Entries by dickbernard

#15 – Dick Bernard, Grandpa's Slingshot; and Jane Stillwater, a Letter to the Editor

A reader comment follows this post. Today is my 69th birthday. I share the birthday with grandson Parker, 7, and a great number of others. Parker and I shared birthday cake yesterday. To a great number of people in my assorted constellations my age means I’m “just a kid”; to many others, including Parker, I […]

#14 – Anne Dunn: Sweet Smoky Blues

Note: Here’s another chapter on Sugaring near Deer River MN. Anne previously wrote on this topic at #6, published April 12, 2009, under the category, Quietings. I’d been charged with watching the maple syrup cooker so it wouldn’t boil over. There were also three barrels of sap bubbling the steam away. Annie and Laura had […]

#12 – Claude Buettner: Atoms for Peace Needs Rethinking

A very conservative acquaintance once asserted to me that the primary purpose of a national government is to establish security. Our global governance system (UN, WTO, IMF…) is failing by this primal measure to guard against potential global conflicts that could be precipitated by the ever-increasing water/food/energy insecurity. There is an inherent loophole built into […]

#10 – Marion Brady: An affirmative response to Corporate America's big "RIGOR!" push

Note from Moderator: I’ve known Marion Brady since the mid-1990s when I joined a national Quality Education listserv. For many years, Marion has been a consistent and articulate spokesperson for substantive change in how young people are educated. He was a regular columnist for a major newspaper in his home state of Florida. Recently he […]

#8 – Dick Bernard: Susan Boyle, and "Cynical", "Tiger" and "I dreamed a dream"….

Susan Boyle, Britains Got Talent, April 11, 09. A great gift… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY. To be as clear as I can be: Susan Boyle’s performance on Britains Got Talent on April 11 was stunning and real. She was so good, but the lead-up made her sound so unlikely to be as outstanding as she was, that I struggled […]