And A Child Will Lead Us

Think about that image: Usually an innocent child is depicted voicing something profound that provides a new perspective on an issue. Something that has been troubling us adults. Makes things clearer and the pathway we need to take obvious.

Well, it’s pretty rare.

Today children spend, on the average, 6 hours a day in front of the television. One in five children are overweight. One-third of all children live in single-parent households. Few understand where food grows and how to prepare it.

There are many reasons why children in school today face challenges we adults never experienced. And therefore, teachers and school administrators have to deal with issues that continually strain the system.

In McMinnville four positions for the School Board will be filled following the May 19 election. Voters have received the information packet from the County Clerk and ballots have dropped. Several of the candidates have been serving on the School Board and hope to be re-elected.

McMinnville is proud to be recognized as one of the excellent school systems in the state of Oregon and yet only 84% of students graduate high school. There is something missing here that is not obvious.

Wednesday evening the Yamhill County Democratic Party will host a School Board Candidate Forum at the Carnegie Room of the Public Library. Starting at 7:00p.m., the candidates will present their responses to questions posed by the attendees. Please come and listen to the candidates to better understand them and then make an informed decision when you vote.

It is our responsibility as adults to provide the kind of schools that will teach the children skills they need to strive for excellence. Otherwise, the leadership they will provide in time will be mediocre. Time now to act.

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Not a Good Choice

Election Day is Tuesday and I think most people are in one of three camps:

1-They have taken the time to read about the candidates. They may even have someone they like so much they volunteered a bit on the campaign. They made sure to vote early or will be in line at the polls early in the day. For a MidTerm election, this is about 10% of the population.

2-They will vote but they are angry. They feel there really is no benefit to them for either candidate in the biggest election. They don’t know much, if anything, about other issues, including ones in their own town. They may vote for every position on the ballot without knowing anything about the candidates. This is about 30% of the population.

3- They won’t bother to vote. They believe it is all a waste of time. They get very angry whenever anyone asks their opinion about anything because they really have not formed one. They are just angry. This is about 60% of the population.

Yup, most people not only won’t vote but they feel they have a right to be angry about the government/country/schools/roads/business regulations/you name it they are pissed about it.

I personally think if you are not part of the cure, you are part of the problem. If you did not get educated about the candidates, if you did not help one you like get elected, if you didn’t even bother to vote, your voice was silenced by your inaction, by your apathy, by your own choice.  

 

The Right To Know

Two states have tried to pass public referenda on the issue to label food that contains genetically engineered ingredients.  Both California and Washington State failed to pass their attempts at labeling, but the votes are getting closer and closer as fewer residents get confused by the big money thrown at them by the GMO proponents.  This November voters in both Oregon and Colorado will deciding if they want food available in the grocery store to be labeled if any ingredients have been genetically modified.

You may be unaware that much of the food you have been eating since the the late 1990s have genetic modifications. Some of those are to permit herbicides and pesticides to be sprayed on what you will eat without harming the food as it grows. There are health issues that have increased since that time and because testing is blocked, there is only circumstantial evidence that these new chemicals in our food are the cause.     The government has run no tests on these foods, saying the companies who produced the modifications to the original food should do it, but testing is not required.  Many countries around the world do not permit foods with genetic modifications to be sold.  

There is a huge group of companies that are fighting the referendum, saying everything is safe.The big players arguing against it are involved in the production of the seeds or the grocery store trade association.  They do not want the referendum in Oregon and Colorado to pass because it would mean they would need to label food with genetically enhanced ingredients and once they identify this, they are afraid of a loss of income.

They have begun to pour millions and millions of dollars into advertising to convince voters it is a bad idea. The main argument is that any change in labeling will cause the price of the food to increase “by hundreds of dollars a year.”  What they don’t say is how often they already change labels.

This is just one example of how a food company changes packaging with no change in pricing.

The side fighting the labeling is pouring millions of dollars into both Oregon and Colorado to try to block the referendum. They are concerned that the consumers’ right to know what they are eating will affect their profits.

No matter how you personally feel about GMOs in your food, labeling should not be a problem for you. The public’s need to know about chemicals in the food has been approved again and again for other items. The food labels just got revised again to make serving sizes easier to read, in the hopes people will stick to them. For health reasons, many people want to avoid this unproven technology.

What’s in YOUR dinner tonight?

Armchair Quarterback or Player

Which are you?  Do you sit on the sidelines and complain about obvious problems or do you get involved trying to solve them….or even ONE?

One of the things I highly appreciated about my experience with Huntington, West Virginia’s Create Huntington was it had one rule: no complaining without suggesting a solution. The Chat and Chew sessions held weekly were attended by only a few of the people in the city, anywhere between 4 and 30 people would show up. Some came just to listen to learn what was going on at a grassroots level. Some had specific issues close to their heart and were there to bring them to everyone’s attention. 

Some of the ideas gained interest and more people were attracted to the concept and helped it become a reality. It was the way the dog park was established, the way the Wild Ramp Market grew from an idea to a reality in only 5 months, the way volunteers gathered to help build a bike path, paint the viaduct tunnels and so much more.

At a grassroots level people in Huntington decided they were not going to wait for some mystical element in local government to fix the problem. They decided if it bothered them enough, it was worthy of their energy to fix it.

But you need not get down and dirty to have a voice. You merely need to be educated about things that are really going on, who the players are, and then go vote. And then contact the person in the position about how you feel about issues. Yes, they actually do read those letter.

Sitting at home, on the sidelines, complaining does nothing helpful.