thank a soldier

I was sitting on a plane, on my way home to Pennsylvania, when a lightning bolt struck my brain and I franticly penned this blog. This is the finalized version, after translating my hurried scribble, unique shorthand and arrows crisscrossing the pages. Here goes.

Here’s a question for the quasi educated minds; what makes a young person, from any walk of life, sign up to be a soldier? What makes them so different from the thousands of other newly high school graduates who in just a few months after graduation, have pictures floating around the internet of them passed out on a ratty couch in some frat house with sharpie scribbles on their faces?  Instead of college late nights and exam cramming, these young adults sign up for dirt, sweat, crappy food, gas chambers, 90 kilometer marches with 30 pound bags on their backs.

These young men and women choose to become responsible adults, carrying on a centuries old tradition of honor, patriotism and sacrifice. I wonder if the world would be a different place if more young people would choose to follow the code by which their counterparts choose to die. The code is:

1.       I will never accept defeat.

2.       I will always complete my mission.

3.       I will never leave a comrade behind.

4.       I will never give up.

These absolutes signify responsibility, perseverance, and compassion.

 Think about those young people who are willing to give up their weekends, holidays, sleep, good food and friendships to protect your freedoms. They are the fearless warriors who are willing to do violence so that we civilian Americans can sleep peacefully at night. God bless and don’t forget to thank a soldier.

Knowledge is Power: the importance of an education

Do you ever wonder why almost every product bought in the United States says ‘made in China’ on the price tag? Or why instruction manuals have Chinese as the first language, and the ‘English’ section is pictures?  It is a simple answer with many convoluted thought processes; the United States is fading as an economical and political superpower and the Asian nations are taking our place.

The OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, states that American students are not learning and therefore not performing to a competitive level. According to the OECD’s PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) published in 2010, the United States placed 17^th on the reading assessment, 23^rd on the science assessment and 31^st on the mathematics assessment. Japan placed 5^th in science, 8^th in reading and 9^th in mathematics. China placed first in all three categories.  The two nations we compete the most with internationally, place significantly higher in all the areas that are important.  This is a shame.

 The American students are not as well prepared for the competitive market or politics which they will be responsible for in a few short years.  They are passed along from elementary to high school without a complete, substantial education. According to statistics from 2007, 40 percent of American high school graduates are not capable of passing the United States Naturalization Exam. This is a scary idea that people not born in the United States know more about the history of the USA than a native born American citizen. The United States Department of Education should institute a year around k-12 program as an important step in improving the national crisis known as the Educational system.   

This would benefit American students because of the constant stream of information, instead of a three month break after which it is nearly impossible to recollect information taught the previous school year.  Summer vacation was necessary until the early twentieth century, when the need for children to assist with harvesting the fields was a matter of survival. Sustenance farming in this modern era is not as big of an issue. Today, nothing is accomplished by summer vacation.  In lieu of spending the dog days of summer watching reruns and talking to a pet goldfish, the future leaders of the United States should be learning.  Summer vacation’s long break from learning directly influences the inability to recollect information necessary to build higher education takes valuable time out of the already short school year required by the Department of Education to re-teach information previously taught. The ideal year round school program would start each new grade in September; have two weeks off for Thanksgiving, a month off for Christmas and New Years and two weeks off for Easter, and one month off in the summer. This is nine weeks of vacation. This is the same amount of time given to American students for summer vacation, just without the large amount of time necessary for students to forget pertinent information.

Another benefit year around school provides to High School students is the opportunity to perform academically at higher standards of education before they reach college.  High School does not prepare students for the collegiate level of education.  A traditional high school educational system has the basic classes; English, math, science, history, five times a week. The ‘art’ classes are held one to two times a week. Each class is 45 minutes long. There are worksheets and homework assignments.  High School students are babied, given chance after chance to maintain their grades. This is not true of a college education. An average collegiate school class week is twelve credit hours; equivalent to four classes of lecture at three hours each. Class time is for the professor to stand in front of the class and lecture.   Students are expected to do reading and all outlining on your own time. The ‘homework’ is reading the material and doing whatever miniscule assignment the professor deems fit to give you. Most class total grades are averaged out of three exams. This is a completely alien world compared to the safe, babied world of high school.

The ideal day length for a year around school program is only three to four classes a day. The closest high schools come to collegiate style of lecture is known as block scheduling. Block scheduling covers three to four classes a semester. Each class period is an hour to an hour and a half. The length of the class decides how many times a week the student has that particular class. One hour classes are held three times a week, while hour and half classes are held twice a week.  This model would better prepare the high school student for their educational careers past high school commencement.

If the goal of the educational system is to prepare students for the ‘real’ world past the doors of high school, why isn’t the failing system of education being fixed? Why is the idea of year around school met with such contempt? The administrators in the Department of Education and the subsequent authoritative powers should be doing something to fix the broken system. The administrators are the only ones who can instill large scale change in the United States, but they will not make a change if they don’t know that the change is wanted.  

Understanding Our Heroes

                My dad, a Field Artillery Forward Observer, served in Bosnia as part of a peacekeeping mission after the end of their civil war. His job was to collect and demilitarize the explosives from the assorted combatants. I was seven years old while he was gone. That assignment was the one that changed my relationship with my father for the next fifteen years. My dad, the funny, happy man who would make paper airplanes and rough house with me and my brothers, did not make it back. The shell of my father returned, filled with a man plagued by memories, but my dad died in Bosnia. It took a very long time to understand what had happened and why my dad’s personality had changed. My dad and consequently my family are just one example of the heroic victims of military service for the United States.

                In 1995, my mom gave me an eight ball. I thought that it would tell the truth every time, for every whispered question. My dad was off serving in a country I could never remember the name of. We would periodically get letters from him. One summer night, I snuck out into the yard with my prized eight ball for it to work its prophetic power. “Dear eight ball; is my dad going to come home?” a vicious shake sent it on its journey into truth seeking. The small triangle flashed stripes of white as it swirled around in the murky unknown. The answer floated lazily into view, ‘No. Not Likely’. Fear erupted into tears as the eight ball landed in its grave in the compost pile. The eight ball had lowered its sentence with a death knell. Mom found me crying on the back step a few minutes later and soothed away with the knowledge that the eight ball had no prophetic powers at all. It was just a ball of plastic filled with colored water. The eight ball had been right though, my daddy didn’t come back from Bosnia.

                My father returned to the United States during the fall. I can remember getting off the school bus and him standing on the front step. I didn’t recognize him. Gone was the sparkle in his eyes and he had grown the mustache which would symbolize his personality for the next decade and a half.

                The next thirteen years were filled with memories of pain, paranoia, anger and bitterness. I thought that my father didn’t love me; that I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, smart enough. He was an atomic bomb, which at any moment could self destruct and destroy whoever had the unlucky fortune of being in the general vicinity. He would find a job, then his paranoid belief that someone was trying to destroy him led to his firing. His unemployment and emotional instability lead to court hearings and possible jail sentences over unpaid child support. He remarried and then took that part of my family into the battlefields of divorce. I hated my father and stopped all contact with him. I thought my memories of happiness and playing were just mirages, but pictures proved me wrong. I wondered what I had done to lose the man who had called me princess.

                Two years ago, I was helping my mom with her spring cleaning which only happens once every few years. As we were going through her filing cabinet, I found an old manila folder stuffed with opened envelopes. They were all the letters my father had sent home from Bosnia. I took them and reading them made me cringe at my own misunderstanding and cry at the horrors that filled my father’s memory.

We need milk!

As omniovores human beings need protein. They need dairy products for the calcium and fats. They need eggs for the vitamins.  People not eating meat as due their personal preference is understandable, but starving yourself for the essential nutrients your body needs to operate properly is stupid. This is what vegans do. They do not eat any meat or animal byproduct such as eggs or milk. They will not eat anything with eggs or milk in it. That means no cookies.  Vegans eat vegetables, fruit, grains and tubers, that’s it. They say their eating is healthier for them. The only aspect in which this is ‘healthier’ for them is the fact that they are not eating over processed foods like Kraft Mac and Cheese and Hamburger Helper. But healthier for the way the human body runs and functions? No. Humans are classified as omnivores, this means that our biological systems are made to process and use both vegetation and meat. Humans even have special teeth designed for ripping meat, the canines. They need meat as energy to keep the body moving. Protein is necessary for muscle building and maintaining muscle mass. I guess that’s why there aren’t many vegan body builders. Milk is necessary to maintain the electrical function in your brain, and build bone density.  These two reasons are why it is so fundamentally important for young children to have a steady diet of milk and dairy products as they are going through the formative growing years, mainly birth-3 years old. Between birth and 3 years old is when children develop their brain and brain function drastically. Children, once they are weaned of the bottle or breast, whichever the case may be, short of having a dairy allergy, should be receiving between 8-32 ounces of milk a day. That’s a lot of bone density growing and brain development that isn’t being supported when you aren’t consuming dairy.

When you are at a loss, ask mom.

"God never gives you a problem bigger then you can handle."

We've all heard that one before right? If this was true though, why for the last month have I felt like strangling my son the next time he says 'no' to anything? Aiden has decided that his new favorite word/sentence is "No, I dont want to Mommy". To absolutely everything. From brushing his teeth to what he's going to wear that day. He's also decided to push every button known to piss off parents, from pretending to not hear us when we are talking to him to the obnoxious boneless hissy fits thrown over trivial things, just to see if he can push a boundary. This is a fun stage. This started about three weeks ago, and let me tell you, its been the hardest time of his young life for me and his dad. However, I think I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on this stage of child development after an intervention staged by my mother.
It was last sunday. Aiden hadn't wanted to go play in the nursery with the other small children, so we sat together in the worship service. My mom was sitting in the pew in front of us. About half way through the service, Aiden decided he wanted to sit with grandma. However, within three minutes of him sitting with grandma, he had managed to wiggle off the pew next to her, and commenced attempting to army crawl down the sanctuary under the pews. I grabbed his foot and pulled him out to a whining chorus of "No Mommy, NO, NO, NO!!!" I was shushing him as he was screeching while I was hustling him out of the sanctuary so the rest of the congregation could hear the pastor without feedback in their hearing aids (the average age for my church is 65). It then took him 20 minutes to sit in a three minute time out. Then, after he calmed down and we had a talk about how he needs to listen to mommy and not go spelunking during the service Aiden did the worst (and looking back, the funniest) thing he could possibly do. After repeated "Aiden don't touch the sound board honey", he waited until my back was turned and cranked the volume and feedback on the soundboard waaayyyy up. It was like nails on a chalkboard mixed with a bomb scare siren at the same decibel which breaks glass. And I don't know how to work the soundboard, so it took a few agonizing seconds to figure out which tiny little slide needs to move to reinstate blessed sanity.
I don't think I have ever seen Aiden move as fast as when he shot off the stool with his hands pressed against his ears. He was terrified. At least this time his curiosity didn't get him hurt.

And the day went on; me telling him not to do something, him doing it, and then the timeout battle. By the time bedtime rolled around we were both exhausted and frustrated. After Aiden finally fell asleep I flopped on the couch with my mom. And the intervention began. I started to complain how Aiden doesn't listen to me. She said, "Ash, he's three, not six." Then I expanded, dramatically adding, "about ANYTHING mom!" She said, "Pick your Battles." I stopped because I just got the proverbial sledgehammer to the back of the head because I had my eyes too tightly shut to see the lightbulb. What mom was saying was the important issues, like listening when I say,"Don't go out in the street", was far more important then him putting a coat on the exact minute I told him to. Pick your battles, and enforce a boundary when one needs to be enforced. It will make life so much quieter. So, starting yesterday, thats what I did. And you know what, its been really nice to be around Aiden. I only needed to use the mommy voice once. The last 48 hours have been wonderful. He hasn't been argumentative, and there have been no timeout battles.
As so 'old fashioned' as I thought my mom was, having a child just keeps bringing to light that my mom is one smart cookie. She's the go to person for late night fevers (motrin, water and cuddling), how to get sticker stains out of shirts (check the shirt before it goes in the washer) and dealing with the infamous 'terrible two/threes'( patience and prayer). My mom has been a saving grace and a really big reason why Aiden is as healthy and well adjusted and happy as he is.

My mom rocks, and she's pretty smart too.

'Teen Mom' Re-Casting

An open letter to MTV.

To whom it may concern,

Please, I beg you, please decide on more responsible and mature young women to be the faces of the  young moms of America when you do the casting for the next 'Teen Mom'. Please choose ones that aren't using their young children for their 'fifteen minutes' of fame. For example, instead of video footage of fist fights and screaming matches, how about what the financial responsibility of having a child is? How about showing what hundreds of young women who are 'mommy' do? They tuck away whatever plans they had of being young and free and grab on to their new reality; that they are responsible for another life. For most young moms, that translated into diaper changing every hour, colic soothing at three a.m., spit up cleaning starting about fifteen minutes after baby is done eating, laundry washing every other day, bottle washing after every feeding, the precious stuffed toy locating, bath time giving, cuddling until their little angel goes to sleep and repeating this cycle every day with roughly two hour intervals of sleep/study/shower time. They entrust the small bundles of their hearts to other's care while they work and in many cases, go to school. Instead of focusing on Amber's latest addition to her rap sheet or Janelle's seemingly non-existent interest in the well-being of her child, can you please focus on a young woman who isn't doing the show for front cover photo shoots and the salary?

Your reasoning behind this show is excellent. Being a mom is mind numbing and physically exhausting. It is even harder when the mom is not more then a child herself. Young girls (and guys) need to know that becoming a parent is a very real possibility if they are engaging in sexual intercourse. They need to know what being a parent looks like. It is not fun. It is not cute. Those adorable pictures of cooing, smiling infants are a sham. They are only cute, cuddly and completely clean for seconds. On top of mommy reality, it seems that this course of action has been effective. The percentage of teen pregnancies and births have dropped to the single digits in the last few years.

However, 'Teen Mom' is a two edged sword. On one side, you have the reasoning behind 'Teen Mom'; on the other, you have the perceptions about young moms it pervades. There are hundreds, if not thousands of young moms in the United States of America, and I am pretty sure almost all of them have a story to tell about a derogatory or dismissive comment or sneer made about them or about their child because mom is young. Media influences society. Your show, 'Teen Mom', has proved that. Please realize that the behaviors of the girls you portray on 'Teen Mom' creates a sometimes pessimistic view of all young moms and their maturity level. Being a mom is hard enough before adding on the feeling like you are fighting against the whole world.

Sincerely,

Ashley
a young mom