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I wrote in the “sexually transmitted disease” – the sins of the mothers and the fathers go down their bloodlines 3-4 generations post at goodmorningbirmingham.com of my great disappointments as a father. As the day wore on, I realized what I had written mostly was about the full weight of my karma for having molested my younger sister when she was 5 and I was 15. My son, daughters’ older brother, died of sudden infant death syndrome. My physical health was suddenly destroyed about two years after my son died. The illness, which even then I knew was a God thing, wrecked my life, including my marriage, my relationship with my daughters, my career and even my later marriages.

As those realizations came to me, the horrible poisoned feeling in my organs and body fluids moved though and out of me, down the commode. My spirits began to lift somewhat, even as I continued having trouble getting my television fixed. The day before, the video portion quit working, but the sound worked okay. I knew I was not seeing something I needed to see. I knew there still was something I was not seeing, which I needed to see.

Then, amiga Hope of Birmingham responded to the sins of the mothers and the fathers post:

Sloan, today’s post is very heavy. I am trying to process it but this will probably take a long time. I had read some of it in previous posts but putting it all in one hits hard. Hope

I replied:

Hi, Hope -

Yeah, heavy for me, too. Alas, it is the terrain I was taken into many years ago, and sometimes threads comes back around. Last night in my sleep, I saw my daughters’ old baby sitter, who lives near Birmingham now, and she said to me, “If you don’t do it, you will never preach again.” Putting that together with several other dreams from last night left me convinced what I had written yesterday, and what I had written nearly two weeks ago, with Morticia of Locust Fork, was ready to fly. I knew back then the Morticia part would fly eventually, because of a dream. Just not when. Holding something like the Morticia part of today’s post inside of me for that long is very rough on me. The physical load seems to be lifting pretty well today. But that’s in passing, if history is reliable, something else will come in soon enough; and I’m still sitting on something really heavy which ended just before the dialogue with Morticia,which I felt I was going to publish.

This political stuff I write into is not what I was trained to do and to speak to. It was added on later, as I described in today’s post, when I was on the bus from Los Angeles to the Keys in 2000. Before that, it was far more like what I wrote today on the Birmingham website. As time passes, I see some things a little differently, or a little more of the details. Imagine me sitting in a St. Luke’s Sunday school class telling some of these stories. I did that in 1998-1999, but very toned down, and even then most of them were freaking out. I met quite a few times with John Claypool in his office, and we had some interesting conversations I doubt he passed along to many people, maybe to his wife. Even with John, I had to be very careful what I said and what I didn’t say. People just can’t grok someone saying he used to be pretty normal, then he started having direct dealings with beings who do not live on this planet and nothing was ever the same again, and his way of looking at things changed completely. Weird, there are stories in the Bible of that happening to people, but that seldom goes anywhere when I mention it to people who wear the Bible on their sleeve.

Hope all going well with you, given time, gravity and life’s servings.

Sloan

Note: John Claypool was St. Luke’s rector. St. Luke’s is my sister’s church. St. Luke’s was my mother’s church, in which my sister, my brother and I were christened. I was forced through confirmation. I refused to be forced to be an acolyte. I left that church in my late teens, but I went back to it for a couple of years starting early 1998. Then, I was moved to churches without walls or definition. Then, I wondered when was I ever not in church?

Later same day brought this email from Wisconsin amigo Mark, who recently stayed with me and about whom I wrote in the the scientist, the evangelist, the mystic – and attention deficit syndrome, religious fanaticism and most other human ailments cure – the Holy Ghost (aka the feminine) post:

Hey Sloan. I don’t read your posts daily and had no idea the first one re: sexually transmitted disease involved family matters, but after reading I am glad I was led to open it. This simple minded Yankee cannot begin to process all that you wrote, but for me the bottom line is that the past is the past and only the present and future matter. There may be many scars and you have beaten yourself up more than any human deserves. Foremost, I am glad our discussion regarding Nelle & Alice is still with you. Regardless of the past and as the father of 2 young ladies myself, I still hope you can make peace and reestablish a loving relationship with them. It’s important. When I told you this, you said “they are both grown women and the balls in their court” since your sense was they rejected you at your father’s funeral. I don’t buy for a minute that the ball’s in their court, regardless of what the angels are telling you. I’m no angel, but God did send me just as he sent them to counsel you. Please listen to your heart. It is not whole without having a relationship with those who you helped bring into this world. Seek them out, listen, speak little, ask and give forgiveness. I know it sounds so simple, but I think your mental horsepower and over-analysis of issues is your Achilles heel at times. I asked if you believed there is a single heaven and you told me there may be multiple heavens. Should that be true, you don’t have an infinite amount of time to resolve your relationship with these ladies. Can they? Sure? Should they? Yes. Can you? Absolutely. Should you? Absolutely! Nobody needs to be a broker or messenger for you in this very important mission for everyone’s benefit. Peace, Mark

After a day and a night of thrashing around, I replied to Mark:

Hi, Mark – Been pondering your comments. I agree, it’s a bad situation. However, after I told you the whole of what had happened at my father’s wake, in 2005 you said there was nothing I could do. My heart does not tell me to do anything. If the angels tell me to do something, I will do it, even if my heart disagrees with the angels. Many times the angels have told me to do things I didn’t want to do, and I have done those things when my heart was not in it. As for forgiveness, I do not ask people to forgive me. I admit my wrong and say I screwed up. Asking for forgiveness puts pressure on the other person. My daughters do not need to ask me to forgive them. They don’t have to apologize. I never stopped loving them. I don’t know what I did, if it was one thing, or several things, which led to them taking the position they took. I told their mother I didn’t know, and she told me it was up to them to tell me. That was in late 2003, when she was hiring lawyers to protect her from me, after I called her to say I was staying in Tuscaloosa with my old canoeing buddy, Michael Cornwell, for a while. I told you about all of that when you were here, and that she is running Nelle and Alice, and I didn’t see anything changing as long as she was alive. Which brings me back to my father’s wake, where she told them it was not okay for them to have a meal with me, if I drove down to Tuscaloosa to see them before they went back to Kentucky, where they then lived. And they looked at me and shrugged. I’m still praying on this. A lot. Sloan

———————————————-

Mark mentioned Achilles’ heel. During my last phone conversation with my oldest daughter, Nelle, early 2000 as I recall, she told me what was going through her head when she was 5 and darted down a driveway to cross a street in front of an approaching vehicle, a game the kids in the neighborhood played, she said. First I’d heard of that. She didn’t beat the car, it struck her on her bicycle, nearly severed her left leg above the ankle. I flagged down a passing motorist, who drove us to the hospital. The orthopedic surgeon on call came in and sewed her leg back together, said he thought he may have saved her leg. I was in shambles.

I told Nelle, the next day, instead of going to the hospital during lunch, to see her, I went to the YMCA and played 4-wall handball. I was playing very well, and as I set up to take a right hand kill shot from the back court, I felt what I thought was someone step on the back of my right lower leg. I went down in great pain. I looked back, there was no one behind me. I hobbled off the court. By the time I reached my law office, my lower right leg was badly swollen. The next morning I was in the same orthopedic surgeon’s office. He said I had ruptured my Achilles’ heel and Nelle would walk before I did. She walked before I told Nelle, for many years I had thought the reason she was run over by that car was she was trying to get my attention. Get me out of the  YMCA and away from handball. Get me home, with her. She was run over, and I went to the YMCA to play handball. She asked why I did that? I said I was really messed up. It was inexcusable. Nelle became quiet. I asked how she was doing? She said she didn’t know how she was doing, it would take time for her to know how she was doing. Except for a few words at my father’s wake five years later, we have not since spoken or corresponded back and forth.

During that same phone conversation, as I recall, Nelle told me of something going on with Alice and her husband, David, which I knew was very serious and painful for Alice and for David. I wrote to them both. Alice did not like what I wrote, I learned two months later from David, after he left her. I learned of it in Costa Rica, where David “bumped” into me, not having a clue I was in Costa Rica. He was like a son to me. I absolved him, told him to move ahead with his life, I hoped it went well for him. I wrote to Alice and told her what had happened in Costa Rica. I gave her more fatherly advice.

Since then, I suppose I wrote to Nelle, and to Alice maybe a dozen times. Some, what I sent to them was impersonal. “Theological.” Some of it was personal. Nothing came back.

A thought came while I watched a movie on my new Radio Shack television, the old TV was busted, it turned out. Perhaps I could ask Nelle to return my childhood photos of her and Alice, which I had mailed to Nelle in early 2000 to safe keep for me, because I was leaving on an open-ended trip to where I knew not, after giving up my apartment in Birmingham and getting rid of my physical possessions except, it would turn out, clothes I could get into a traveling bag, and credit cards and my driver’s license and passport. First stop outside USA was Costa Rica. Last stop was Key West, via South Africa, Mauritius, India, Tokyo, Hawaii.

Then, I thought, I really didn’t want the childhood photos back. I wanted my daughters back. Or did I? I wasn’t sure. I needed to see and feel that ambivalence, be honest about it. And, I needed to be honest about what I was looking at. They are not my daughters, they are God’s. I was just their caretaker when they were young. Not all that good a caretaker.

When I was moved to look up Nelle’s and Alice’s Facebook accounts today, I could get into Alice’s but was blocked out of Nelle’s. I don’t recall ever sending either of them anything by Facebook.

I have an old phone number for Nelle, which I found years ago online but never used it. Maybe it’s still a good number, maybe not. Her wishes seem loud and clear, though. I do not force people I love to do anything. Ever. Period. The end. I’m bawling.

That leaves Alice, the eye surgeon, who told me in a dream about two years ago that she would never leave me. I dream of her from time to time. She helps me see what I am not seeing. Maybe she will come to me in a dream tonight.

The road the angels took me down crushed and destroyed everything truly dear to me. Also crushed were my hopes and dreams. For years, all I do is get out of bed and do what is in front of me, expecting nothing to come from it, enjoying what is enjoyable, while wishing each day is my last.

Mark wants far more than I for me to reconcile with my daughters. Maybe God wants far more than I for that reconciliation to happen. If so, “He” sure has a funny way of going about it.

————————————————-

Next day, which is today, 7 May 2013.

I dreamt last night of Nelle and a US Post Office. On waking, I felt I should write to her about the childhood photos, if she still has them. As mi amiga Sandy Downs suggested last night, I will say I love her, and sign it “Daddy,” which is what she and Alice used to call me.

After some effort online, I was unable to locate a U.S. Post Office mailing address for Nelle. However, I know where her husband works and can send the letter care of him at his business address.

I heard nothing yet about trying to contact Alice.

————————————————–

Later today, 7 May 2013.

I was not clear if it was alright to publish the above today, so I took a morning nap, which I do nearly every morning. Dianne, Nelle and Alice’s mother, came in a dream and gave me a hand-made shirt that would not shrink, for a Tibetan lama. I awoke, thought, hmmm, love and detachment, that sound’s like a Tibetan lama’s path.

I dragged myself out of bed and went online and saw an invitation from Nelle and Alice’s old baby sitter for me to connect with her on Lindkin. The other night, she told me in a dream, if I didn’t do something, I would never preach again. That led to my publishing the prequel to this post at goodmorningbirmingham.com, to which my Wisconsin friend Mark had responded as told further above.

Also in my in box after my nap was this reply from Mark to my email to him yesterday reproduced further above:

Sloan:

I cannot imagine not having contact with my girls and know it has taken a toll on you. I think the saying “time heals all wounds” has some truth to it, IF there is reflection during the time. God knows you probably reflect on this wound every hour of every day. Perhaps they are doing the same… If you can listen to one man’s message, I can’t help but offer Jimmy Valvano’s famous speech where he said the famous words “Don’t Give Up, Don’t Ever Give Up”… Here is the abridged and full speech.

Abridged:            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIr1VrgZHd0

Full Speech:       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuoVM9nm42E

I hope with all my heart that you can have a presence in your girls life and they in yours. Life on earth is so short, there is not enough time to accomplish everything, but if you can touch them again I am confident it will be one of the most important things you do for everyone. They are your legacy, and need you more than you or they know…

As I told you, I consider you one of the most important people in my life, someone who has provided interesting perspectives and advice on many issues. I thank you for our friendship and only hope that I can give back a few % of what I have gained from you.

Love and Peace,

Mark

Actually, the only toll of which I am aware comes when I am leaned on by other people to do something about the situation with my daughters. Otherwise, I seldom think of it, although sometimes I have an emotional dream about them. Even so, the nap dream and what followed looks to me like very strong indication that I should not to shrink from, but I need to publish this father’s dilemma post today, and I should not to shrink from, but I need to write to Nelle. Perhaps I will tell her of this post and the prequel post. I haven’t gotten that far with this yet.

I learned long ago, in the spirit world people tend to relate very differently with each other from the way they relate on this world. Dianne sometimes has come to me in dreams in the past with helpful messages. I wonder why she, and the angels, have waited so long to tell me to do this? All the other times when friends leaned on me to do something about it, Dianne and the angels were silent. When the angels are silent, that means straight up they are okay with my position.

I replied to Mark:

Hi, Mark -

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

There is a post today at goodmorningkeywest.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: glad tidings from Key West: channel-widening charade, Tree Commission shenanigans, Tabernacle Church Jesus karma

With less than a month to go before the new Horace O’Bryant K-8 school must be ready to accept students into its new classrooms, School Board member Ed Davidson has discovered what he calls yet another financial discrepancy relating to its construction.

This time around the brouhaha involves payments requested by the School District but partially denied by Bank of America, which is entrusted with the bond funding for the $40 million project.

“With four weeks left until we have to close out the HOB stimulus funding, the School Board and the public still have inadequate information concerning more than $2 million in project-related funds,” Davidson said. “Add in the disputed change orders and we’re well north of $3 million. I have requested some of this documentation, which is specifically required by the terms of the contract, for several months now, but major pieces are still missing from the puzzle.”

Knowing Ed, he is hopping mad that the school district can not (or will not) provide him, a school board member, information he is legally entitled to receive pronto, so he can do his job correctly. Ergo, maybe this indicates heretofore the school district has not had a school board member stick his/her nose more than an inch deep into school district finances. Maybe this indicates the school district believes school board members are suppose to keep their noses stuck some place else more convenient to the school district. Read on.

Of particular concern to Davidson are six requests for payment that Bank of America partially disallowed, for a grand total of $909,550 between December 2011 and February this year.

In one 25-day period this year between Jan. 15 and Feb. 11, the bank withheld $511,827 from the district’s payment requests, thus requiring some of the six partially denied billings to be funded from other sources.

“Coastal Construction, the contractor, appears to have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars that the bank has not reimbursed the district for,” Davidson said. “If this is the final decision of the bank, then the disapproved fund requests will have to be paid from other sources, which will require specific board authorization as an official budget amendment.”

Davidson added, “At the moment the board has practically no detailed explanation about the specific reasons the bank disallowed these funding requests.”

Seems at this moment the board has no one in the school district willing, or able, to explain any of this. Does that give you a warm comfy feeling, or what? Does that make you long for a state takeover of this school district, or what? The other day, Nashville J sent me this link, about a FEDERAL TAKEOVER of the El Paso, Texas school district. 

Justice Department OKs ousting El Paso Independent School …

J sent this today:

Sloan:

Ed is bringing up lots of questions but getting no concrete answers. The smell is getting rather pungent with all the stonewalling, not hiring and doing a full audit of the funds BEFORE it will make no difference. One would certainly think that a $38 million project would have someone who is in charge and can produce all the information about where the money has gone and why the paper work has not been delivered. There is a dead skunk in the middle of the road and it is stinking to high heaven!

Yesterday J sent:

The Citizen article continues.

In addition to the partial nonpayment issue, Davidson is also concerned about a 10 percent retainage provision of the original contract with Coastal, which meant that a portion of all payments to the contractor were to be withheld.

Although this provision was later reduced, the retained balance at one point totaled $840,070, though now it appears to have been reduced to $653,392, for which the board, once again, apparently has no explanation.

Besides that, there is a contractor contingency, required by the contract terms, at the level of $563,569, of which the terms and authority to spend are unclear.

“Obviously,” Davidson said, “if you do the math, these three issues alone total over $2 million of taxpayer money, which isn’t exactly petty cash. This project cries out for the serious and thorough audit, which should have started a long time ago.”

Come on, Ed. You know this school district never learned 2 + 2 = 4 in grade school. If it had learned that, you probably never would have felt called to attend school board meetings for over ten years, and school board Audit & Finance Committee meetings for over 2 years, and run for the school board seat you now hold, after winning that seat last year.

Superintendent Mark Porter on April 30 released to all board members, including Davidson, a spreadsheet listing dozens of payments, including the six partial payments in question. It contains a note describing the contested payments as being “incorrectly characterized as disallowed payments,” attributed to interim Director of Finance and Performance Jim Drake.

The same Jim Drake who misreported the Manatee County school district’s finances and nearly bankrupted that school district before he was found out.

“Call it what you want, but we’re short almost a million dollars in bank reimbursements, about which the board was only informed two days ago, at my insistence,” Davidson said.

“If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

“Praise in public, criticize in private” School Board Chairman Andy Griffiths on Friday explained that, “A portion of these requisitions were not appropriate for the stimulus bonds and thus had to be removed from the requisitions. An example of disqualified requisitions would be furniture, fixtures and equipment that are not part of the construction project. This project is slightly over budget due to board-approved change orders, the biggest of which involved removing the contaminated soils and lowering the roof design.”

Note how carefully Andy avoided saying what percentage of the dollar total of those “disqualified requisitions were furniture, fixtures and equipment that are not part of the construction project.” The same Andy who, I imagine, very much wishes “Put everything in the bright sunshine for all to see” Ed Davidson had not been elected to the school board last year.

Porter was traveling on Friday and could not be reached for comment.

Davidson said he would bring the matter up at the next board meeting.

See trailing email from Larry Murray, my interjected thoughts in italics:

tschmida@keysnews.com

Tim:

The wisest words I saw this week…

They came in an important, thought-provoking piece by a Stanford University professor named Sean Reardon, and ran in The New York Times:

“There is a lot of discussion these days about investing in teachers and ‘improving’ teacher quality,’ but improving the quality of our parenting and of our children’s earliest environments may be even more important. Let’s invest in parents,” he says, “so they can better invest in their children. This means finding ways of helping parents become better teachers themselves…. It might also mean greater business and government support for maternity and paternity leave and (child) care so that the middle class and the poor can get some of the educational benefits that the early academic intervention of the rich provides their children. Fundamentally, it means rethinking our still-persistent notion that educational problems should be solved by schools alone. The more we do to ensure that children have similar cognitively early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools. This in turn will enable us to let our schools focus on teaching the skills – how to solve complex problems, how to think critically, and how to collaborate – essential to a growing economy and a lively democracy.”

When, oh when, are we going to act as though we really know that?

Dave Lawrence
Chair
The Children’s Movement of Florida

P.S.: To read the full article, just click here.

My stomach turned and soured over teaching tots reading, writing and arithmetic, when they are still supposed to be playing and exploring and learning in that way. Unimaginable harm is done to children forced into a grade school curriculum before their minds and souls are ready. Unimaginable harm also is done to children forced to learn by rote, instead of through applied hands-on experience. The entire dumb blonde American teaching model is soul destructive.

Here’s the full article, it’s pretty long. My interjected thoughts in italics:

No Rich Kid Left Behind

Javier Jaén

The Great Divideis a series about inequality.

TAGS:

BLACKS, CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION,INCOME INEQUALITY,RESEARCH

Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.

There it is, the premise (myth) for all that follows: college education is the Holy Grail for all children in America.

Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer.

What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially.

One way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years. When I did this using information from a dozen large national studies conducted between 1960 and 2010, I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago.

To make this trend concrete, consider two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that 10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below $15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above $165,000.

In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

The same pattern is evident in other, more tangible, measures of educational success, like college completion. In a study similar to mine, Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, economists at the University of Michigan, found that the proportion of students from upper-income families who earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by 18 percentage points over a 20-year period, while the completion rate of poor students has grown by only 4 points.

In a more recent study, my graduate students and I found that 15 percent of high-income students from the high school class of 2004 enrolled in a highly selective college or university, while fewer than 5 percent of middle-income and 2 percent of low-income students did.

I cannot imagine that our school board and schools superintendent and principals and teachers do not know of these statistics and trends. Yet they continue to force all students into a teaching model which clearly is not working well for at least half of their students. A teaching model Europeans do not use. They measure students, rich and poor, and put them into curriculums where they have the most aptitude and best chance of using in jobs. Yes, rich Europeans can bypass that teaching mode by sending their not college ready or able students to colleges which accept their parents’ money. Over all, though, European students, rich and poor, end up where they have the best chance of moving forward in life. An alien concept in America, and in the Florida Keys school district, even though our school district’s vision statement for many years has been to have high school graduates college and/or career ready. 

These widening disparities are not confined to academic outcomes: new research by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam and his colleagues shows that the rich-poor gaps in student participation in sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer work and church attendance have grown sharply as well.

Did the Harvard political scientist consider that the reason for this gap might be a dumb blonde teaching model, which does not examine each student and guide that student toward his/her most suited courses? Does the Harvard political scientist consider that the dumb blonde teaching model itself needs to be seriously studied and changed? 

In San Francisco this week, more than 14,000 educators and education scholars have gathered for the annual meeting of theAmerican Educational Research Association. The theme this year is familiar: Can schools provide children a way out of poverty?

We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform.Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families.

How about teaching children trade skills from the first day of school? How about teaching American children children hands-on skills from the first day of school? How about teaching American children music from the first day of school. And art? And mechanics? And poetry? And dance? And drama? And creative writing? And story telling? And typing? And a conversation only second language, Spanish? How about engaging the whole child from the first day of school, instead only a small part of the child’s left brain hemisphere? Do you think that method might produce better results for kids generally, than the dumb blonde model now in use?

Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing. For the past few years, alongside other scholars, I have been digging into historical data to understand just that. The results of this research don’t always match received wisdom or playground folklore.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich.

Before we can figure out what’s happening here, let’s dispel a few myths.

RELATED

A Look at the Data

Graphs highlight some of the trends described in this article.

• Go to the Charts »

 

The income gap in academic achievement is not growing because the test scores of poor students are dropping or because our schools are in decline. In fact, average test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called Nation’s Report Card, have been rising — substantially in math and very slowly in reading — since the 1970s. The average 9-year-old today has math skills equal to those her parents had at age 11, a two-year improvement in a single generation. The gains are not as large in reading and they are not as large for older students, but there is no evidence that average test scores have declined over the last three decades for any age or economic group.

The widening income disparity in academic achievement is not a result of widening racial gaps in achievement, either. The achievement gaps between blacks and whites, and Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites have been narrowing slowly over the last two decades, trends that actually keep the yawning gap between higher- and lower-income students from getting even wider. If we look at the test scores of white students only, we find the same growing gap between high- and low-income children as we see in the population as a whole.

It may seem counterintuitive, but schools don’t seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10 percent between kindergarten and high school. There is some evidence that achievement gaps between high- and low-income students actually narrow during the nine-month school year, but they widen again in the summer months.

This snake seems to have turned around and swallowed its own tail.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t important differences in quality between schools serving low- and high-income students — there certainly are — but they appear to do less to reinforce the trends than conventional wisdom would have us believe.

If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school.

Okay, you pass a law saying rich kids cannot be taught in their homes? Rich kids cannot be given computers, I-Pads, video games, Rubick cubes, Legos, tinker toys, erector sets, model electric train sets, etc? You create a department in Homeland Security to enforce that?  Or, do you use a teaching model geared to engage young students as human beings with their own inclinations and abilities waiting to be discovered and encouraged and developed?

My research suggests that one part of the explanation for this is rising income inequality. As you may have heard, the incomes of the rich have grown faster over the last 30 years than the incomes of the middle class and the poor. Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and — in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs — access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves.

This Stanford author is getting repetitive. Redundant also comes to mind. And boring. This Stanford author also is sounding like he is not in touch with reality. What’s he gonna do, take money away from rich families and give it to poor families, and then he’s going to have a legion of overseers to make sure the poor families spend the rich families’ Robin-Hooded money to give their poor kids the same things the rich kids have? And, he like’s testing 4-year-olds? And preschool test preparation tutors? Is he freaking serious? By the way, Standford is the west coast’s answer to Harvard, Princeton and Yale. My father and his father both went to Princeton, and as far as I can tell, it didn’t help them one bit in the rest of their lives. They made their fortunes by their wits and lots of hard work. My father’s fortune depended heavily on his knowledge of mechanics and electronics, which he learned on his own when he was a kid. My grandfather’s fortune depended heavily on his business savvy, which he learned from his father, a self-educated Polish Jew who came to America when he was 15, alone.

But rising income inequality explains, at best, half of the increase in the rich-poor academic achievement gap. It’s not just that the rich have more money than they used to, it’s that they are using it differently. This is where things get really interesting.

High-income families are increasingly focusing their resources — their money, time and knowledge of what it takes to be successful in school — on their children’s cognitive development and educational success. They are doing this because educational success is much more important than it used to be, even for the rich.

What about job success? What about life success? What about relationship success? What about mental health success? I bet rich families spend heaps more per kid on psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, rehab centers, than do poor families. 

With a college degree insufficient to ensure a high-income job, or even a job as a barista, parents are now investing more time and money in their children’s cognitive development from the earliest ages. It may seem self-evident that parents with more resources are able to invest more — more of both money and of what Mr. Putnam calls “‘Goodnight Moon’ time” — in their children’s development. But even though middle-class and poor families are also increasing the time and money they invest in their children, they are not doing so as quickly or as deeply as the rich.

Maybe the rich Americans today should start their own country with its own school system, or maybe poor families should be deported to Mexico or wherever.

The economists Richard J. Murnane and Greg J. Duncan report that from 1972 to 2006 high-income families increased the amount they spent on enrichment activities for their children by 150 percent, while the spending of low-income families grew by 57 percent over the same time period. Likewise, the amount of time parents spend with their children has grown twice as fast since 1975 among college-educated parents as it has among less-educated parents. The economists Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey of the University of California, San Diego, call this escalation of early childhood investment “the rug rat race,” a phrase that nicely captures the growing perception that early childhood experiences are central to winning a lifelong educational and economic competition.

It’s not clear what we should do about all this. Partly that’s because much of our public conversation about education is focused on the wrong culprits: we blame failing schools and the behavior of the poor for trends that are really the result of deepening income inequality and the behavior of the rich.

I always heard that money is the root of all evil, but I wager the dumb blonde teaching model used in America is  giving money a serious run for that distinction. 

We’re also slow to understand what’s happening, I think, because the nature of the problem — a growing educational gap between the rich and the middle class — is unfamiliar. After all, for much of the last 50 years our national conversation about educational inequality has focused almost exclusively on strategies for reducing inequalities between the educational successes of the poor and the middle class, and it has relied on programs aimed at the poor, like Head Start and Title I.

Aiming a learning a trade, typing, and another or other languages would work a lot better.

We’ve barely given a thought to what the rich were doing. With the exception of our continuing discussion about whether the rising costs of higher education are pricing the middle class out of college, we don’t have much practice talking about what economists call “upper-tail inequality” in education, much less success at reducing it.

Meanwhile, not only are the children of the rich doing better in school than even the children of the middle class, but the changing economy means that school success is increasingly necessary to future economic success, a worrisome mutual reinforcement of trends that is making our society more socially and economically immobile.

Darn, is this Stanford author going nowhere but in circles.

We need to start talking about this. Strangely, the rapid growth in the rich-poor educational gap provides a ray of hope: if the relationship between family income and educational success can change this rapidly, then it is not an immutable, inevitable pattern. What changed once can change again. Policy choices matter more than we have recently been taught to think.

So how can we move toward a society in which educational success is not so strongly linked to family background? Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it.

No way America can afford this author’s plan and have a military which is bigger than and costs more than all other countries’ military combined, and when America fights stupid wars when I doesn’t have the money to pay for same, using soldiers who came from middle income and low income families. It would go a long way toward solving this author’s concerns for kids from rich families to have just as much exposure to American military adventures as kids from middle and low income families. If that method had been used when George W. Bush was at Yale, instead of his rich Yale alum Texas father getting his kid into the Alabama Air National Guard unit in Montgomery, even thought G.W. did not live in Alabama,  from which unit G.W. went A.W.O.L.

But for his rich father’s string pulling, G.W. A.W.O.L. would have gone to federal prison like a dear friend of mine in Key West from a middle income Idaho family did when he was 18, because he refused to be inducted and be sent to Vietnam, which was a US Military-Industrial Complex intervention into a Asian civil war which had nothing to do with America. My friend served all of a 3-year sentence, and he has been screwed up ever since. Or, G.W.A.W.O.L. would have been sent to Vietnam where he might have been killed or maimed and terminally battle-shocked like my dear Key West friend due to being in federal prison from age 18-21.

Maybe if G.W.A.O.L. had gone to federal prison or Vietnam, America would not now be so broke from G.W. A.W.O.L.’s two seriously stupid ruinous wars that it can’t afford its own military any more, so it prints money to pay for its military and wars, which shambles the American economy even worse, and widens the rich and poor gap even farther. Maybe if G.W. A.W.O.L had gone to federal prison or Vietnam, America’s military would not be the only real trade school option for kids from middle and low income families. Real, because it’s free. I wonder if this Stanford author backed G.W.A.W.O.L.’s two seriously stupid wars? I don’t wonder if this Stanford author fought in either of those two seriously stupid ruinous wars.

But we need to do much more than expand and improve preschool and child care. There is a lot of discussion these days about investing in teachers and “improving teacher quality,” but improving the quality of our parenting and of our children’s earliest environments may be even more important. Let’s invest in parents so they can better invest in their children.

This means finding ways of helping parents become better teachers themselves. This might include strategies to support working families so that they can read to their children more often.. It also means expanding programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership that have proved to be effective at helping single parents educate their children; but we also need to pay for research to develop new resources for single parents.

It might also mean greater business and government support for maternity and paternity leave and day care so that the middle class and the poor can get some of the educational benefits that the early academic intervention of the rich provides their children. Fundamentally, it means rethinking our still-persistent notion that educational problems should be solved by schools alone.

Where’s the money gonna come from to pay for all of this, assuming poor families want their lives run by government workers?

The more we do to ensure that all children have similar cognitively stimulating early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools. This in turn will enable us to let our schools focus on teaching the skills — how to solve complex problems, how to think critically and how to collaborate — essential to a growing economy and a lively democracy.

You want to stimulate first-graders cognitively, and in all other ways, teach them to fix a washing machine. Teach them to play a harmonica. Teach them to type. Teach them another language in a course where they only can speak that language. Teach them to sew. Teach them to create a website. Teach them to write a computer program. Teach them to tell stories, and let them write down their stories in their native language and in their adopted language. Don’t grade them on spelling and grammar.  Don’t grade them at all, but show them the correct spelling and grammar, and encourage them to keep telling stories and writing them down, and watch how quickly they learned to read and write. There are so many ways to teach young children, which help them. The dumb blonde teaching model hurts them, and worse.

---

Sean F. Reardon is a professor of education and sociology at Stanford.

I wonder if Stanford professor of education and sociology Reardon has figured out yet that America can’t provide affordable health care coverage to most of its citizen because of how much America spends on its military and wars? I wonder if Reardon ever read Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED? There’s a Reardon in that tale, who excelled in business, and going to college had nothing to do with it.

My oldest second Bashinsky cousin sent this today:

As for Vietnam, a fellow who used to live in Key West put this onto Facebook today:

I never forget…a very sad day…in the annals of free speech, a day of infamy. National Guard troops open fire on unarmed college students (including some who were simply walking to clas and not in the protest) killing four…at Kent State University in Ohio, May 4th, 1970. Four dead and no one was arrested and no one was punished…and many “man in the street” interviews expressed that they “got what they deserved”…BUT no one should ever be shot by our government for speaking their mind.

My sixth wife was one of the Kent State students on whom the Ohio National Guard opened fire. She told me that she and a bunch of the students jumped up and ran away, and when they reached a knoll she veered left and the rest of them went ahead together and were caught up with by pursuing national guardsmen who shot some of the fleeing students. Unarmed students, protesting US bombings in Cambodia or maybe it was Laos. Protesting Democrat President Lyndon Johnson’s expansion of the war in Vietnam without Congressional approval. When they would not disperse, when they would not quit calling out Uncle Sam, when they would not quit taunting the national guardsmen, they were shot at and many of them were killed. No national guardsmen, nor their commanding officer, were prosecuted. My wife never got over it. She never trusted American government again. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t thrust America’s government either. Hadn’t since Vietnam. That’s something else first graders should be taught – Vietnam and Kent State, and G.W.A.W.O.L and how going to his father’s Ivy League alma mater later got him elected President of the United States of America. LOL that being taught to American first graders.

Sloan Bashinsky, B.A. Economics, Vanderbilt. J.D, and L.L.M in Tax Law, University of Alabama School of Law

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

No, I did not dodge the Vietnam draft. God dodged me out of it after I had signed up to be drafted. That’s another story I would love to tell Keys first graders. Lots of luck, unless they read it on my websites.

From: Naja Girard <bluepapermailbox@gmail.com>Date: April 28, 2013, 2:01:19 PM EDTTo: circulation@thebluepaper.com Subject: Fwd: Breaking News: Balfour Beatty’s Lawsuit Against the Property Appraiser: The Truth Comes Out

http://thebluepaper.com/news/breaking/

Published April 28, 2013

Breaking News!

THE TRUTH COMES OUT:  74% OF BALFOUR BEATTY’S RENTALS AT KEY WEST NAVY BASE  ARE RENTED TO CIVILIANSOnly 26% of the 890 NAS Key West rental units owned by Balfour Beatty/Southeast are rented to active Navy personnel.
“The property is leased to both active Navy personnel and their families and other classes including non-military and civilian tenants.  While the percent of Navy occupants changes annually, there were 20% of active Navy tenants in 2008 and 26% of active Navy tenants in 2012.  This is a stark comparison to the allegation of Plaintiff’s counsel [Spoonhour] that only 1% is occupied by non-Navy.“ – Property Appraiser Attorney, John Dent, in his Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant’s Motion For Summary Judgment Balfour Beatty had refused to make this information public, but when the international developers decided to sue Monroe County Property Appraiser this important piece of information found its way into official court filings.NEXT ISSUE:  thousands of emails obtained by Key West The Newspaper reveal multiple complaints by Base Commanders concerning the way Balfour is running its business.HELP US CONTINUE OUR INVESTIGATION.  SEND TIPS TO editor@thebluepaper.comand learn how you can support The Blue Paper here.See also:  http://thebluepaper.com/article/tax-loophole-would-help-balfour-beatty-but-hurt-children-of-military-families/

PUBLISHED APRIL 12, 2013

TAX LOOPHOLE WOULD HELP BALFOUR BEATTY BUT WOULD HURT CHILDREN OF MILITARY FAMILIES

by ARNAUD AND NAJA GIRARD

Last Tuesday the Monroe County School Board voted unanimously to voice their opposition to the local tax loophole sought in the Florida legislature by private military housing contractor Balfour Beatty. The resolution came as no surprise, since public school students are bound to be the biggest losers if a tax exemption is adopted.  Of the $ 11.5 M in back property taxes owed by Balfour Beatty, about 1/3 would go to the school district.  In Monroe County 80% of public school funding comes from property taxes.  Funding has been so low in recent years that last year’s budget cuts were in the neighborhood of $ 6.2 M.

and  this from The New York Times (2004)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/realestate/in-the-region-connecticut-groton-naval-housing-to-get-private-management.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

BY the end of the year, more than 2,000 military families living in southeastern Connecticut will have a new landlord. The United States Navy is preparing to select a contractor to operate and improve its housing near the Naval Submarine Base in Groton.

The public-private venture is expected to result in the construction of 150 new apartments and a complete renovation of 1,400 others, said Capt. James E. Ratte Jr., the base commander.

…

The privatization of base housing also means that the town will soon be collecting taxes on the apartments, because the contractor will own them, Captain Ratte said. That will mean a windfall for the town.

The Groton assessor, John S. Philip, said this would also mean a lot of work for his office, since the units have never been subject to a formal valuation process because they were federal property. He estimated that apartments are worth $16,000 to $40,000 each and will raise the town’s tax base by at least $32 million and tax revenues by some $700,000.

TO UNSUBSCRIBE simply send an email to circulation@thebluepaper.com and type “UNSUBSCRIBE” in the subject line.

Arnaud and Naja Girard

KEY WEST THE NEWSPAPER

(The Blue Paper)

http://thebluepaper.com

I replied:

Has this information been provided to Holly Raschein and the members of the Florida House and Senate?

Naja wrote:

Will send to Holly and House as well.

I replied:

The House is where the whores seem to be living on this issue.

————————————

There, and the Mayor’s office in Key West City Hall. Only Mayor Cates voted against the City Commission Resolution voicing opposition to the Florida House of Representatives bill giving the British company Balfour Beatty a retroactive free pass on paying land taxes on property it bought in Florida from the Navy and other branches of the US Government Military. I still wonder how the House of Representatives would have voted if British Petroleum, instead of Balfour Betty, had bought the military housing? Meanwhile, 

based on all I have read of Mayor Cates, as reported in The Key West Citizen, he also wants to see the channel gouged out to accommodate mega cruise ships, to further clog Duval Street sidewalks with hordes of half-day tourists, and to further clog city streets and neighborhoods with loud blaring conch trains and trolleys hauling said hordes of half-day tourists around the city to improve the quality of life of the city’s residents. More on that sore subject from amiga Ginger in Jupiter Beach, who has come to Key West several times on cruise ships. I borrowed the cartoon from an old edition of The Key West Citizen. Dear Sloan,

If you have GOOGLE EARTH SATELLITE on your computer, you can go in and look at the satellite map photos of Key West and look at all the channels dug through the coral reefs around Key West.  I’m curious, did they actually vote yes on the digging and dredging and get the  money? It’s stupid as many people don’t want to visit Key West anymore on their Western Caribbean cruises anymore. They would prefer to spend more time in Belize and Mexico, and for the cruises to St. Thomas, Puerto Rico and Martinique, they want to spend more time shopping, supposedly duty free–in the Caribbean. Also, like the jumbo bus jets, people are getting leery of the giant passenger ships as it is obvious what a production it is to get people–especially 5000 or 6000 people, plus crew of 1500 to 2000 off a SINKING SHIP. I haven’t taken a cruise in 2 years, but I would not book on a big super ship as it’s exhausting walking back and forth to dinner, to lunch, to breakfast, to the pool, to the spa, getting on and off the ship [if exit in the back and one is in a cabin in the front]. Younger people might not care as they enjoy walking several miles a day, but not the older people and disabled people. Hope City of Key West doesn’t waste their money and destroy their reefs hoping to make some extra money from the few extra people visiting in the big ships. Virginia in Jupiter

Likewise, this letter to the editor in The Key West Citizen:

Swift’s vision of park differs from public’s

I would like to thank Ed Swift for his gracious reply to my recent letter concerning the Navy taking back the Mole Pier and shutting down his Duck Tours ramp. I say his, because that is what it was for a short time, a private launching ramp in a public park for Historic Tours of America Ducks only. Sounds like an exclusive arrangement to me. Of course we all know Ed Swift is no stranger to exclusive arrangements, don’t we? Ed’s vision of what the Truman Waterfront should be is very different than most of ours’, we the people of Key West. Most of us see open green space and lots of tropical trees to relax under, not a paved paradise with more trains, trolleys, and [amphibious tour vehicles], and more and larger cruise ships. I seem to remember Ed leading the charge for the land grab for the so-called assisted-living facility that was really 80 percent independent units starting at $500,000, with 40 of the 140 planned units priced at over $1 million, situated at the foot of Southard at the gateway to the park, essentially an extension of Truman Annex. All of this overlooking a mega-yacht marina, which now he bemoans the Navy stealing from us. Ed is no stranger to boondoggles, and the Truman Waterfront park is surely getting to that point. If the $8 million we paid to Duck Tours Seafari is 20 percent of what is proposed for the Truman Waterfront, I think we need a $10 million park instead of a $40 million-dollar park, and the extra $30 million will go a long way toward watering the grass and raking the leaves.

Matt Lynch

Key WestA Key West City Commission, on which incumbent “quality of life” City Commissioner Jimmy Weekley sat, ordered the city attorney to “grind Duck Tours” to dust, to protect the exclusive city streets tour license the city had given Ed Swift’s Historic Tours of America, to run conch trains and trolleys around most of Key West. I have yet to see any of Ed Swift’s many letters to the editor in The Key West Citizen, some quite a bit longer than the maximum word limitation, come anywhere close to revealing Ed’s real intere$t in the topics he addresses.

Meanwhile, it’s time to grab your best hold, for what follows is volcanic:

Further enhancing the quality of life in Key West …  According to this article below today in The Key West Citizen, Mayor Cates intends to have the Key West Tree Commission, known in Key West as the Tree Nazis, continue to gouge Key West property owners. My interjected thoughts in italics.

City reviews laws that protect the island’s trees

City crews will be trained on tree-trimming techniques

BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff gfilosa@keysnews.com

The city of Key West has laws against “tree abuse,” and 94 tree species enjoy protective status, with the books name-checking the gumbo limbo, buttonwood, royal poinciana, autograph tree and coconut palms as being dear to the island.

Word has it that tree companies which do business in Key West view the royal poinciana as a weed which grows very fast and has to be trimmed back frequently and is a great money maker for the Tree Commission.

As for the invasive Brazilian pepper tree, which torments some yard owners with its rapidly growing brittle limbs and clusters of red berries, no permit is ever needed to cut at will, according to the city code.

It’s all spelled out in a 26-page draft of a proposed update of the city’s Tree Protection Code, available at www.keywestcity.com, as part of the agenda for Tuesday’s 6 p.m. Tree Commission workshop at Old City Hall, 510 Greene St.

Key West’s Tree Commission, comprising volunteers appointed by city commissioners, can order hearings over questionable tree cuts or removals, with the power to render penalties of tree replacements or a fine up to $5,000. Permits are required in many cases before a tree is taken down, the code states.

Proposed revisions, though, are few. The most extensive rewrite adds mitigation for people who can’t afford to replant trees — and adds to the code a $250 flat “donation” fee per palm tree illegally removed. For a canopy tree, the donation could be $150 per inch of any canopy tree

The rest of the proposed ordinance contains additions such as: “Climbing spurs shall not be used to trim palms unless a total tree removal permit is approved by the tree commission.”

I put that quote in bold because word has it that the subtext of this article and the city commotion about its Tree Commission is Dan Kramer, of Dan’s Tropical Tree Care, while recently trimming a palm tree at County Commissioner Heather Carruthers’ women-only lodge in Key West, fell 20 or so feet and broke maybe 50 bones and was airlifted to a Miami hospital where he remains in a coma and it is not know if he will live. If Dan does live, he will not be able to do tree work again. Dan was not wearing spurs. Word has it that at a Tree Commission meeting some time ago, Dan advised the tree commissioners that spurs were not needed to climb palm trees. Word has it that other tree company owners were there when Dan gave the tree commissioners that advice. Word has it that the city ordinance prohibits the use of spurs to climb palm trees, but OSHA rules only discourage the use of spurs to climb trees, unless there is no other safe way to climb. Word has it that there is no other safe way to climb palm trees, which meets OSHA rules. Specifically, word has it that using extension ladders as primary climbing technique is prohibited by OSHA rules, as is throwing a rope over a palm tree top and using both ends of the rope climb and trim a palm tree with a chainsaw, because there are no other branches to hang the rope from and the risk of cutting the rope with the chainsaw is great. Word has it that working in palm trees without spurs is suicide. Word has it that tree commissioners, who are not arborists, and the city thereby changed OSHA rules so spurs could not be used to climb palm trees. Word has it that Dan Kramer, or his family, will bring a mega lawsuit against the city for not allowing tree workers to use spurs to climb palm trees. Recall, word has it that Dan advised the tree commissioners not to allow spurs to be used to climb palm trees.

Already on the law books is Key West’s distaste for the shallow root system that comes with the standard ficus tree and can lead to disaster during hurricane season. “No species of Ficus tree, except for the shortleaf fig (Ficus citrifolia) shall be planted on city property,” the code says. “Owners of private property are hereby discouraged from the planting of any tree Ficus species.”

The care and upkeep of Key West trees, though, sparked a brief yet fierce discussion at this month’s City Commission meeting when the subject of the city’s maintenance tree-trimming crews arose.

“Someone needs to train them how to trim trees,” said veteran City Commissioner Jimmy Weekley. “Apparently they’re doing a butchering job on some of the trees on private property.”

Greg Veliz, the city’s director of community services, said Key West doesn’t have professional arborists on the streets but promised a new round of training for the crews. ”We’re going to bring all right-of-way crews to train them once again; more importantly to establish a process by which we trim trees,” Veliz told the commissioners April 2 at Old City Hall.

“We don’t want to cut every tree back,” said Mayor Craig Cates. “They look beautiful, a lot of them.” Maybe city policy needs a review, Cates said. “There is a policy, it’s clearly state in the code,” Veliz said. “If you tell us to go out and cut to code, we’re going to go out and cut to code.”

Now why would the city tree crews be told to go out and not cut to code? The city can override its own code but city property owners cannot? What I think happened, as reported to me by a tree company owners, Sandy Downs of Tarzan Tree Care, was the city was gotten onto by the state about not cutting city trees back from Keys Energy Services powerlines, as required by federal and state law, and city tree crews were sent out to take care of that. Many trees had not been trimmed back away from powerlines for years, if ever, because the city government wanted the canopy more than it wanted public safety from electrocution. Sandy said city tree crews were cutting city trees back to the trunk in many places in Key West. Butchered described those trees well, she said. Even as her company was fined the max for cutting a private property owner’s tree back from a powerline without butchering tree. Sandy’s company was also fined the max for removing a stunted tree between two house, the roots from which had dug down into a Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority waterline and ruptured it and caused the loss of several hundred thousand gallons of water. Sandy was not allowed to call Tree Commissioners and Tree Commission employees as adverse defense witnesses at her kangaroo court trial before the Tree  Commission. Sandy had and arborist working for her company, and currently has two arborists. The city has no arborists, nor is there one on the Tree Commission, or working for the Tree Commission. Word has it that the current tree commission consists of a taxi driver, a PE teacher, a Chervolet parts salesman, a postal clerk and Realtors, some of whom took the arborist exam and flunked it. I wonder how much liability insurance they have.

Tuesday’s workshop is part of the city’s solution. “We will follow up on this,” said City Manager Bob Vitas. “It’s all about training and communications.

gfilosa@keysnews.com

Actually, Bob, it’s all about the city obeying its own code and state and federal laws with respect to city trees, and it’s all about a City-run RICO operation with respect to trees on private property. Best I was able to guess, the Tree Commission is illegally raking in several or more million dollars a year in fines, mitigation trees and coerced donations in lieu of fines and mitigation trees, from private property owners.

I have a printed transcript of a June 8, 2009 Tree Commission meeting, during which the tree commissioners and assistant city Attorney Ronald Ramsingh discuss, and lament, having gotten caught at a previous tree commission meeting by a Key West lawyer representing a private property owner named Paul Tripp. Tripp’s lawyer told Ramsingh and the tree commissioners what they were trying to do to Tripp was illegal, the city code did not permit it, and they agreed with Tripp’s lawyer and gave Tripp a free pass. In the transcript, Ramsingh and the tree commissioners discuss how to avoid that unhappy outcome in the future, and Ramsingh convinces the tree commissioners that the only way to do that is to amend the city code, which would require amending the city’s comprehensive plan, which would require state approval. They did not get the ordinance changed and they continued to do to city property owners what Paul Tripp’s lawyer convinced them they could not do. Perhaps next time The Key West Citizen and Gwen Filosa write about the Tree Commission, they will interview people who do not work for City Hall.

Last today, excerpted from The Key West Citizen – www.keynews.com:

BP dollars could make a big difference

Group wants to identify, restore and monitor Keys’ banks and channels

BY TIMOTHY O’HARA Citizen Staff tohara@keysnews.com

The edges of banks and deep channels off the Florida Keys — with their hard driving currents — are a haven for such prized game fish as permit, tarpon and bonefish. They are unique habitats where the shallow edges of seagrass meadows meet the sandy, limestone bottoms, which also makes for ideal living conditions for spiny lobster, crabs and other small fish. However, some of the shallow edges have also been the victims of careless boaters and have propeller scars to show for it. The fishing conservation group Bonefish Tarpon Trust and the research and restoration company Continental Shelf Associates (CSA) have embarked on a proposal to repair and restore habitats along banks and channels off the Keys. The groups will first work with flat’s guides to identify the areas in most need of repairs and restoration, Bonefish Tarpon Trust Director of Operations Aaron Adams said. The groups would then restore them and reintroduce indigenous corals and seagrass. Following the restoration work, the groups would do extensive monitoring of the sites. The groups have not yet determined exactly how many will be restored, but they are initially looking at five sites, Adams said. “If it works, we will do more,” Adams said. “If not, we will find out why. Based on other restoration work, I think it will be effective.” The groups plan to go after BP fines handed down through the federal Restore Act to pay for the proposal. The project is estimated to cost between $3 to $5 million, Adams said.

As much as I detest what the BP oil spill did to the Gulf of Mexico and the coastal Gulf communities and Florida Keys economies, I see zero relation between that sea and marshes and beaches rape and prop scarred seagrass flats in the Florida Keys. At the last county commission meeting, commissioner David Rice said he had studied plenty on channel scarring and replanting sea grass, and as best he could determine, restored sea grass had about a fifty percent chance of surviving.

Beyond that, having spent many suns and moons on flats around Islamorada, with flats guides and poling my father’s and uncles’ skiffs, I know for a fact that prop scarring is aggravated by marking channels and making it easier for non-informed boaters to wander deeper and even deeper into waters far from port, and it is those uninformed boaters who cause nearly all of the prop scarring.

Right, if environmentalists really are serious about preventing prop scarring, they will lobby to remove all but the most necessary channel markers, and let uninformed boaters go into the far reaches at their own risk and learn by running aground that they don’t belong back there. The flats guides already know how to get around out there and don’t need navigational spoon feeding. 

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

depress Ctrl and + keys at same time to increase zoom (font size), depress Ctrl and – keys at same time to reduce zoom

Since yesterday, the child sex trade topic grew in size and shape, so today I first bring forward the child sex trafficking part of yesterday’s homeless former Key West woman’s art gallery opening, and child sex trafficking seminar post, then I include later developments.

Tim Gratz of Key West wrote:
From: keyscoalition@live.com
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: Can you help broadcast this?
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:11:22 -0700

I am not sure whether Vicky sent this info to you.

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The Keys Coalition against Human Trafficking invites community members to its annual meeting Sunday, April 28th, 2013 at 3 pm, which will be hosted by Monroe County Mayor George Neugent and Ginger Snead, former Marathon Mayor and current member of Marathon City Council. The meeting will be held at the Marathon Firehouse, 8900 Overseas Highway, and Gulf side.

Greg Feldman, Regional Criminal Justice Coordinator at Florida Department of Children and Families, will speak. (See the attached biography.) He has advised the coalition previously and assisted in the development of work in the Upper Keys. Special music will be provided by Keys recording artist/songwriter Adrienne. A State of the Coalition report will share successes and challenges of the last year. Members will also be asked to elect officers for the next six months.

The Coalition’s efforts have focused primarily on the sexual exploitation of minors. At a recent program meeting in Key West, Tyson Elliot, Human Trafficking Coordinator for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice said, as quoted in the Key West Citizen, “Human trafficking is a very real problem, and it’s ‘definitely’ going on in the Keys.” Details and sources are available on the KC website, www.keyscoalition.com.

For information about the meeting or about membership, please contact Vicky Fay at vickyfay@terranova.net or 451-5517

I replied:

Maybe, but I don’t care of the last paragraph, because Elliot is not working in the Keys as per what was quoted in The Citizen along with his quote in what you sent to me; and my impression, from what you send me to read is, your focus is 90 percent outside the Keys.

Tim replied:

Feldman who does work in South Florida and Monroe was on the Becker show this a.m.

Did you get a chance to hear him? If not you can on the Net this late afternoon as you know.

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The focus of KC is definitely on the Keys although frankly I do not think we should be so provincial. A child trafficked in Africa is as much a travesty and deserving of justice as a child trafficked here. Now I am not necessarily talking about child sex trafficking because other than donations to organizations fighting that overseas there is not much we can do about it.

What I am talking about is slavery in the manufacture of goods we purchase, including chocolate and components of cell phones and perhaps even produce harvested in Florida.

This may be too much for us to take on now but education to ensure we purchase products not made by slave labor can be important,

But back to child sex trafficking:

Elliott, an expert, believes trafficking likely occurs here but has not yet surfaced because there has so far been inadequate training in recognizing its signs. So one of the programs we are developing is awareness training for those whose profession may put them in contact with traffic victims.

More important, really, is the development of training/awareness/prevention programs for targeted youth.

Here is one of several programs we are investigating:

http://www.liarsandposers.com/

Far better to prevent victimization than to rescue a child after she (he) has bben victimized.

Best

Tim

P.S. Do you recall the labor trafficking case that went down about five years ago (before the issue was on my “radar screen”)?

I replied:

I listened to Becker’s interview of Feldman. Feldman did not really answer Becker’s question, is child sex trafficking/slaving happening in the Keys. Rather, Feldman talked generally about how it is in cities and rural communities. However, Feldman sound a thousand times better than that fellow I heard in the church in Marathon maybe a year ago. Feldman works for the state, is not trying to push his own private business geared toward making money from putting on child sex trafficking/slaving workshops and attracting paying clients for training and/or advice. I continue to think and say you and Connie and others/Keys Coalition need to focus here in the Keys, and on child sex trafficking/slaving, and it is not on your plate to drag into adults in the trade. Nor African slavery. Nor anything not directly relevant to child sex trafficking/slaving in the Keys. Duval Street’s sex dens remain your primary traffickers and your primary target in the Keys.

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Given how many times I have told Tim that he, Connie Gilbert and Keys Coalition need to take on Key West’ sex trafficking/slave magnet, and given I have not Tim, Connie or Keys Coalition do that, it looks to me that there is too much in Key West for Keys Coalition to take on. That aside, I agree with Tim: education is the best preventative, for once a child is lured into, or intentionally foes into sex trafficking, it is very difficult to undo it.

It remains my view that in the children Tim sees himself, and that drives him to eradicate all forms of child slavery world wide, which cannot be done. Nor, in my opinion, can even a dent be made it child slavery even in America. I have told Tim this several times, and I have also encouraged him to do what he can to head off children going into sex trafficking in the Keys, where he lives.

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That part of yesterday’s post ended there.

From Tim Gratz later yesterday:

KEYS COALITION (keyscoalition@live.com)
To: Sloan Bashinsky

Assuming you publish this tomorrow:

Keys Coalition thanks you for the coverage you have provided re the human trafficking seminar at the Marathon Fire Station at 3:00 p.m. this afternoon.

You wrote yesterday:

“It remains my view that in the children Tim sees himself, and that drives him to [want to] eradicate all forms of child slavery world wide, which cannot be done.”

You are very close to the truth. My eyes were first opened to the trafficking issue in 2007 when I saw a program on Dateline NBC on child sex trafficking in third world countries. At the time my daughter Melody Joy was ten years old.

What I saw on that program was girls my daughters age being sold in brothels. It was the thought that many of those girls in third world countries were the age of my daughter that ignited my passion re the issue. I have not studied it but I have seen anecdotal evidence that many men have become involved in the issue because they too have young daughters.

But in 2007 I did not realize that child sex trafficking existed to any extent in this country. I first discovered that in 2011 and it was that horrible discovery that led to the formation of Keys Coalition.

You state that it will never be possible to “eradicate all forms of child slavery world wide” and I acknowledge that you are right about that. Many anti-trafficking organizations talk about ending slavery in our lifetime. Again I do not think that possible but that acknowledgement should not cause us to throw up our hands in despair. Our mission should be to do all we can within our means to minimize its incidence.

You also wrote:

“. . .Education is the best preventative, for once a child is lured into, or intentionally goes into sex trafficking, it is very difficult to undo it.” You are as so often right on in your analysis. Far better to prevent a child from becoming a victim than it is to rescue a child who has already been victimized. While we do not want to minimize the importance of detecting any victims that may be in Monroe County (primarily through spreading awareness of the “signs” that a person may be a trafficked victim) we want to prioritize the development and implementation of programs to train young people so they are not lured or forced in to sexual exploitation. That is why we are intrigued with the “Liars and Posers” program developed by anti-trafficking organization in Texas.

Again, thank you for publicizing the event and your counsel. Let me share with you this great quotation from Edward Everett Hale, that I suspect you may have heard before:

” I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do.”

Because we cannot do everything to stop slavery does not mean we should do nothing about the problem whether locally or globally. What we can do, we must do. Our moral conscience so requires.

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I was unable to copy and paste the attachment into this post. Summing it up, the combined attempt to rid this planet of human slavery in its various forms is impressive. But, this isn’t 1860, Tim isn’t Abraham Lincoln, and this evil is planet wide …

I replied:

Hi again, Tim -

Yes, I have to agree that all possible must be done by those called to stop child sex trafficking and other forms of child enslavement; and also to retrieve and restore children, and even adults who went into the trade as children. The world in which you seek to have an effect is the worst, nastiest, most evil world I can imagine on this planet. I hope a special place in hell is reserved for adults who profit in that world at the expense of their slaves. I hope the perps reach that special place in hell ASAP, which would make a serious dent in the business they are in. I still think, though, there is more to what drives you than seeing in the child sex trafficking trade your own daughters. I still think something in your past, which child sex trafficking reminds you of in some way, was triggered and is in play. And, I still don’t see human efforts making a dent in the sex trade, or in any slave trades; I think it will take a supernatural intervention such as I suggested above. And, I still think you, Connie Gilbert and Keys Coalition should restrict your efforts to what is going in the Keys, where there is a major child sex trade magnet operating in plain view, which is in Key West, mostly on Duval Street.

Sloan

Tim wrote:

We are in so much agreement. I agree that supernatural intervention is necessary to combat what you rightly characterize as one of the worst and nastiest worlds imaginable. Although Keys Coalition is secular, I am also involved in an organization which is working to fight trafficking through the power of prayer. Re the hottest places in hell being reserved in hell for those who so cruelly exploited minors for their commercial gain, I am reminded of Matthew 18:6 where Jesus says that if anyone causes one of His children to fall into sin it would be better for him to have a millstone tied around his neck and dropped in to the sea. Now, that being said, even of worst slave-trader is not beyond redemption. I am sure you are aware of the story of John Newton who wrote the words that became the song “Amazing Grace”, who was a slave-trader until he realized the evil of what he was doing. In the movie “Amazing Grace” it recounts the true story that Newton inspired William Wilberforce to continue his efforts to ban the slave trade in England.

Re what we can do to fight slavery in other parts of the world, we can work to ensure that the products we purchase were not made in part from slave labor. California recently passed a law that corporations doing sufficient business in that state must disclose efforts they make to ensure their supply chain is free of slave labor.

You might also like to look at the attached report that has some interesting and I believe worthwhile recomendations.

I am heartened by the fact that there are many very good minds working on this issue.

Best

Tim

I replied:

I dreamt about this hell in a nap today, before I replied to your next previous email. After replying, I had to run an errand for a friend, even as some thoughts came to me.

[I was told in the nap to steer this discussion toward sexual child abuse, and that there was another line of approach, prayer for Divine Intervention. I did not tell Tim those details in the nap.]

First, I still think you, Connie and Keys Coalition should lay off the global and even national and even Florida, and focus on child sex trafficking the Keys.

Two, I imagine perhaps most kids who end up in trafficking were were sexually molested and the schools are still the best place to try to intervene with such kids, via teachers spotting warning signs and reporting concerns to superiors and law enforcement. Pediatricians and family practitioners also are good for spotting kids who are being abused.

Three, several times I have mentioned and have written of an event the angels clearly had to have arranged, in which I was told by a Keys person of a prominent Key West man who this person said is said to have a chicken farm in the Caribbean. Code, for a place where he keeps a stable of young boys. Connie twice or maybe three times told me she knows this man well and would speak to him about that, but each time I bring it back up with her, she either does not respond to me, or she says she has not spoken with the man. If wrote the above in a post and named this man, there would be a major upheaval in my life, and probably in the Keys.

You have not responded today to anything I wrote about the Key West sex magnet. Do you and Connie speak of it in seminars and workshops you hold in the Keys? Do your mainland experts talk about it? Have you and/or Connie yet spoken out against it in a Key West City Commission meeting? People in the field, who physically rescue, or attempt to rescue child and adult sex slaves from their masters/pimps, put their very lives at risk. I am pretty sure, if you and Connie and other members of Keys Coalition went after the Key West sex magnet, and after this fellow described above, and you did it publicly, you might experience serious social and perhaps other repercussions.

I see no way to make a dent in sexual child abuse, just as, if not a more terrible, trade, either. The US Congress went to war against drugs in America and did not make a dent in the drug trade. If the US Congress goes to war against sexual child molestation in America, it will not make a dent against that trade. If the US Congress goes to war against child sex trafficking, it will not make a dent in that trade.

I’m sorry, Tim. We just do not see eye to eye on stopping what so bothers you, or even slowing it down. Where we see eye to eye is on just how truly horrible it is. That’s why I am glad to hear you are praying for Divine help with it. For, as I wrote earlier today, that is the only hope I see in making a dent in any and all of the above trades we are discussing today. That God has not already intervened and put a stop to it leaves me wondering if that’s a message such an intervention will not happen.

However, I think I can safely say, if what the angels have done and continue to do to me was done to all people, what we are discussing here today would stop very quickly. As would war. As would a lot of nasty, horrible things. Humanity would behave very differently, because, to be blunt, it would be terrified of not behaving very differently.

Sloan

Tim wrote:

Sloan, I know the man to whom you refer and do not know how to handle that. We know the good he has done here which of course does not justify things done in a foreign country if you are correct.

Of course we are going to focus on child sex trafficking in the Keys since that is where we may be able to make an impact, through raising awareness in the “target audience” of the pimps, hopefully through the school system.

Many trafficking victims are run-aways from foster care. I read the other day that there are 31,000 foster children in Florida. I do not know how many there are in Monroe County and doubt that their names are publicly available. But it may be possible to somehow get the information in to their hands.

I will ask Mr Feldman if he is aware of trafficking through the “adult clubs” on Duval. It is certainly true that in other cities such places are a breeding ground for sex slavery and I agree we need to discuss how to handle it here.

We totally agree that Divine intervention is needed. It certainly has happened before. Why it has not happened yet to a greater extent also troubles me. Perhaps God wants to se how serious His people are about it. That is why we want to work on putting churches together against it. It is obviously an issue that cuts across both theological and political differences.

I do think laws can help–not eliminate it, on that much we agree–but on greatly reducing it. One way is to cut down on the demand by imposing draconian sannctions on those who purchase sex with minors. I think reducing the demand is more important than punishing the pimps.

Tim

I replied:

You send me stuff all the time deploring what is going on in other countries, and this man is in your and Connie’s adopted hometown and neither of you have not spoken with him even yet, maybe two years since I first told Connie what I had been told about this man?

You and Connie have not done an all-nighter on Duval Street, surveying its various sex magnets?

You have spoken out against that at city commission meetings?

Sorry, Tim, your and Connie’s inactions in Key West simply do not jive with what you send to me.

I’m still sitting on what I don’t know whether to publish, even though I wager my life and soul it is prove positive of just how intractable sexual child abuse is in humanity. Sexual child abuse itself is child sex trafficking/slaving, as anyone who has experienced it surely knows, if he/she is not in denial.

I come at this from a position some people do not enjoy. As having been molested by my mother, and as having molested my younger sister when she was 5 and I was 15. It was before I had reached puberty, and it didn’t last long, but it messed her up for life, and it messed me up and I’m still enduring the karma it created.

Connie was molested, she told me it had happened [after I told her it had happened]. She said she was healed of it, but I have seen plenty of indication that she was not healed of it.

We have a county commissioner who was sexually molested in childhood, and I have seen many indications in her social actions and comments at county commission meetings and in her votes, which showed me she is being driven by that terrible soul wound.

The angels tell me one half of all Americans are sexually molested in childhood, and that translates into the Keys. That’s where most of the child sex trading starts. That’s where the main effort needs to begin. It still won’t make a dent in it, though. There is nothing you or anyone can do to make a dent in it, Tim.

Here’s a suggestion for a prayer you and Connie can make. “Dear God, do to all of humanity what you are doing to Sloan, and start with doing it to us.”

Sloan

Tim wrote:

Off to work so short. I like the prayer.

I replied:

I knew all along you wuz crazy, just not HOW crazy.

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The prayer I suggested to Tim is the only possible solution I see for what Tim and Connie are trying so hard to stem. It’s up to Tim and Connie to make that prayer, and that it start in them. If their prayer is answered, their lives and perspectives will totally change. They will come to know the Jesus, Michael, Melchizedek and Holy Spirit I know, and they will  experience healing unknown in religion, mental health and spiritual development circles today. In fact, anyone can make that prayer, but whether or not is it answered is up to God.

Yes, I know that is not the view of perhaps anyone I now know. I have known one other person, my sixth wife, who made that prayer and who had done to her what was done to me. If she were with me right now, I bet she would say the same thing I just said about what it will take to stop child sex trafficking.

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I pretty much put the above together before turning in last night. Around 2 a.m. today, this came in from Connie Gilbert, responding to yesterday’s homeless former Key West woman’s art gallery opening, and child sex trafficking seminar post.

Hi Sloan–

Thanks for the publicity for good causes (I adore Erika and wrote most of the Pam Eden press release, other than Erika’s commentary). You are absolutely right that Tim’s focus is far too broad, his attention, frankly, too scattered. We’ve had some changes recently in the structure of the Coalition, and I certainly hope it can direct our attention specifically to helping people in the Keys recognize trafficking and–if possible–rescue any children who are being sexploited. See attached resolution, which I hope will be passed by acclamation at Sunday’s annual meeting.

Would love to see you there.

Again thanks.
c

RESOLUTION RE KEYS COALITION ACTIONS 2013-2014
WHEREAS it is the mission of Keys Coalition, Inc, to keep human trafficking, and particularly child sex trafficking, out of Monroe County through both the prevention of victimization and the detection of any existing victims, and to accomplish that mission through raising public awareness;

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that Keys Coalition shall work toward implement the
following programs in 2013-2014:

PREVENTION PROGRAMS

Prevention awareness shall focus on the targets of the sex traffickers, primarily children starting with those in grades 6-8. It shall be the primary goal to attempt to introduce awareness training in the public and private schools serving grades 8-12.

DETECTION PROGRAMS

Detection awareness shall focus on general awareness programs for the general public and specific training for groups most likely to encounter victims, to include educators; health care professionals; and those working in resorts and hotels. These programs shall stress the recognition of the signs of a possible victim and how to deal with a situation if a possible victim is encountered.

Methods of awareness shall include social media and a monthly newsletter; a rally in January with a speaker to be approved by the Executive Committee; presentations to churches and service clubs; training sessions in schools (if permitted) and/or to youth groups; and the development of training materials and presentations to groups such as educators; health care workers and those employed in the hospitality industry.

Approved by the membership ______________ By_________________________

Date

Secretary

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If you google Tim Gratz, you see all of his life he has been deeply interested in and involved in US and global politics. He has written political history articles for The Key West Citizen’s Solares Hill Sunday magazine. Looks to me he has tried to make Keys Coalition into something it was never intended to be, and I’m glad to see Connie recognizes that and is trying to get Keys Coalition to focus its efforts in the Keys, and leave for others to focus their efforts elsewhere.

Sexual molestation in infancy usually cannot be remembered. It is known in mental health circles that some adolescent sexually molested children block sexual abuse out, develop amnesia, to defend themselves. Tim was sexually molested in childhood, and like me and my sixth wife, he has no conscious memory of it. That terrible soul wound is what frenetically drives Tim to try to save every child and every person on this planet from sex and other forms of slavery.

That said, what I wrote about interviewing the prominent Key West gay man I was told has a chicken farm in the Caribbean, and what I wrote about taking on the Duval Street sex magnet stands, still stands. People who take on tough causes are asked to do tough things. People who wish to be healed of serious soul wounds are asked to confront people causing serious soul wounds in other people.

And, what I wrote about putting primary emphasis on recognizing children who are being sexually molested also still stands.

At most, there are only a few cases of child sex trafficking in the Keys, in the sense Keys Coalition views child sex trafficking. However, figure one-half of children in the Keys are sexually molested, and thus are sex-trafficked and enslaved in their own families. K-12 school teachers and pediatricians and family practitioner physicians are the best watchdogs for sexually molested children.

It is well known that family members cannot be relied on to report to the authorities family members who are sexually molesting a child, or children, in their family.

Project the Keys onto America, and project America onto the world. Sexual child abuse in families dwarfs in numbers the kind of child sex trafficking Keys Coalition and related groups seek to stop.

A Divine Intervention is the only thing that will make a dent in either form of child sex trafficking. All people called into that arena should ask for the Divine Intervention, and that it begin in them. As Jesus also said, First, take the beam out of your own eye.

Yes, the same let-it-begin-in-me-first prayer for a Divine Intervention can be made by anyone for any situation, and then it is up to God to respond. Be careful what you pray for comes to mind.

Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com