I commemorated Super Tuesday by voting the primary. I had decided to cast my ballot for Obama after reading about his view on immigration and listening to Michelle give a speech on CSPAN. I like Hillary very much. I think she's been badly treated by the press and anyone who doesn't approve of a First Lady who speaks her mind.

On Tuesday I felt I was making a considered decision based on facts. I bellied up to the booth to fill in the circle with the felt tipped pen. Then let it ride into the ballot box. Then, for some reason, I got choked up. I had not anticipated this vote would cause me to tear up, but it did. I was born the year that Rosa Parks took her seat on the bus. I grew up with civil rights and my life has been very different as a result. Yet, who knew when the day would come when I would get to vote for an African American candidate?

Tearing up was probably the most appropriate thing to do.

T.

3:10 to Yuma's Cinematographer

Phedon Papamichael.

Academy Awards

All I have to say is that Russell Crowe, Christian Bale and the "Yuma" cinematographer were robbed. Let's put Denzel Washington on that list, too. Different film, great performance.

I'm Going to Ghana!

I'm going to Ghana! Late last year, Jessica and Alayna asked me if I would like to be part of their 5 year project to bring the curriculum at the Academy of Hope up to National Standards. They sited several reasons why I would be useful ending with "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're older."

The Academy of Hope is the school for the children who live at the Village of Hope, an orphanage, in Fetteh, Ghana. The elders at the church of Christ in Tema oversee the work of the orphanage. Different groups in the US send doctors, dentists, builders, et al, to support the work with their skills. Jessica and Alayna went last summer for a couple of weeks to work on mathematics and found that the other content areas are also in need of some work. Notably science. Children in Ghana do not study science until the fourth grade. At that time they learn how to tend their gardens and chickens. Jessica and Alayna were able to obtain a telescope and held beginning astronomy lessons outside, under the moon and stars.

Another area of need is English language instruction. Ghana is a country with many languages. Many, many, many languages! Since it is a former British colony, English has become the unifying language of the land. Children come to the Village of Hope speaking one of the Ghanaian languages, but have to learn English so they can do their lessons in school. I have long been a proponent of teaching children to read in their mother tongue, then English. However, at Hope Academy, that is a luxury that cannot be accommodated. The teachers do not speak all the languages of their students and can only teach them in English.

There is a lot to learn before I go, where I know I will learn even more. I just pray that I can leave them with some new methods to use with the children that will help. I have seen photos of the children and look forward to meeting them. Especially Winnie. More on her later.

I have a lot of planning to do with Jessica. We will "meet" with Alayna via Skype as she has already arrived to spend several months at the Village of Hope. Pray for her work, our preparation and our fund raising efforts.

New Year

The Feast of the Epiphany is here and time to take down the boughs of holly and other assorted stuff that has been fun to look at the past few weeks. I will remove all the bits and bobs, but will keep the big tree up in the corner because it is heavy and we have a hard time finding the connection plugs. I purchased some bird ornaments to put on it that look like they will do for the rest of the year.
La Bufana arrives on her Testa Rosa broom. She brings giocchi e dulce to all the good bimbi in Italia. After her arrival, everyone goes back to work. I get a few more days until I start slogging away at the University. This is my last semester of coursework. I will have to take one last class in the summer session, but it will be the last. In the fall I look forward to writing my proposal and taking comps.
Outside of school, I've been asked to help with an education mission to Ghana. Because of the last class, I may not get to go with the team, but I will help them out with the work they plan to do in May. It's also been assumed that I will help get a scrapbooking group started at church as an outreach/encouragement project. Those who have assumed know me and I look forward to being part of the fun.
It will be a busy year.

News in the USA

Benazir Bhutto was assassinated yesterday. While CNN is giving it a lot of coverage, I feel I have to complain about the coverage of other stories. I have been watching CNN, not Headline News, because it usually has the hard news. While watching reports about Ms Bhutto's funeral and the tiger attack, I was disgusted by breaking news that Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn are divorcing. Americans are woefully ignorant of a lot of what happens in the rest of the world. One could argue that we live in a large country and we have a lot of our own news. But, when entertainment news goes shoulder to shoulder with reports of world events that argument falls flat. Sean Penn has won an Oscar or two and Robin is best known as Princess Buttercup, but all of that is pretty insignificant when compared to the assassination of a world leader. Shame on you CNN. We need to pay less attention to the painful, personal moments in the lives of celebrities and more on the important issues. When we ask why someone isn't doing something about global warming or world hunger, I think we need to ask ourselves why we spend so much time and money on celebrity gossip.

Christmas Eve

It is Christmas Eve here in the Old Pueblo. It's been a bit nippy here after the sun goes down and things cool off. There's snow on the mountains around town. I saw ice in the street left over from the hard frost we had.

The bad thing about Christmas this year is that Bonnie and Ryan are in Hawaii with the boys and Zoe decided to stay in Europe to travel during the winter break. I tried to find other lost souls to invite over for Christmas, but there just aren't any this year. It's sad. We used to make sure everyone had a place to go when we were in Europe. Here, everyone has a place to go and if you don't have family in town, or coming in....you're on your own.