nifty animation of this mechanism at this link. Click the little blue figure on the left side.